Page 77 - Using MIS

Q3 What Are the Four Primary Purposes of Collaboration? 45

Phase Tasks Shared Data
Starting Set team authority. Team member personal data
Set project scope and initial budget. Start-up documents
Form team.
Establish team roles, responsibilities, and
authorities.
Establish team rules.
Planning Determine tasks and dependencies. Project plan, budget,
Assign tasks. and other documents
Determine schedule.
Revise budget.

Doing Perform project tasks. Work in process
Manage tasks and budget. Updated tasks
Solve problems. Updated project schedule
Reschedule tasks, as necessary. Updated project budget
Document and report progress. Project status documents
Finalizing Determine completion. Archival documents
Figure 2-5 Prepare archival documents.
Project Management Tasks Disband team.
and Data

here. Figure 2-5 shows project management with four phases, the major tasks of each, and the
kinds of data that collaborative teams need to share.

Starting Phase
The fundamental purpose of the starting phase is to set the ground rules for the project and
the team. In industry, teams need to determine or understand what authority they have. Is the
project given to the team? Or is part of the team’s task to identify what the project is? Is the team
free to determine team membership, or is membership given? Can the team devise its own
methods for accomplishing the project, or is a particular method required? Student teams differ
from those in industry because the team’s authority and membership are set by the instructor.
However, although student teams do not have the authority to define the project, they do have
the authority to determine how that project will be accomplished.
Other tasks during the starting phase are to set the scope of the project and to estab-
lish an initial budget. Often this budget is preliminary and is revised after the project has
been planned. An initial team is formed during this phase with the understanding that
team membership may change as the project progresses. It is important to set team mem-
ber expectations at the outset. What role will each team member play, and what responsi-
bilities and authority will he or she have? Team rules are also established as discussed under
decision making.

Planning Phase

The purpose of the planning phase is to determine “who will do what and by when.” Work activi-
ties are defined, and resources such as personnel, budget, and equipment are assigned to them.
As you’ll learn when we discuss project management in Chapter 12, tasks can depend on one
another. For example, you cannot evaluate alternatives until you have created a list of alterna-
tives to evaluate. In this case, we say that there is a task dependency between the task Evaluate
alternatives and the task Create a list of alternatives. The Evaluate alternatives task cannot begin
until the completion of the Create a list of alternatives task.
Once tasks and resources have been assigned, it is possible to determine the project sched-
ule. If the schedule is unacceptable, more resources can be added to the project or the project