IT Project Management at Google and the Development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Applications Google is known for its rapid pace of innovation and exceptional ability to deliver fully-featured products in a fraction of the time other companies can. Given the wealth of data Google has available in its search engine, taxonomies designed to increase the speed of data access, and the advanced technologies for linguistics modeling, the development of a hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a natural extension of its current technologies. Using the IT project management skills, tools and techniques learned, this paper presents a plan for delivering a state-of-the-art CRM system that can be delivered via browser to any user in the world. The concepts of IT operations, project controls, reporting and maintenance are defined in this analysis.

Defining the Project Plan and Objectives

At the center of any enterprise software application effort there needs to first be a conceptualization of quality levels including the metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that will govern the prioritization of goals and dictate how trade-offs are resolved (Geraldi, Kutsch, Turner, 2011). It is advisable that the project schedule and scoping of IT operations be defined with the constraints necessary for quality management, quality control and quality assurance of the application before it is released for alpha...

Project plans including the constraints and controls in place must also align to the project plan and also take into account advanced frameworks for ensuring software quality and consistency of delivery. The most commonly used metrics for this activity are based on the Sig Sigma methodologies and best practices proven to be highly valuable for streamlining process-centric projects and making them more effective, focused and economical over time (Eng, 2011). The goals must be defined using Six Sigma-based methodologies for them to be effective and measurable as the project progresses, ensuring a high degree of compliance and repeatable quality during the entire coding, programming, testing, user validation and launch process (Geraldi, Kutsch, Turner, 2011). In the case of the hosted or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based CRM applications, the goals of having individual instances of the hosted applications orthogonal or separate is critical to its functioning securely. There is also the need to benchmark the performance of the application as many users get online concurrently with it. This is an aspect of the DMAIC methodology of Six Sigma development as well (Johannsen, Leist, Zellner, 2011). All of these factors need to be taken into account in planning the IT project, schedule, constraints, costs, testing and verification period and launch. Using Six Sigma-based development methodologies, it will be…