Today's Technologies

Users on project teams are being faced with tasks that require great conceptualization skills and a great under­standing of system architecture. These skills are not developed by the use of PCs and workstations alone. Terms and tasks include:

• Repository development
• Repository cleanup
• Data flow definition editing
• Defining enterprise objects for object oriented programming
• Imaging interfaces
• Open system platforms
• Multiplatform, multimedia
• Relational database architectures
• CASE tools
• GUI front ends
• TCP/IP network protocols

All have a profound effect on project completion and esti­mating and on the time it will take for the user group interface to get up to speed with the design team. Working on these projects is no longer like getting a new car and learning how to drive it and use all the options. It is more like getting a DC-10 and having to learn how to fly it from scratch.

Project teams can no longer afford to wing it. Highly networked systems across incompatible platforms with highly interfaced databases all force new learning curves and ramp up curves for project team members on the system side and the user side.

Future Roles of Project Members

Team members must include fully dedicated client and MIS personnel. Neither MIS nor client personnel are effective in a part-time role on a project. Team members may be called into and out of a project during various phases due to their expertise and the needs of the project. But when they are required on the project they must be available full-time. This is similar to a movie production where the actors and actresses may not be in every scene but when they are required on location they must be there and not be also shooting another picture which competes for their time and energies.

The advancement of OOP and CASE will radically change the role of the project team members. Most companies utilize the user team members to be the human "reposito­ries" of current practices and current data definitions. In the future, the user role will be more focused on the updating or restructuring of the repository (perhaps as a RAD team) and the longer term development, testing and rollout will be performed by specialists that will move from project to project. It is far less time consuming and punishing to work on a RAD assignment for ten weeks to fix a repository than it is to work for two years to bring a system in and just hang around on demand for fifty percent of the time to serve as the "human repository" for the technical team.

The user role is similar to that of a homeowner having a house built by the construction company. The homeowner and construction company will work together to define the blueprint for the house, the budget and the time frame needed to build the house. In project terms this is the project scope, budget, and project plan. The homeowner could then choose never to check the progress until the date the house is due to be completed just as the client can choose to be uninvolved until the project is due to be completed. This is risky since when the homeowner or client returns on the due date, they may find that their expectations differ significantly from reality. The house construction may be behind schedule, over budget, and blue prints may have been misinterpreted, incorrect, or incomplete. Whether these problems are legitimate and explainable or due to carelessness and poor work, the result is the same. The end product is unacceptable. If the client stays involved with the project and works with the project leaders to help ensure that project requirements are interpreted correctly, and that budget and resource problems are handled effectively, the end result will meet the business needs and the client will not be surprised.

This is not to say that the client needs to supervise and be involved in every nail and board used in the house nor in every line of code and programming decision. Instead the client needs to feel comfortable that the major components and milestones, pouring of the basement, construction of the main floors, wiring, and finishing are under control. Possible project milestones could be: requirements defini­tion completed, system design completed, training plan established, screen layout completed, testing plan estab­lished, etc. Each milestone should be deliverable that can be seen and touched. The client should be relentless in working with the project leaders until the major compo­nents and milestones for the project are defined to their satisfaction and in terms that they can understand.

To Be Continued