Managing projects utilizing self-managed teams and managerial toolkits

Project Management is an essential function in most software companies today. With increasing complexity and inter connectivity between software projects, it is not surprising that managing such large scale development projects can be expensive and extremely time consuming for the sponsoring organization. In large scale complex software projects the project manager has to ensure that enough resources are allocated to the project and foster an environment of communication and teamwork, but accomplish all this with little authority over the project team. This traditional approach to managing project relies on the skills and experience of a project manager but is fraught with pitfalls that can lead the project in the wrong direction if corrective action is not taken in a timely fashion. Any misstep during the project lifecycle due to scope creep or miscommunication can ultimately push the project to miss deadlines or be over budget. Another alternative approach to software development is using self organizing teams. Free/Open Source software development approach uses the concept of self organizing teams to collaborate at a global scale using communities of developers. The F/OSS paradigm, based on cooperation and collaboration among developers from all over the world, introduces methodologies and development models different from those usually utilized within the proprietary software industry.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Mathur, Praveen, S. M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eric A. von Hippel.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55222

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55222