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BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS COMPUTING (B2B) 329

where work and resumes would be posted and an exchange facilitated. These ex-
changes have by and large failed due to not taking into account the complexity of
skills needed to do IT/AD projects. Even more important, labor exchanges were
problematical for IT because it is hard to trust an unknown partner. Now we’re
seeing a growth in private labor exchanges where organizations deal only with
partners whom they know and trust with their work.

What Are the Key Benefits from Applying B2B Practices to
IT/AD Projects?

For outsourced labor, it can speed the delivery of services and more deeply inte-
grate the contractor into the internal processes of the buying organization. An ex-
ample may help. In current conditions, a project or resource manager may be
forced through a complex process to get an external resource assigned to their
project. Using a private labor exchange, the details of billing should already be in
place, and the contracting organization might allow a direct view into the avail-
ability of their staff. The project or resource manager can then search the staff
database by skill and assign contractors to the project. Then there would be no
need for an invoice; payment would be made directly from approved time sheets.

For outsourced projects, the requirement documents can be generated to the
contractors meeting predefined criteria, bids can be automatically graded and
awards made faster.

How Does Traditional Critical Path Type Software Fit In with
B2B Solutions?

For general project management there is little direct effect of the B2B approach
to procurement. The durations of the procurement activities will be different and
there will be different risks on those activities.

For IT/AD, the critical path will not have much impact, but the resource
search and assignment could be very different. If you could imagine a private la-
bor exchange with visibility into availability of the virtual organization, you begin
to see how many trade-offs of cost, duration, skills development, and so on might
become available to the project manager.

How Is CPM Being Integrated with Other IT/AD Tools?
How Successful Is This Integration?

We extend the CPM term to mean project scheduling which includes assigning
resources and getting their commitment to do the work. In the broader con-