Podoprykhina T.О. Project Management using Distributed Teams at the Enterprise. - Qualifying scientific work presented as a manuscript.
Ph.D. thesis undertaken in research specialization 073 – «Management» (07 – «Management and administration»). - National Technical University «Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute», Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Kharkiv, 2021.
The thesis is available at National Technical University «Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute» the library at 61002, Kharkiv, Kirpichova str., 2.
The theoretical foundations and scientific and methodological approaches to the project management system improvement using distributed teams at the enterprise are developed in the thesis.
The first section of the thesis systematizes scientific experience on the project management theory, highlights project teams’ essence, the types and features as well as underline their differences. It is established that a distributed team is a cross-functional team consisting of geographically distributed employees in offices or out of the offices around the world and who interact with each other using a combination of telecommunications and information technology to perform project tasks. Based on organizational lifecycle models, the role and place of distributed teams in each period are identified and it is proven that distributed teams are one of the tools that helps organizations reach a new stage of development through crisis management, providing both faster growth and cost optimization. As project scaling process requires appropriate management tools, the theoretical provisions are summarized and the content of project scaling factors from the standpoint of choosing the format of team organization (classical, distributed / dispersed, or virtual) is revealed. It is systematized the project management approaches using distributed teams depending on the location and method of organization, as well as depending on the purpose of their creation and timeliness of use. The project distributed team main formation stages in the conditions of globalization, pandemic and division of labor are defined. It is substantiated the distributed teams advantages, including the ability to generate unique ideas and solutions, have the most technically qualified professionals, save money in the organizations’ context as well as work regardless of location for employees. It has been found that project management using distributed teams is risky and without additional knowledge of relevant methodologies and practices can lead to difficulties and inefficiencies in distributed team management, which in turn can affect service, product, or projects portfolio. The requirements to distributed teams to perform on a high level are generalized and supplemented, among which project manager’s actions and communication skills play a key role.
The second section of the thesis contains the project management practices grouped by standards, issuing organizations and methodologies. The project management Agile-related methodology types available in the information technology (IT) industry and software development are described too. The pre-conditions and potential for IT industry in Ukraine development have been studied. The scientific and methodical approach in three stages of creation, formation and work with project KPI is developed. In addition, the system of project metrics to identify status for projects with distributed teams use at IT enterprises is proved. The level of project methodologies use in Ukraine and the world is defined based on the answers collected from the developed questionnaire. It is determined that distributed project teams leaders in the IT industry in the world note the overall positive impact on the effectiveness of teams performing tasks outside the office, while the biggest difficulties of working with such teams respondents include the complexity of communication, lack of certain soft skills, and problems of information management processes and its storage in digital format.
The third section of the thesis examines the difficulties of project management at the enterprise using distributed teams by interviewing project managers to test the hypotheses and form a maturity model of the distributed team (MMDT) to improve its efficiency by assessing 7 different processes including the level of soft skills. A comprehensive assessment of the project status and distributed team maturity level at the beginning of the project and after the measures implementation to improve the efficiency of the project team at the enterprise was performed and reflected at the thesis. The assessment result proved the developed recommendations efficiency because it helped to implement the project on time.
