On internal Project Management tools at Google
I eventually spotted a timeframe to read Baseline’s would-be exhaustive and really good analysis of one of the most secretive of the most famous companies worldwide: Google. The article’s entitled How Google Works, and I suggest you print it out (it’s really long) and take a look at it some day, unless you’re lying down on a beach and then it’s a perfect time.
The part I enjoyed most, since I’m a recent member of the Project Management Institute (Paris chapter), is the one providing an insight about Google’s project management internal tools. Take a look at this short extract, it’s really impressive.
“Consider how Google handles project management. Every week, every Google technologist receives an automatically generated e-mail message asking, essentially, what did you do this week and what do you plan to do next week? This homegrown project management system parses the answer it gets back and extracts information to be used for follow-up. So, next week, Merrill explains, the system will ask, “Last week, you said you would do these six things. Did you get them done?”
A more traditional project tracking application would use a form to make users plug the data into different fields and checkboxes, giving the computer more structured data to process. But instead of making things easier for the computer, Google’s approach is to make things easier for the user and make the computer work harder. Employees submit their reports as an unstructured e-mail, and the project tracking software works to “understand” the content of those e-mail notes in the same way that Google’s search engine extracts context and meaning from Web pages.
If Google employees found the project tracking system to be a hassle to work with, they probably wouldn’t use it, regardless of whether it was supposed to be mandatory, Merrill says. But because it’s as easy as reading and responding to an e-mail, “We get pretty high compliance.”
Those project tracking reports go into a repository—searchable, of course—so that managers can dip in at any time for an overview on the progress of various efforts. Other Google employees can troll around in there as well and register their interest in a project they want to track, regardless of whether they have any official connection to that project.
“What we’re looking for here is lots of accidental cross-pollination,” Merrill explains, so that employees in different offices, perhaps in different countries, can find out about other projects that might be relevant to their own work. Despite Google’s reputation for secrecy toward outsiders, internally the watchword is “living out loud,” Merrill says. “Everything we do is a 360-degree public discussion.””
By the way, Baseline Mag is a great Project Management resource for those who are keen on the subject. I also like Gantthead very much. These are my two favourites.
Related posts:
- 7 good software project management videocasts
- A review of a great Project Management Institute lecture on industrial outsourcing and agile software development offshoring
- E’ship diary part 5: project management and vision development in the face of ambiguity, technology and market risks
- What I'd like: a project management front-end for the Explorer and Finder
- Now sharing classes with engineers: Information & Communication Technologies + Project Management
Business Process Management, Google, Internet, Organization, Project Management, USA, innovation, operations
Thanks for the links. It was very interesting to discover the “inside” of Google.
If you have the occasion to write about the PMI, I would be curious about it.
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You´re most welcome Cedric. It looks as if you´re slowly overtaking Kari, Jedi, François-Albert, Vincent, Xavier & Hubert as the number one comments poster on this blog. Come one guys, waky waky!
Seriously speaking, I appreciate very much your interest in my posts and I´ll make sure I´ll meet your expectations. But first, I need to understand them a little deeper. What do you mean by “writing about PMI?”. I´ve just joined the Project Management Institute, so there´s not much I can yet say about it. If you want, I can write a few posts on Project Management in itself: it´s at the crossroads of Art (managing people under time constrains) and Science (budgeting, quality checkings, functionalities) – that´s what I like about it. Is that what you were talking about?
Thanks in advance for clarifying your stance.
Jeremy
PS: two of what I believe to be “interesting” posts (as you can imagine, I´m a very independent advisor
) on Project Management on this blog; Project Managementization of organizations here; and Kari on Project Management there.
AFIDORA should implement that !
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Hey Steve, I´m glad you´re at last starting to post comments. You still have a long way to beat Cedric´s recent days activity though.
That would be pretty cool for AFIDORA to implement such a tool indeed. Unless AFIDORA has the cash to hire a developers´team from Google, which I do not doubt, there are already some interesting GroupWare you can use for free. I especially recommend the free version of Basecamp for a start. I´ve been using it in a professional environment and it´s a handy, useful, easy-to-use GroupWare. Another interesting way of collaborating: open a private blog (secured access)! Teams enjoy such initiatives a lot. But I guess you should bring the management of AFIDORA into this conversation to go further into the analysis.
Hope it helps,
Jeremy
Is there a project to add the Google’s project management/tracking system technology to the current Google Docs and Spreadsheet apps? If not I suggest it would be a great addition. Such an addition would nicely dovetail with current PM movement across the world.
Best wishes,
Cole
Hey Cole,
I haven’t heard of such a project, and I’m not sure Google wants to make their project management tool available to all.
This being said: great idea you’ve had. And if Google doesn’t do it, maybe it’s a good business opportunity.
[...] Lesen Sie hier, wie Google arbeitet – insbesondere auch, welche Projektmanagement Kultur Google [...]
[...] to Tech IT Easy who provided the [...]
Really interesting how Google works. I was looking for a Google Project management tool integrated in Google apps, but it seems it doesn’t exist till now
One thing missing is the article that you are referring to, can you please update or email me a copy of that article?
Thanks
Finally – a secure to do list and project management application for Google Apps! Manymoon is like Basecamp and Sharepoint for Google Docs.
* Private and Shared To Do List (attach Google Docs)
* Turn emails into tasks, receive daily reminders
* Projects and milestones linked to Google Docs
* Super easy to use
This is the only application that provides Google customers with a superior collaboration experience
http://www.manymoon.com
does google give a gadget kind for thing for project management which we can integrate into our website for internal users.
Thanks for passing on these useful tools, this will help me alot.
It was the project management using Google that caught my attention and I like what everyone has had to day, although I have some understanding that some collaboration tools will be integrated with the Google WAVE; slated for first 100,000 user release Sept. 30, 2009
This would be huge! I'm an engineer in the building industry and if I had this kind of PM capability within google Wave, it would make all the difference in managing projects in addition to implementing new ideas for designs.
Or if not, then if its possible to create it without being a computer programmer, I'd love to help make it.
Well….but the social tools indicate that Google was pretty prescient two years ago; now several vendors, including Yahoo and StumbleUpon, offer the same tools in the market.
Well….but the social tools indicate that Google was pretty prescient two years ago; now several vendors, including Yahoo and StumbleUpon, offer the same tools in the market.
* Private and Shared To Do List (attach Google Docs)
* Turn emails into tasks, receive daily reminders
* Projects and milestones linked to Google Docs
* Super easy to use
This is the only application that provides Google customers with a superior collaboration experience