communicatons fulbright
TRANSCRIPT
MODERN TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION
FOR INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
Svitlana O. Volkova, PhD. student
Petro Mohyla Mykolayiv
State University
in consortium
with “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”
Medical Equipment and Systems Department
The First Academic Investigation –
Scientific-and-Practical Conferences
2007
• International Scientific-and-Practical Conference “Olvian Forum 2007: Strategy of Ukraine inGeopolitical Space”, 06.09.2007 - 06.09.2007., Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Synthesis of Structured Software for Automated Knowledge Testing”.
2006
• Scientific-and-Technical Conference of Students, Post-graduates, Young Scientists with
International Participation “Informational-Controlling Systems and Complexes”, 04.10.2006 –04.11.2006., Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Present Days and Problems of Student’s Computer Testing”.
2005
• Guidance Conference “Mogylianski Chitania”, 10.31.2005 – 11.06.2005, Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Main Functions of Software for Computer Testing of Student’s Knowledge”.
• Science Days in National Petro Mohyla University, 01.24.2005 – 01.28.2005, Kiev, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Presents Day and Problems of Student’s Computer Testing”.
2004
• Guidance Conference “Mogylianski Chitania”, 10.23.2004 - 10.26.2004, Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Problems of Automatic Student’s Testing”.
• International Scientific-and-Practical Conference “Higher education perspectives:
The Role of Inter-University Consortia”, 09.30.2004 - 10.02.2004, Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Presents Day and Problems of Automatic Student’s Testing”.
Publications in Scientific Journals
& Materials of Conferences
Materials of Conferences:
2007
• Kondratenko Y.P., Encheva S., Volkova S.O., Olijnik A.I., Sapozhnik Y.V. “Synthesis of Structured Software for Automated Knowledge Testing”, Materials of International Scientific-and-Practical Conference “Olvian Forum 2007: Strategy of Ukraine in Geopolitical Space”, 2007, Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine – pp.78-79.
2006
• Volkova S.O., Kondratenko Y.P. “Present Days and Problems of Student’s Computer Testing”, Materials of Scientific-and-Technical Conference of Students, Post-graduates, Young Scientists with International Participation “Informational-Controlling Systems and Complexes”, 2006, Mykolaiv, Ukraine – pp. 1-8.
Publications in Scientific Journals:
2007
• Volkova S.O. “Kondratenko Y.P., Encheva S., Olijnik A.I., Sapozhnik Y.V. “Synthesis of Structured Software for Automated Knowledge Testing”, Scientific and Methodical Journal “Scientific Works” (Naukovi Pratci), Petro Mohyla Mykolaiv State Humanities University, 2007, Mykolaiv, Ukraine – pp.183-194.
2006
• Volkova S.O., Kondratenko Y.P. “Software for Automatic Testing of Student’s Knowledge”, Scientific Journal “Technical news”, 2006, Lviv, Ukraine, №1(22), 2(23) – pp 32-36.
The Main Current Investigation
The Algorithmical and Programming Tools
for Increasing Medical Software
Quality, Reliability and Safety.
Publications in Main Research Field
1. Publications in Conferences Collected Papers:
• 10 + 1 Internet-based.
2. Conference’s Presentations and Reports:
• 12 + 1 Internet Conference.
3. Publications in Ukrainian Scientific Journal:
• 5 + 1 in Russia, Saint Petersburg.
The Collaborative Work with
Professor from Washington University
• Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri
• William Hayden Smith
• Cooperative Project has been doneunder U.S. Civilian Research andDevelopment Foundation .
• Title of Project:
• Development of Software forProcess Control
The Most Recent Conference Presentations
with International Collaboration
• International Scientific-and-Practical Conference “Olvian Forum 2008: Strategy of Ukraine in Geopolitical Space”, 05.06.2008 – 08.06.2008, Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Software development for endoscopic investigation: problems and basic approaches” (U. Gorbenko, W. Smith, O. Trunov, S. Volkova).
• XXIX International Scientific-and-Practical Conference “The Application of Lasers in Medicine and Biology”, 05.21.2008 – 05.24.2008, Kharkiv, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Sensor-and-informational Systems for Rehabilitation Procedures” (U. Gorbenko, W. Smith, O. Trunov, S. Volkova)
• 19th All-Russian Scientific-and-Technological Conference with International Participation “Extreme Robotics”, 08.04.2008 - 09.04.2008., Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
• Presentation “Medical Systems: Quality and Safety in Robotic Surgery” (O. Trunov, S. Volkova).
• Internet-Conference «Perspective innovations in Science, Education Manufacture and Transport '2007», 01.06.2007 - 15.06.2007, Odessa, Ukraine
• Presentation “Basic approaches to development of diagnostic systems: requirement statement phase” (S. Volkova).
The Main Spheres for Application of Effective
Communication Tools
1. Distant Education
2. Scientific Projects
The most wide-spread computer tools for effective communication:
• The E-Mail (with web-access – Yahoo, Gmail or local –
Outlook Express etc.);
• The ftp:// resource storage with shared access;
• The Instant Messengers for interactive discussions (ICQ, Yahoo, Skype – for video and audio conferences)
• Special Equipment (Web-Camera etc.).
MODERN TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION
FOR IT-PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESS:
PRACTICE OF ADAPTATION
Agenda
• Problem Statement
• Organization of Communication
• Necessity of Applying Communications
• Communication Channels an Phases
• Communication Planning
• Communications Matrix
• Relational Model of Project Communications
• Communications Tools
• Phone Communication
• E-mail Communication
• On-line Communication
• Messengers Review & Comparison
• ICQ, QIP
• Skype
• Yahoo/MSN Messengers
• The Effectiveness of Communications
• Conclusions and Useful Links
Problem Statement
• Today’s leading companies in the field of information technologiesstarting their branches in regions. They are specialized in softwaredevelopment and testing, technical support of software products andinformation consulting.
• It is mainly explained by the less cost of labor in regions, than inlarge towns, and supplying of regions by graduated students withhigher education with the high level of preparation in the field ofinformation technologies.
Problems of Communications
• The main reasons that decrease effectiveness of the work of suchvirtual, territorial distributed project teams are:
• The geographical remoteness among participants;
• The divergence of time zones;
• The linguistic and social-cultural factors.
• Problems in providing the effective communications and firmness inthe inner conflicts in IT projects together with inadequacy of projectinformation are three from six major reasons of project failures.
• That’s why the actual tasks are:• The synthesis of communication model for IT-project’s
management in accordance to modern business relationships;• The search of all pros and cons of this situational relations.
Business-
Analyst Project
manager
Developers
Testers
User
Changes
Use Case
Non Functional Requirements
Tasks
The Simple Example Software Life Cycle
The Necessity of Effective
Communications among all
Project Participants
Faults
Bugs
The Organization
of Communications
Communications Management
The Project Management Institute (PMI) identifies nineknowledge areas in The Project Management Body ofKnowledge (PMBOK):
• Project Integration Management
• Project Scope Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Cost Management
• Project Quality Management
• Project Human Resource Management
• Project Communications Management
• Project Risk Management
• Project Procurement Management
Project Communications
• Project Communication Management includes the processes whichrequire to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection,distribution, storage, retrieval and ultimate disposition of projectinformation.
• The Project Communications Management processes provide thecritical links among people and information that are necessary forsuccessful
Communications. (PMBOK Third Edition, p. 340)
• Project Communication includes:
• Communications Planning• Information Distribution• Performance Reporting
Project Initiation:
Develop Communications Plan
Project Planning:
Refine Communications Plan
Project Execution & Control:
Execute Communications Plan
Project Closeout: Solicit
Feedback
Phase
2
Phase
3
Phase
4
Communications by Phase
Phase
1
Necessity of Applying Communications
• The implementation of systemsat the local level may requirepolitical approval prior to use;
• The financial issues may requiresignificant time;
• The change management canbe complex etc.
• IT responsibilities are notconsistent;
• IT relationships with applicationusers are not alwaysconsistent;
Communication Channels
Communicate to senior
executives;
Highlights issues, risks and
exceptions;
Tools used: exception reports,
weekly status reports, project
charter, e-mail updates,
communication plan, face-to-
face reviews;
Strengthens the buy-in from
top.
Provide directions to project
team;
Highlights tasks pending,
scheduled tasks, dates and
general team briefings;
Tools used: verbal exchanges,
agendas, minutes, e-mail,
project brief, project plan,
issue logs;
Requires delegation skills.
Downward channel
Upward channel
Communicate to clients,
vendors and functional
managers;
Involve negotiations for
resources, time allocations
and budgets;
Tools used: communication
plan, statement of work,
contracts, e-mail;
Requires diplomacy and
tact,
Lateral channel
Communications Planning
• Who? Who needs to know?
• What? What do they need to know?
• When? How frequently?
• Where? Where are communications required?
• Why? Why is it important?
• How? How are they kept informed?
What? Who?
• Tendency to send too much to too many -very easy to do with electroniccommunications! Too much is as bad as toolittle - can't read everything.
• Target your audiences -and realize you mayhave more than one.
• Did you think of everyone?
• If you are designing an application in this project, have you included the end-users in the early project communications?
• If your end-user works for another organization have you also kept the IT people in those entities informed?
When? Why?
• How often?
• Morning & afternoon?
• Day of week?
• Day of month?
• Different intervals for various teams
• Weekly for team members
• Bi-weekly for Middleman
• Monthly for Executives
• Curiosity? Good/bad?
• Need to know?
• Provide information
• Prepare end-users for transition
• Many reasons to share information
Where? How?
• Location for status meetings
• Location for team meetings
• Locations for information: Network drive, website, internal or external, e-mailattachments, e-mail text
• E-mails
• Status reports
• Phone calls
• Meetings
• Face to face, one to one
• Press release
• Others
Tools: Communications Matrix
Audience All, Part of Team etc.
Vehicle Conversation, Report etc.
Frequency Monthly, Scope change etc.
Medium Meeting, Hard Copy etc.
Source PM, Weakly Report etc.
Delivery by Team, PM, Customer etc.
Date delivered As needed, every month etc.
Expected Result Business impact of project etc.
Object
Audience, Delivery by
Item
Source, Expected Result
Assets
Vehicle, Medium
Frequency, Date delivery.
Relational Model
Project Communications
Communication Model’s Description
• The description of the hierarchy of connections forparticipants of the project:
–> technical leaders of groups–> leader of the project
–> middleman–> customer.
• The wide possibilities of the sets theory allow to describethe presented model.
Discussion of Communication Model
• The developed model structure demonstrates the process of organizationof the project communications for the company’s employers in the branchwith guidance of main office and directly with customers who can be onother continent.
• The relational model for IT project communication management ispresented and it:• shows the complete visual state of project• Contains sequent relation among projects’ participants;• determines the dynamic changes between the participants.
• The main task is providing the connection of project’s technical leader(TL) who works in the company’s branch with the project leader (PM),who is in a main office and with the customers of software product orrepresentatives of customers.
IP-Phone Organization
• By the functionality and principles of work it is possible to divide theprograms into the network pagers, IRC-chats, Web-chats andcombined programs, such as on-line intercourses which allow holdingconferences with the participants of project and communicating withthe use of IP telephony.
E-mail Communications
E-mail Communication Tools:
The Bat
Evolutional Mail
Etc.
Basic recommendations:
• Create the message
• Timely• Accurate• As defined
• Deliver the message
• Accept feedback as input
On-line Communications: Messengers
• Yahoo Messenger
• http://messenger.yahoo.com
• MSN Messenger
• http://messenger.msn.com/
• Mіranda
• http://mіranda-іcq.sourceforge.net
• ІRC
• http://www.mіrc.com/
• RQ
• www.rejetto.com/&RQ and others.
Basic Features of Messengers
• Status indicator
• Contact list
• Chat
• Chat history (Log)
• Integrity with others
IM-networks (Int)
• Conferences organization
• IP-phoning (VoIP)
• Support of video communications
(Web-camera)
• Support of usual telephone calls (PSTN)
• Files transmission (File)
• Sending SMS (SMS)
• Pictures or desktop translation
• Support of secure connection
Messengers Comparison
VoIP PSTN Video SMS Log File
Yahoo Messenger + + + + +
Windows Live Messenger + + + + +
AIM Pro + + +
Skype + + + + + +
Google Talk + +
ICQ + + + + +
Gizmo + +
Apple iChat + + +
Qnext + + + +
Trillian + + + +
Gaim + +
Ineen + +
Jabber + + +
Jabbin +
AIM Triton + + + + +
Imvite + + + +
WebMessenger + + +
ICQ QIP
Conversations
Smiles
Contact Groups
Messages
Skype
Check your
Skype-account
Hold the
conference-meeting
(video/audio)
Phone on
stationary phone
Send a file
Organize
a chat
Find
the people
Manage your
contact list
Save
your history
Yahoo Messenger
Get Your
Yahoo ID
Use Your
Webcam
Miranda
MSN Messenger Remember!!!
You need
the registration
Contact
Status
Search
In Web
The Practice of Adaptation
of IT-Project Communications
• Interactive communication and data exchange for all IT-projectparticipants are carried out with the use of such software:
software testing process control system (TestLink, RUP);
reporting system about defects (Bugzilla, Trac, Mantis);
system of testing results accounting (ProjectLocker, QADB);
on-line communicational systems (Skype, ICQ, Yahoo);
system of organization of correspondence (Outlook Express,Bat etc.).
The Graphical Interpretation of IT-Project
Organization Communication
Project
Manager
(PM)
Customer,
Client
(Middleman)
Database server for
saving the test
results (Mysql)
Testing
Management
System
(Testlink, Mercury)
The Testing Report
System
(ProjectLocker,
QADB)
On-line Communication Systems
(Skype, ICQ, Yahoo)
(Outlook Express, The Bat)
Bug Tracking
System
(Bugzilla, Trac,
Mantis)
The Graphical Interpretation of Communication
Influence on IT-Project
Phone
Instant
Messengers
Personalcontact
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Dis
tracti
bilit
y, %
Efficiency, %
Distractibility and Communications
Instant Messengers
PhonePersonal
contact
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Mu
tual u
nd
ersta
nd
ing, %
Efficiency, %
Mutual-understanding and Communications
0%
20%
40%
Instant MessengersPhone
Personal contact
10% 20% 30% 40%
The Usability Communication Tools
• The highest degree of mutual understanding can be provided by phone andpersonal contact, the lowest – by e-mail.
• The e-mail is less distractible communication tool than instant messenger and
phone, but it provides the least efficiency. Personal contact, compared to e-mail, provides the highest project efficiency, but it has also the highest degreeof distractibility of project participants.
0
20
40
60
80
100
Instant Messengers
Phone
Personal contact
Distractability
Mutual understanding
Efficiency
Conclusions
• The presented method of creating the communications matrix proved to beefficient for solving a problem of providing the reliable project
communications.
• The communications channels in accordance to project communicationmatrix defines items, object and assets of project communications.
• Modern progressive information technologies are able to provide an effectivecommunications among the project team members.
Conclusions (Continued)
• Developed relational model:
• describes the main principles of organization continuous communicationin the process of IT-project management
• provides the economy of project’s facilities and prevents the rising
conflict situations inside project.
• As a result of using different communications the instant messengers aredetermined as an alternative tool that supplies the effective IT projectcommunications because of the low degree of distractibility and middle
degree of mutual understanding.
Conferences with International Participation
IT Project Communication Investigation
2008
• Conference of Students, Post-graduates, Young Scientists with InternationalParticipation “Innovative Processes of Economical and Social-Cultural
Development: Native and Foreign Experience”, 27.03.2008 - 28.03.2008.,Ternopil, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Importance of On-line Communications for IT-project Management”.
2007
• Young Scientists “The Development of Foreign-Economic Activity for Ukrainian
Enterprises in context of International Integration Process”, 10.24.2007 –10.25.2007 // Donetsk, Ukraine
• Presentation “Modern on-line tools for international businesscommunication”.
• Conference of Students, Post-graduates, Young Scientists with
International Participation “Innovative Processes of EconomicalDevelopment: Native and Foreign Experience”, 26.04.2007 -27.04.2007., Ternopil, Ukraine.
• Presentation “Modern Tools of Communication for IT-
project Management Process: Practice of Adaptation”.
The Conference with International Participation
in Ternopil, April 2007
For further information
Useful Links:
• NYS Project Management Guidebook• www.oft.state.ny.us/pmmp/guidebook2/index. html
• Management's Guide to Project Success• www.oft.state.ny.us/pmmp/managementguide/index.htm
• Reference The Project Management Institute (PMI) PMBOK:• www.pmi.org
Literature:
• Project Management Body of Knowledge, 3 Ed. PM institute, 2004.
• Nickson D., Siddons S. Project Disasters & How to Survive Them, 2005
• Kerzner H. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Eighth Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2003