TeamCluster Project Real time project management solutions Harry Hvostov April 27, 2002

The Competitive Landscape Projects are increasingly complex, requiring cross-functional and organizational involvement for success. Companies must focus on core competencies to be successful in today’s market. Vendors must provide complete solutions for their customers. Successful companies share risk and gain economies of effort through collaboration with partners, vendors, and customers. Successful companies deploy key skills quickly and leverage critical mass regardless of geographic location. Successful companies have a network infrastructure mature enough to support efficient, effective, and secure team collaboration. The Web is the global team workplace.

The Challenges Project management burden is stealing “cycles” from valuable engineering resources. Project complexity and speed is now beyond the single “gatekeeper’s” scope. Clarity about project objectives must be diffused globally. Clarity about roles and responsibilities must be diffused globally. Duplication of effort must be avoided at all costs. Why are there 10 spreadsheets for the same data? Need consistency in resolving issues and managing risks – misdirected action plans, too little, too late. Need efficient and timely access to project critical information, regardless of location. Need global accountability across the project team. We must proactively manage risk.

TeamCluster Project Value Proposition TeamCluster Project places focus where it belongs: The team. Plan and execution. Risk management. Information management.

TeamCluster Energized

Teamwork – All for One and One for All

Cross-functional Team Management Each critical skill set for the project must be represented as part of the team. Team member roles and responsibilities must be globally defined. Team member roles must be clearly endorsed. Part time teams never succeed. Priorities must be clearly established and followed.

Plan and Execution

Action Oriented Project Execution Ease project management burden: Clear links between the plan and results.  Plan - top down: Product feature set for each Phase – time to market. Phase completion as a set of milestones. Deliverables with clear ownership.  Execute - bottom up: Issues are gates to deliverable completion. Accountability for each issue and action plans to resolve them. Targeted actions to remove gates and unblock the team progress.

Risk management

Risk management Assessment: Identify risks before they become costly problems. Prioritize – probability x impact = exposure. Analyze to identify risk type and anticipated impact timeframe. Action oriented control: Develop risk management action plan:  Mitigate, transfer, watch, execute contingency plan. Assign clear ownership for risk resolution. Reassess risk exposure define next corrective action.

Information Management

Real Time Information Sharing – Key to Success Publish: Team members create subject area folders. Upload documents into common repository. Subscribe: Team members receive automatic notification of new relevant documents. Global Web access from desktop, laptop, PDA. View, download and use information to accomplish project objectives.

TeamCluster Components Web browser access – no client installation! Industry standard server computing platform: Java runtime. Web server. Java servlet engine. Relational database management system. Seamless standards based server installation. Complete OS platform deployment independence: Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows 2000.

Flexible Deployment Model Corporate intranet or extranet. Server configuration to client requirements. Leverage corporate network infrastructure, remote access, and security. Keep project critical information assets under direct physical control. Managed hosting (rackspace.com) Best of breed enterprise application hosting:  Dedicated servers.  % availability.  24x7x365 guarantee – Fanatical support.  55% guaranteed extra bandwidth capacity.  Global presence through US and UK data centers.

TeamCluster Project Summary Boost distributed team productivity to meet ROI targets. Ease project management burden. Execute to plan with predictable, consistent results. Integrate management of project critical information. Enable universal Web based info access on demand – from anywhere, anytime.

Questions? Comments? Contact TeamCluster at (408)