Project collaboration frameworks and best practices

Project Collaboration

Best Practices in it Project Collaboration

To merely rely on technology alone as the foundation for attaining collaboration between the many activities of it projects, their often non-integrated elements, and issues that arise during the completion of any project requires leaders, not merely managers. Leaders need to create a high level of transparency and trust in projects to ensure the highest levels of collaboration possible are attained (Connelly, 2007). What is also critical is a strong leader who can over time change a culture to make it more accountable and capable of producing results called for in the projects' objectives according to organizational culture expert Caudron (1999). Effective leaders are essential for it projects to be successful, in fact without them and their concentrating on driving accountability deep into an organization along with identification with critical goals, the majority of it projects would typically fail (Dyche, 2004). This is especially true in the area of customer-facing it projects. Paradoxically however research shows that the it projects that attain the highest levels of adoption and performance have been consistently centered on the unmet needs of their customers; in essence a project only succeeds to the extent it can stay focused on who the end customer is for the effort, whether that be an internal or external group or department. Being customer-centric is also the foundation of best practices in management of the System Development Lifecycle (SDLC), and further anchors this concept to customer accountability (Young, 2002). Finally, leaders must infuse their teams with a strong sense of transparency and trust in order to attain the shared goals of the project (Kouzes & Posner, 2003). The synchronization of all the many elements, activities, issues and roles that comprise a project must be coordinated from a leadership position that concentrates first on accountability of results to customers while striving to create high levels of transparency, sincerity and trust to ensure the highest levels of collaboration are attained.