PROJECT TOOLBOX


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS


What is the purpose of the Project Toolbox?

The Toolbox is intended to be a a Web storehouse of proven project methodologies, documents, and templates--a resource to assist IT developers and project managers in compiling effective project methods.

As an archive of successful templates and project documents, the Toolbox will meet a long-standing need as an additional channel of communication linking IT developers on separate projects. It puts IT a step closer to other long-range goals: 1) preserving best project practices and 2) promoting a trend toward more public documents than private ones.


What will Project Toolbox contain?

The Toolbox will include:


Why call it a Project Toolbox?

It will be a collection of tools for managing project tasks.


Are developers expected to use the methodologies in the Toolbox?

Not necessarily. The Toolbox will be a collection of documents and methodologies, each item selected because it was effective in a project. A methodology or document can be used as is, modified, or serve as inspiration for building a new tool.

After a project completes successfully and the team determines that the new or revised tool has been effective, they can install it in the Toolbox, along with notes on how to approach the tool.


How is a tool judged to be effective?

The project team that used the tool can determine this during their project post mortem session. Judging a tool effective does not preclude the team's having ideas about how to improve it. Notes for improving the tool can be included in the Toolbox.

A tool that turns out not to work would be accompanied by notes on its deficiencies. A tool that seems to no longer be effective would be deleted.


What is the relation between the Project Toolbox, project management, and the Project Notebook?

All three are interrelated components that contribute to efficient attainment of project goals.

As mentioned above, the Toolbox will be a resource for both project managers and system developers. The project manager identifies resources, sets deadlines, and may use the Toolbox to help decide on project deliverables. If one of the deliverables turns out to be a requirements analysis, the project manager will assign one or more people to do the analysis. The person compiling that requirements analysis will find an outline and a standard deliverables list in the Toolbox.

The Project Notebook, in addition to being an archive of specific completed projects, will communicate status, deliverables, and activities for ongoing projects. The Notebook will reflect project methodology and store project-related documents. Some documents in the Project Notebook will be modeled after Toolbox documents.

Like the Project Toolbox, the Project Notebook needs to be placed in a central on-line location such as the Web.


What is the Orange Team? the Hephaestus project?

The original mission of the Orange Team was to create a development methodology for the former DCNS. This project was called "the Hephaestus Project". Its deliverables were requirements and an implementation plan for the System Methodology Vault, the precursor of the Project Toolbox.

The Project Toolbox concept, on the other hand, has evolved so that it provides a selection of approaches from which a developer can select, modify, or devise a completely new project methodology.


last modified: March 25, 1996
by Janet Littell (jlittell@mit.edu)