Project Management – Beyond the Obvious

In ConnectALL by Johnathan McGowan

Why write a blog about project management anyway?

You already know project management is important. Developers and managers are already using it as part of their DevOps or agile development platforms. Those who don’t know about the importance of project management probably don’t want or need to know.

The guy who cuts your hair doesn’t have any interest. The cashier at the fast food place where you sometimes get lunch isn’t interested – unless she’s working a part-time job to finance college courses in management or development!

So what can I say that isn’t obvious to those who already know?

A few things are clear

For effective project management, the project manager must have transparent, rapid communications with all teams involved in a project. Regardless of which tools the teams use, the project manager (whatever their actual title is) needs to easily share information with each team and each team needs to share information with other teams. For example, QA and test teams need to communicate effectively with developers. Resource managers must communicate with developers, and with the clients. The project manager has to track all communications, and effectively manage all phases of a project, even if each team uses different tools.

But there’s a problem

Multiple systems block effective communication. The tools each team uses work well for them, but aren’t compatible with tools used by other teams involved in the DevOps project. The data sets, field definitions, and formats are different, and in many cases there is no inherent design that enables data sharing with other tools.

And there’s a solution!

Go2Group’s ConnectALL solves most of these issues. This application integration tool enables communication across tools, and across teams involved in all aspects of development and operations. With ConnectALL, transparent connections between quality assurance, resource management, testing, development, and other areas in the application lifecycle are automatic and effortless.

The 2.7 release of ConnectALL supports Microsoft Project Online. Project managers can now overcome the communications problems that previously required cut and paste, print and scan, and other steps to manage the numerous teams involved in projects. A project manager can easily see the current status of each step in the development process. Changes can be made and easily sent to teams or the tools they are using. Teams can share their data, using ConnectALL as the central hub.

To learn more about how ConnectALL can empower Microsoft Project Online, or provide transparent connectivity across development processes, contact us.