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If you are running your organization lean then you definitely do no want the additional management costs and organization disruptions caused by project management. Your software development goals can be easily accomplished using your existing systems department (or a similar organizational unit) which I'm assuming is quite well setup using functional organizational structure, and that can be spun around to use the project approach.

You should consider these simple criterion to evaluate the desirability of having a formal project management with in your organization.

a. Find out if the job your department is about to take on is large or technically complex. If the job is large or technically complex and challenging then you should consider a formal project management approach within your organization. Why? Because such complexities often require and deserve close management attention that is available with formal project management.

b. Find out if the job involves the integration of many components into a functioning, operational whole. Having a single individual representation for such jobs can help reduce redundancy of float information and clears out the communication blubber. Thus having project management enables better handling of interaction between various components.

c. Another thing to consider is to find out what your management wants. If your management is leaning towards having a single individual that should be available at all times as a focal point regarding information and responsibility, then you definitely need project management. Management also might require such an individual to scrutinize budget, and manage schedules of the job.

d. Find out whether a group of people with different skills-set need to be brought together in order to achieve a common goal. If your job does requires such a diverse set of professionals, then you need a project management environment within your organization. This way the group interactions can deserve a goal oriented leadership to reach its end objective.

e. Finally, you need to closely look at your organization whether the requirements for the job are changing or needing revisions every now and then. Having a project management approach will help your organization solve those kind of problems, bring an agile perspective to changing needs with in your organization and will help in gaining a better rate of customer satisfaction within the organization.

Though having presented all these interesting points, it is fascinating to find out that majority of software projects fail because of poor adaption and application of project management practices. There's no hard and fast rule for doing or executing software project management. Adaptability to the development environment in correspondence with the organization, and its subsequent applicability to the needs of the development project are critical to any software development project. And if either of these are missing then the software project cannot be a success.

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"Guanxi" is vital to any successful business strategy in China. “Guanxi” literally means "relationships". In Chinese business world, it means network of relationships among different parties that work together in cooperation and support. It is also about exchanging favors, which are voluntary and which also include bringing gifts. In China it is the right "Guanxi” that ensures that business will be successful. By maintaining the right relationships (“Guanxi”), organizations can minimize the risks, barriers and open doors for doing business in China. The relationship does not have to be about money but about creating a trust factor. If a company promises something and delivers it as promised then they show trust and worthiness that will win them more business in the future. It is important to be reliable and dependable to strengthen the relationship. Since "Guanxi" and relationship could function as an information network, companies with wide "Guanxi" and relationship networks often have much higher performance than companies with little or no relationship.

But the west has a total different take on this, and the personal relationships are said not to be mixed with professional relationships. But, at the core, still business relationships are build on knowledge, know-how and trust. And that trust comes from building relationships, and more so on the professional front in the west as oppose to building a personal one. Nothing comes cheap, and so are the business relationships as well. What's your take on all this?

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Gone are the days when ignorance was a bliss. Today its a curse. But why so? Why are you reading this anyway? What's it to you? How did you get here anyway? Just curious. :-)

© Manoj Khanna/Open Source World/rapidblog.com 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Powered by Dextrus Prosoft, Inc.

I hope to write here regularly if not daily or weekly, and post some meaningful content and not just my rants. :-)

Have a great week everyone!

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COSSFest 2007 is an exposition of open source technologies, welcoming new voices, tools and projects that will accompany established operating systems, platforms, languages and applications that started the open source movement. The beginning collaboration between two user groups and post-secondary education has been expanded to include new partners in making this event the biggest free technology event in Calgary.

COSSFest is the place for the open source community and their supporters to gather, exchange ideas and gain momentum. It is also a place for enterprise developers and managers to see and hear about competitive advantage in using open source technology. It is an opportunity to learn from and meet with users of open source who could profoundly affect Information Technology strategy in your organization.

There are already very interesting tracks and sessions confirmed for this event, ranging from Web 2.0, Collaborative frameworks to Ruby on Rails, and areas covering Linux. It'll be fun to watch coming all this together on the event day. There are many things lined up for next couple of weeks. It is going to be very busy as we approach the event day.

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To learn more about COSSFEST'07 visit the conference website here.

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The other day I spent a good 30 minutes to understand the basics of latest Office'07. And I must admit that I was amazed with the styling but really what a mess! It took me a great deal to find simple thing such as "Save as" which is to my surprise was hidden in top left corner under the special Office logo! What the $%^#&? Anyhow, Microsoft might have the advantage of the general enterprise wide acceptance and similar user market, but with innovation like Office'07 they sure are making one hell of a life for the enterprise as well as the common user. Everything is not about style. It is about usability and applications own cleverness. By adding style Office'07 has added overhead with requirement of higher disk space, at least a gig of RAM and a faster processor, and without all this good luck with your Office'07 experience as your machine will be on Office'07 mercy. I strongly encourage Microsoft engineers to learn something from Apple engineers and Apple's application design team.

At least, with Numbers Apple has accomplished what was the missing link in their office application suite - and with AppleWorks disappearance with OS 9 this surely is a delightful surprise to see a much effective and pleasant spreadsheet application.

Good job Apple and keep it going!!

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Feedbacks are welcome.

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Another top of the line attractor of funds and capital these days is Web 2.0. Do we really understand Web 2.0? Why 2.0 and why not 1.5 or 2.5 or 3.0 or any arbitrary number for that matter. A term coined for the heck of it or did it have any meaning far and beyond the marketing and publicity of it? Is it making life easier for the users? What I have seen so far from Web 2.0 is - site slowness, complex page designs, heavy scripting and not really paying attention towards usability standards - so how the heck it makes things better over the standard pages or pre-Web 2.0 era?

To me both open source and Web 2.0 and overrated and overused terms today. It is time to move on, get something more useful. Something that makes the lives of the software development world easier, less stressful, more manageable, more focused, less expensive and user centric, and supports open technology standards (if they ever evolve completely).

Though, I named this blog "Open Source World" very aptly, but I think it's going to stay this way, because open source though overused and overrated will eventually live out itself - and then I'll think of some new name. BTW, I'm back with blogging.

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I might be blogging on bits and pieces at my book blog for now and will return here after I finish my book project. Ciao!

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