The Insider

While doing my “Project Management” course in the uni, I had to do some research on Virtual Project Management for an assignment. We were to research on this concept and imagine that the assignment itself was a proejct and that its with a virtual team. We have discovered lots of interesting facts and issues during the process. I was amazed with the relativity of the topic with my work here at Yahoo! So with all of you engineers/developers, I thought I would share my thoughts and also see what different tools are up there to overcome these issues. I would be doing this as a series as there is so much to discuss in one post.

A few interesting questions we had in the beginning of the project (which was our assignment) was what VPM is and why do we need it. Though the name gives you a hint, there is a whole science of project management behind it. In simple terms, VPM is the project management techniques for managing virtual teams. Now that will definitely raise the next question “What is a Virtual Team?”. A Virtual team is a team of individuals separated geographically. So basically a team that does not meet very often, a team that has to rely on technology to communicate to each other, works together on a project reaching its goals and meeting its deadlines.

Now though that sounds simple, there is a lot to tackle in this concept of Virtual Project Management -The VPM. Issues like communication, availability, trust, co-ordination, time difference etc.. arise. Though latest trends in technology definitely does provide tools and aids to overcome these hurdles, a lot of the process is still human dependant.

In this series, I will be trying to jot out the ideas that I have noticed and studied in my observation and research. So keep an eye out for more in here.

Upcoming: VPM - An Intro, Its pros and cons
- The Insider

We have been having discussions on how to write specs for redesigining of a currently existing site. I guess it needs a bit of experience to write one. You get hundreds of questions in your mind like:

1. If the current project is a redesign then one of the most infamous questions you would get is “Do I need to keep the design same as the current one?”

2. Functionality-wise should it be similar to the existing one

3. What should I give importance to? Time/ Quality / functionality / user interface designing??

4. If its a new project then usually there is a problem that you go off the track as you will have to imagine a finished product while developing the specs.

Well here are a few tips in overcoming these hurdles:

1. Think about your product and the features you would like to add but at the same time try to keep them realistic. I mean, I would love to develop a search engine like Google or a portal like Yahoo! but frankly how long would it take me to do it? And when there is Google and Yahoo! why would peope want to use my product?

2. Try to keep your product unique by adding in unique features but at the samtime try to maintain relevancy with the concept. E.g.. Quotes listing and company announcements on a finance site is related but not a Political news module on a finance site. Though political news would earn lots of clicks, its not related to the main product. So you would be missing return users.

3. Dont concentrate on the Jargon. Try explain the features in simplest terms you can think of.

4. Keep in touch. Yes, try to talk to as many people as you can to know what is going on in your field. Talk to engineers and web devs to see if there are any “Technical Cant Do”s

So Happy PRD writing!!