Collective Wisdom from the Experts 81
The most difficult thing is getting the buy-in from vendors, clients, sponsors, and
other stakeholders. We need to analyze their interests, requirements, and needs
to be sure that there is value for each of them when we group technical projects.
Every group must gain more value than if its project was completed in a vacuum.
Particularly when customers span many countries, they will all have different
ideas of how technology should be created, and unique organizational proce-
dures and processes. Agreement and approval on internationally recognized
program management practices is fundamental in order to begin the align-
ment of all stakeholders to program goals.
To have a successful methodology, we need common, but flexible, documents
or templates to use for all projects. When we manage information technology
programs, we typically need goods or services from vendors with their own
unique methodology and templates, or outputs from other projects being run
simultaneously with our own. So, before we begin, all parties have to agree
which documents we are going to use.
What will our project management methodology be? If individual project
teams can’t agree on what methodology, procedures, processes, and integrated
change control steps will be adopted by all teams, the smooth codevelopment
of projects to serve the greater program good will fail. When choosing, the
software project manager needs to ask the team which templates and practices
are reasonable and useful to help it execute and control its projects efficiently.
Once you have a common process and document/template tools, you are in a
position to coordinate technical projects into programs. These provide greater
value to your customer and your organization than single projects done alone.