August 17, 2009

Equipping Your Mobile Project Staff – Part 1

Posted by Brad Egeland

I’ve made no secret in this forum for my support of remote work. It’s efficient, cost effective, green, and – IMO – better allows for project manager to effectively manage multiple projects consisting of a geographically diverse resource pool.

However, I’m really just talking about home base when discussing virtual or remote PM work. It’s still understood and expected that PMs are onsite with the customer when needed – especially to kickoff the project or to kickoff particular phases like design, development, testing, etc.

I’ve worked with and for companies where the PM did most of the traveling. Often times, however, the business analysts are the bigger bridge between PM and the technical solution and therefore spend more time traveling. It depends on the customer, the delivery organization, and the specific needs of the project, but usually there is at least one member of the delivery team that ends up doing a decent amount of traveling.

With information based on an article found in InformationWeek in late 2008, I’d like to discuss five ways to best prepare your project road warriors in your organization to be as productive as possible when traveling for work and trying to juggle those various project responsibilities. For Part 1, we’ll cover IP Telephony and Disk/Data Encryption.

IP Telephony

Enterprise IP telephony has gone from fad to necessity in a relatively short period of time. Voice over IP is one of the few areas in IT where the up-front capital expenditure can be quickly paid back with savings over traditional telecom operating expenses. These potential savings are much greater if you have a large contingent of workers overseas who need to stay connected or home-based office staff. It can be particularly beneficial to PMOs with a sizeable portfolio of projects and project personnel dispersed across the US and/or globally.

Cisco and Avaya are top providers I the unified communications and VoIP space, and both have impressive arrays of products designed for the road and the home office. On the home front, Cisco’s Unified IP Phone 7985G should satisfy even the most discerning executive. For video conferencing – which may allow further cost-saving measures by making some of the later-phase kickoff sessions entirely remote – the 7985G has an 8-inch LCD and built-in camera capable of providing 768 Kbps of IP video yielding 30 frames per second using H.263. The built-in two-port, 802.1Q-capable, 10/100-Mb switch allows for seamless quality of service and provides for convenient connectivity to a networked printer at the home office.

Avaya is releasing the IP 9670G Executive Touch Screen phone, which provides full touch screen access to all standard voice-mail system functions, as well as a standard suite of applications. For something more portable, Avaya offers the 3641 IP Wireless Phone resembling a traditional cordless telephone – however it connects to 802.11 a/b/g wireless networks.

Disk/Data Encryption

Preventing data leakage is quickly becoming a top priority for IT, and there’s no better place to start than with staffers who are taking your most sensitive material outside the corporate walls. In today’s world, much of the workforce is leaving the office with a $300 piece of mobile equipment in hand that has access to possibly $300M in valuable corporate and customer data. It needs to be protected…no question.

If you own a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise or Ultimate, you already own an out-of-the-box system for full disk encryption via BitLocker. However, for true enterprise-ready encryption and data leakage protection, look to products from companies such as GuardianEdge Technologies, Mobile Armor, and Seagate Technology. GuardianEdge allows you to encrypt the local hard drive and prevent leaks of data via external devices, keyloggers, screen captures, smartphones, and more.

Disk/data encryption won’t safeguard you against every possible leak, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction of protecting your valuable company and customer data.

In Part 2, will consider the following: