Fasten the belts
It’s ok if a technically competent client with managerial experience has a strong will to be the leader of his/her own project. In this case, the project team might operate normally, i.e. without decreasing in performance and quality. Even the distance and time difference as well as national peculiarities wouldn’t affect the final high-grade product performed after customer’s wishes.
But what happens if the control stick would appear in hands of a pilot’ knowing how to fly a plane after reading a book? Or what’s the fate of a jet being steered by a person who had repeatedly seen others doing that and therefore has a strong confidence in his/her capabilities? The answer is clear: an aircraft (i.e. the software project) would reliably crash down, and its passengers (both client and software company) are appeared to become its victims.
Project manager: a short description
In fact, project management is a complex multistage system that can be simply collapsed as a result of amateur’s interference. The project manager, once we use building terminology, doesn’t just coordinate the team of builders, but also combines the roles of architect and building engineer.
Firstly, the manager has to describe and scrupulously document HOW and WHAT should be done. Then the manager must choose a proper team of specialists with specific skills and experience. And after that, the same manager is obliged to compose a development plan in order to distribute tasks among all members of the project team.
It’s obvious that the project manager takes a great responsibility by supervising every project phase and monitoring the effectiveness of every team member. Also one shouldn’t forget about communications with a customer willing to include additional amendments while the project is running. It’s quite understandable that the client is hardly able to think out everything before the project starts, although the Agile methodology as a leading one in our company implies flexibility towards the initial project scope. But any client’s suggestion announced on the run must be analyzed, agreed and properly included into the entire process of product creation. And who’s responsible for that? That’s right, the useless project manager.
Responsibility found. Caretaker is needed
First of all, a client who wants to take responsibility for project management, is supposed to understand that mistakes done by programmers are indeed mistakes of the manager being failed to provide an appropriate explanation, check or estimate time, resources and so on. Basically, such kind of a client-manager tends to blame everyone but him/her; and the more mistakes are made, the greater level of his/her dissatisfaction with the project team. And as a result, there’s an eternal project with variable number of soldiers and weapons, but constant irritation of its Commander-in-Chief.
What about the tester? There’s a common image of this person as an ordinary user, randomly clicking on program’s menus. But contrary to the client, testing engineer has a professional technical background that allows him/her to conduct a full test procedure after specific pre-test plan according to a certain adopted methodology and with usage of proven programming tools. The tester is fully responsible for a final product working fine within any scenario of user behavior. It means that a professional tester must provide a guarantee of the product quality. Is any client-tester without certain skills and expertise ready to give such a guarantee?
Money-losing saving
It’s worth mentioning that Qualium Systems strives to safe its customers from making painful mistakes, however leaving them the right for the choice of collaboration business model. Our long-standing experience reveals many cases, when such an alleged saving yield significant additional costs due to incorrect risks calculation, thoughtless decisions and/or inappropriate use of resources. Therefore, while rejecting paid management and testing, the client with a great desire to manage his/her project personally should set priorities between dubious optimization of the project budget and creation of a professional high-grade product.