A Collaborative Project Management Architecture

e Abstract The Project Management (PM) paradigm is rapidly shifting due to business globalization and information technology (IT) advances that support distributed and virtual project teams. Traditional PM focuses on a single project at a single location [16] and is more concerned with project inputs and outputs than with project process [51]. Management in the past implied projects were conducted with a top down view [13]. The PM paradigm has begun to change due to the increasing number of distributed projects involving project collaborators from different locations, organizations, and cultures [27]. Current and future PM will be more concerned with tracking project work processes and efficient and effective sharing of information and knowledge, among project contributors. High-levels of collaboration will become essential for distributed project success. Task interdependence and member distribution across time, space, and technology will make high degrees of collaboration necessary to accomplish project work. Adequate and timely sharing of information, and knowledge in all directions, proactive change management, and process monitoring are some of the important factors required for successful project collaboration [36]. In this article, we review problems associated with traditional PM scenarios, explain how collaborative PM can provide solutions, present a comparison of current commercial collaborative PM tools, and propose a collaborative PM architecture to address the challenges facing distributed projects teams.