Project Teams that Work
The Role of the Full Team
The full team serves as the steering and oversight committee. It includes representatives from all areas that are directly or indirectly affected by the projector that have changes in responsibility resulting from the project. The team members have regular status meetings and are responsible for ensuring that their departments or other related individuals are kept informed of the project’s status. Each team member has access to all project documentation and is asked to provide comments and suggestions.
Minimally, the AM/FM/GIS project team should have key members from the users organizations and the technical staff. In general, the joint vendor/client team members should hold the following project responsibilities: Project Managers; Technical Leads; Subject-Matter Experts; Current and Prospective Users; Soflware Analysts, Designers, and Developers; Software Quality Assurance/Quality Control Staffi Managers of Affected User Communities; Technical Writers; and Support Staff. Including representatives from these different groups allows collaboration among the participants and a view of the different perspectives. This blending of ideas leads to a better definition of the requirements of the project, which in turn leads a solution that better meets the needs of all involved.
In the utilities environment, ideas for projects frequently come from or have an impact on the user organization. The vendor/client team should include representatives from the user (client) organizations because they are the experts in their business. From the client’s user groups, subject-matter experts are identified to serve on the team because they are knowledgeable in the business areas affected by the application.
The Role of the Core Team
The core team is a subset of the full team that is responsible for doing the day-to-day work in the project. The members of this team work together to analyze, define and document the project requirements, design the system, build the application, test and document it.
The members of the core team will change somewhat over the course of the project, depending on the skills required at each phase. For the development of the requirements and system, the core team should minimally include those who have the critical knowledge required for the project (subject-matter experts from the user community), those who know how to convert that knowledge into analysis and design documents (technical experts), and the technical writers to document the results.
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