An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects

Luma Maia Ferreira, Juliana de Melo Bezerra and Celso Massaki Hirata

Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Division of Computer Science, São José dos Campos, Brazil

Keywords: Collaborative Management, Project Management, CSCW, Informal Project.

Abstract: Informal projects, such as elaborating a schoolwork, organizing a social event, and planning a trip, are

performed commonly in groups. Current approaches of project management are complex, rigorous, and do

not explicitly exhibit the flexibility to manage informal projects. We propose an approach based on

cooperative work concepts in order to support the participation of members in the collaborative management

of informal projects. The proposed approach requires a tool support for the collaborative management. Aiming

to verify the effectiveness of the approach, we developed and employed a mobile application to support

collaborative management of informal projects. Two case studies were conducted to investigate if the

approach, along with the tool, assists in the management activities and encourages participation of project’s

members. Our preliminary results show that the approach improves planning and monitoring and control

during project management, encourages the participation of members and helps in the recognition of members

compared to existing approaches.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Project management is the application of

knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project

activities to meet the project requirements (PMI,

2012). Projects can be managed and executed in two

types of organization: formal and informal (Gulati,

2009). Projects in formal organizations due to their

complexity generally are more rigorous in terms of

management, requiring more detailing, effort and

time in the planning and monitoring of activities

(Carroll, 2003). In general, specific responsibilities

are assigned to roles, in which management is

individually assigned and rarely shared (PMI, 2012).

Informal Project is a project without formal

processes of management. Examples of informal

projects include community projects, schoolwork,

and the social events such as birthday parties and

open house meetings (Schatz, 2016). In general, the

management of informal projects does not have

specific support tools. In these projects, members

share responsibility for the results, and the success of

the project depends on the participation, motivation

and commitment of the members (Donker, 2008).

Since informal projects are managed and executed

collaboratively, there is growing use of

communication tools, including email, instant

messaging, text messages and chats (Battestini, 2010)

(Farnham, 2006) (Kowitz, 2005). Mobile applications

such as WhatsApp and Facebook benefit the

management and execution of informal projects,

since the users are always connected and accessible

(Dillman, 2014) (Venkatesh, 2012).

We claim that there is no suitable approach to

conduct the management of informal projects that

require collaboration. In informal projects,

communication tools are used to plan, monitor and

control the activities. However, these tools are not

sufficient to perform project management activities

and motivate participants. Among the problems, we

include the lack of support for coordination

mechanisms, lack of awareness of project progress,

difficulty to manage activities, and lack of motivation

mechanisms (Schuler, 2014). On the other hand,

using traditional approaches and conventional project

management tools is not a solution. The main reason

is that they require detailed information for

monitoring and control and rigidity, which do not

match the reality of informal projects that need to be

dynamic, flexible and decentralized (Counts, 2007).

We propose a novel approach consisting of

guidelines to assist members in the collaborative

management of informal projects. The goal of the

approach is to allow collaboration and enable an

exchange of information according to the

convenience of the project members, in a way to

Ferreira, L., Bezerra, J. and Hirata, C.

An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects.

DOI: 10.5220/0006256300330042

In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2017) - Volume 1, pages 33-42

ISBN: 978-989-758-247-9

encourage the participation of members in project

management. The approach is based on concepts,

techniques, tool support, and recommendations of

project management, cooperative work, and

motivation mechanisms.

Section 2 presents related work. Section 3

describes the proposed approach to collaborative

management of informal projects. Section 4 details

the requirements, design and implementation of the

tool. Section 5 describes how we evaluated the

proposed approach, including the tool. Section 6

discusses implications and limitations of our

proposal. Finally, conclusions and future work are

presented in Section 7.

2 RELATED WORK

This section describes research on communication,

management and coordination of informal projects.

Existing research includes how groups are currently

organized, how management occurs, what tools are

used and the problems encountered. Informal project

management does not necessarily follow a project

management methodology (Lawson, 2009). It is

conjectured that the informal project management has

the following advantages: less bureaucracy and faster

management of activities; team members more

motivated and proactive; and team members feeling

that they are project owners.

Counts (2007) identifies how people

communicate to organize their day-to-day, especially

leisure, such as dinner and party, and detects that

there is direct exchange of messages. Counts

proposes a system that allows people to organize

themselves into groups, and coordinate their leisure

activities together, and provides a history and

overview of what is happening in the groups. The

proposal of Counts provides mechanisms for creating

groups and centralizing communication; however, it

is not structured in project management guidelines to

help manage the group’s activities.

Battestini et al. (2010) conducted a study with 70

students at a university where they collected nearly

60,000 text messages. It was discovered that the

recurrent subject is related to planning. The study

showed that the conversations are not restricted only

to SMS text messages, but other mechanisms were

used, such as email, Facebook, online chats and

phone calls. The result emphasizes the lack of a tool

for planning in project management.

Schuler et al. (2014) investigate groups of social

activities in order to understand the coordination

dynamics in the current context of technology. The

groups surveyed were undergraduate students

performing activities such as birthday party, bachelor

parties, reunions, barbecues, cinema, football game,

and lunches. The tools used include text messages

(SMS), group messages (WhatsApp, e-mail), chat

(Facebook chat), phone calls and event systems

(Facebook event and Google invite).

Decentralization, lack of focus and overhead of

information in the conversations were identified as

major problems faced mainly because coordination

occurs in a decentralized manner and information is

distributed in message flows that are not structured by

subject or activity, which led to a lack of

understanding and confusion about the details of the

activity. The researchers point the way groups are

organized and the problems faced, but they do not

suggest an approach for coordination and

management of social activities.

Donker and Blumberg (2008) describe the

problems faced by virtual teams that are less effective

and have a limited ability to work. The problems of

these teams were linked to lack of relationship

between the project management tools and

collaboration tools because project management tools

do not support collaboration and do not integrate the

results of activities performed and incurred costs,

generating distortion and problems in planning. The

problems identified by them were the motivation to

define the guidelines of our approach.

In general, the presented research shows that

people are organizing in groups to coordinate some

kind of social activity, herein represented by informal

projects, and they have suffered from the lack of an

approach that meets their needs, since the project

management and collaboration tools alone are not

able to provide the necessary assistance for the

management of informal projects. In the next section,

we present a collaborative approach to manage

informal projects.

3 PROPOSED APPROACH

The proposed approach to collaborative management

of informal projects is based on concepts and

technology of four areas: project management,

cooperative work, motivation mechanisms, and tool

support.

The project management (PMI, 2012) brings to

the approach the basic elements of management of

informal projects. With respect to project

management, the approach has to aid planning, and

monitoring and control without requiring excessive

overhead. The approach has to allow the creation of

ICEIS 2017 - 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

projects, group definition, definition of activities,

time control, assignment of responsibilities, and

workspace for monitoring and control. We claim that

informal project management requires a flexible

approach.

Concepts of cooperative work (Beaudouin-Lafon,

1999) (Borgohoff, 2000) complement the approach in

terms of models and techniques for communication,

coordination and cooperation. The aim is to have an

approach that provides effective communication,

enables cooperation and necessary coordination of

members to carry out the management activities, and

enable efficient collaboration in the execution of

project activities.

The management must be motivated, encouraged

and carried out by the cooperation of the participants

in the project. All group members should be

encouraged to participate so that overhead of activity

work on few members should not occur, which can

lead to dissatisfaction in the group. In the proposed

approach, all members share responsibility for the

management and coordination of project activities.

Any member can define project activities, deadlines,

responsibilities, and even termination of activities at

any time. In our proposal, we opted to employ

incentive mechanisms (Bezerra, 2015) (Kim, 2000)

that encourage the participation of members through

the needs of belonging, esteem and self-actualization.

The approach requires a tool to support the

collaborative management of activities. The tool has

to not only aid the management activities but also

support the collaboration among the project members

in a convenient manner. The tool also has to have

mechanisms to motivate members to contribute to the

project in an effective manner.

We structure the proposal of informal project

management as guidelines. In our proposal, a

guideline is an indication or instruction that directs

project members in the way that the management

activities are performed. The subsections below

describe the seven guidelines of the proposed

approach.

3.1 Define Project and Group

The basic definition of the project includes project

identification, purpose (objective) and duration. Any

member can create a new project, describing the

project and its purpose and setting a deadline. The

group definition is the definition of the group

members. The creator of the project invites members

to participate and collaborate with the project.

Members who accept the invitation become part of

the project group.

Any group member who participates in the project

may at any time redefine the project features and

invite new members. Allowing the participation of

members from the beginning of the project, including

the definition of the participants, is an incentive

mechanism related to belonging and esteem. It is a

way to recognize the competence of members to

appoint new participants, which results in greater

involvement and motivation, demoting the relevance

of a possible "owner" of the project. By allowing

everyone to have equal authority, it is understood that

all will share responsibilities. In order to have an

easier coordination and ensure individual motivation,

it is important that all members be aligned with the

objective of the project.

3.2 Define and Manage Activity

The definition of the activities to be performed in the

project is part of the project scope management and

happens not only in planning but also in

implementation and in response to the monitoring and

control. To define an activity one must describe its

identification, deadline and responsible participants

for the activity. The information may change during

the execution of the project and in our approach; any

project team member can redefine activities and their

attributes.

Any activity can be excluded if it does not make

sense for the scope of the project to achieve the

project goals. It is expected that all activities are

completed. Finishing the activity means that the

activity made its contribution to the execution of the

project. It is important that the activities have

progress status information. When an activity is

completed, it is important that the information of

completion and its results be shared, so that everyone

in the group can follow the progress of the project.

Allowing any project member at any time have

access to the activity definition and related actions

(e.g. change, finish) is an incentive mechanism for

belonging. This empowerment allows for dynamism

and flexibility and encourages members to participate

in the project.

3.3 Assign Responsibility

The responsibility for the success of the project

should be encouraged to all the members. For each

activity, it is encouraged that one or more members

be responsible, in order to decentralize

responsibilities and increase the likelihood that the

activity is performed. The responsibility for an

activity may come in the form of an invitation or

An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects

voluntarily. The assignment of responsibility should

never be of mandatory acceptance. It is important that

members have knowledge of competences, skills and

abilities of themselves so that they can suggest

specific members to be responsible for the activities.

At any time, members may suggest or invite other

members to be responsible for a given activity. The

invited member may not accept the invitation. No

member can undo an invitation, except the member

who invited. This way of assignment of responsibility

aims to encourage active participation of the

members, fostering cooperation and project

management. The fact that someone is invited to be

responsible is related to incentive mechanisms of

esteem, since the invitee can feel recognized and

valued by the group and decide to contribute actively.

Assuming responsibility relates to incentive

mechanisms of self-actualization, as the member is

faced to meet new challenges. The invitation is also

characterized as a mechanism to inhibit social fear;

since the invited member can feel more comfortable

to participate.

3.4 Promote Contribution

The contributions are intended to assist in planning,

monitoring and control of activities. One member

even without being responsible for a particular

activity can and should be encouraged to participate

actively in the activities. We believe that mechanisms

that promote contribution are necessary.

The contribution may happen at any time in the

project management, and in various ways. The

promotion of contribution may occur with the

suggestion of new activity and opinion that

contributes to the execution of an activity. A member

can also promote contribution by encouraging the

participation of other members. For management of

informal project, we believe that promotion of

contribution is the key mechanism to the active

participation of members in the project.

3.5 Encourage Recognition

Demonstrating recognition aims to encourage

collaboration and ensures a conducive environment to

the involvement of everyone in the project, which in

turn raises the esteem of the participants. Recognition

can happen indirectly, for example, when a member

invites other member to be responsible means that

he/she relies on the member’s ability to perform the

activity and recognizes his/her competence and skill.

Recognition can happen directly by thanking

someone or issuing a positive comment about a

contribution provided by a given member.

By providing the opportunity to members to be

recognized, the goal is to increase the esteem of the

participants, giving visibility of their contributions

and favouring the feeling of prestige, and

consequently encouraging further participation in the

project.

3.6 Provide Visibility of Project

Progress

Providing the project visibility allows the project

members have access to everything that is happening.

It is about giving transparency of the project

management, facilitating monitoring and control and

aligning the expectations of everyone with regard to

project objectives.

The visibility should be provided in a simple way

and should be easily accessible to all members.

Preferably, members should be warned of the events,

so that they do not stay away from the project. To

encourage the participation, members need access to

everything to find out what has to be done and what

was done, since in order to cooperate, it is necessary

to know when, where and how to cooperate.

Among the information that must always be

visible to all members of the project, we highlight the

information about the activities. All members must be

aware of critical project activities, their deadlines and

status. In addition to the information of the activities,

members have to be aware of the interactions among

members in order to be aware of the group’s

contributions and attempts to accomplish the

activities.

Providing visibility is an incentive mechanism

that includes several motivations. The member can

feel within the group once he/she knows everything

that is being accomplished in the project. The member

may also feel prestige because his/her contributions

may be perceived by the group. In addition, visibility

helps avoiding late contribution if information about

activities and deadlines are available immediately.

3.7 Tool Support

In order to make the approach feasible, we consider

that a tool through which members follow the

guidelines in timely and convenient manner should be

available. We advocate that the tool should be a

mobile application. A mobile application enables

members to perform the management activities

collaboratively anywhere anytime. The mobile

ICEIS 2017 - 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

application should implement the incentive

mechanisms related to the aforementioned guidelines.

Without a proper tool support, members would

experience more difficulty to perform the

management activities and they would be less aware

of work performed by other members. They would

not see recognition of their work and they would feel

less motivated to contribute. The next section details

the tool.

4 TOOL

A mobile application was developed to enable

members perform the management activities

collaboratively in the proper time. The advantages of

mobile applications are convenience of use and

mobility to the users. The system includes as front-

end, smartphones and tablets with Android version

3.0 or later. This section describes the requirements,

design and some implementation issues of the

application. We aim to demonstrate that the approach

is feasible by building and experimenting with the

mobile application.

4.1 Requirements

The requirements are composed of prerequisites

(restrictions), functional requirements and non-

functional requirements. As prerequisite, the Android

platform was adopted to develop our application. The

system includes as front-end, smartphones and tablets

with Android version 3.0 or later. Another

prerequisite is that the application depends on

constant connection to the Internet to work due to the

cloud solution adopted. To have access to the

application, a member downloads it from Google

Play. The user can search for the app using “COLAB

– Atividade colaborativa” (in Portuguese).

Functional requirements describe the system

functions. The application has the functional

requirements described in Table 1.

The functional requirements were defined in order

to meet the guidelines proposed by the approach.

Each guideline resulted in one or more

functionalities. In general, association of a guideline

to requirements is immediate. In what follows, the

associations of the last three guidelines are detailed.

The guideline promote contribution gave rise to

functionality comment on activity (FR09), where

members can contribute with comments, which can

be praise, criticism, suggestions or any other

comment to assist in planning, implementing or

monitoring and control of the activity. In addition to

textual comment, the contribution can happen with

image attachments in the comment.

Table 1: The guidelines and the functional requirements.

Guideline Id Requirement

Define project

and group

FR01 Create Project

FR02

Associate members to

the project

FR03 Edit Project

Define and

manage activity

FR04 Edit new activity

FR05 Edit existing activity

Assign

responsibility

FR06 Invite responsible

FR07

Accept invitation to be

responsible.

FR08 Accept responsibility

Promote

contribution

FR09 Comment on the activity

Encourage

recognition

FR10 Like comment

FR11 Like project change

Provide

visibility of the

project progress

FR12 Provide project list

FR13 Provide activity list

FR14 Provide activity status

FR15 Provide responsible list

FR16 End activity

FR17 View project changes

FR18 Be notified of interaction

The guideline encourage recognition gave rise to

the mechanism of like where members can

demonstrate their satisfaction with a comment (FR10)

or a particular contribution to the project (FR11). The

like mechanism is a simple way to someone

appreciate something and make the member (who

contributed) feel recognized.

The guideline provide visibility to the project

progress led to many features. The features are:

provide a list of all projects that the member belongs

(FR12); provide a list of activities of a particular

project with activities’ deadlines (FR13); provide the

status of the activities (FR14) that can be completed,

in progress and late; provide a list of members in

charge of the activity (FR15); enable a member to

finalize an activity (FR16) so that he/she provides a

resolution and makes it visible to other members;

view project changes (FR17) so that the member has

an overview of what is happening in the project who

is contributing with the change and how is the

progress of the project; and be notified of interactions

(FR18) so that the member is notified and reminded

about the changes of the project so that his/her

participation is encouraged.

A non-functional requirement that deserves

consideration is synchronization. The application

must provide a synchronous interaction where

information should be shared simultaneously, i.e. the

An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects

notifications of change shall be immediately available

to other users. We adopted the model WYSIWIS

(What You See Is What I See) that is used in multi-

user environments, where all participants have the

same on-screen information simultaneously.

4.2 Design and Implementation

For data storage services, notifications, user

management and client-server infrastructure the

Parse platform was used. Parse offers a range of

services, including data storage and notifications,

which allows developers to focus on building their

applications without having to worry about managing

servers and back-end infrastructure.

The API Parse implicitly employs the client-cloud

architecture, where the server is in the cloud. Figure

1 shows the architecture of the application where the

client part is installed on mobile devices that

communicate with the server Parse through requests

to ParseObject. The server Parse is responsible for

executing queries to the data. Parse is also responsible

for sending and managing notifications to warn

members of the interactions that occur in the project.

The app was developed taking into account the

usability. Figure 2 illustrates the interface that

contains information of a specific project - the project

Farewell Party - and Figure 3 illustrates the interface

of current informal projects that a user participates.

5 EVALUATION

We conducted two case studies in order to assess

whether the proposal can meet the needs of groups

with respect to the collaborative management of

informal projects.

5.1 Design of Experiment

Ten students divided into two groups were invited to

use the application and assess the proposed approach.

Participants were between 15 to 24 years old. Group

1 with three participants, was composed of teenagers

attending high school course. Group 2 with seven

participants was formed with undergraduate students.

In the initial questionnaire, we analysed the

groups’ maturity with respect to the members’

experiences with projects, communication tools and

project management tools. We aimed to identify the

profile of the participants. In both groups, the

participants rated their experiences with projects

mostly as “Good”. They also rated their experiences

in the use of communication tools such as “Excellent”

Figure 1: Architecture of the application.

Figure 2: Interface for the Farewell Party project.

Figure 3: Interface of current informal projects that a user

participates.

and assessed their experiences with project

management tools as “Little” or “None”. The results,

shown in Figure 4, indicate that the participants have

ICEIS 2017 - 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

not yet been presented to the project management

tools. This can be explained by the fact they do not

participate in formal projects.

Figure 4: Previous experiences of the participants.

We were also interested in identifying the

communication tools previously used by the

participants. All participants cited WhatsApp and half

of them cited e-mail as shown in Figure 5. The

participants could answer more than one alternative.

The fact that all participants use as the primary

way to manage their projects a communication tool,

WhatsApp, strengthens the need of an approach to

manage informal projects. The fact that the

participants do not have experience with project

management tools emphasizes that these tools are not

disseminated or used to carry out the management of

informal projects. The use of WhatsApp also

emphasizes that the combination of smartphone with

app is the right choice to develop the application for

our proposed approach.

Each group was in charge to decide what project

to manage and execute, but its duration was limited to

two weeks. The first group chose schoolwork of

History, and the second group chose a definition of a

programming exercise. With the project definition,

they started defining the activities, deadlines and

responsibilities.

In order to verify whether the approach met the

expectation to help groups in the collaborative

management of their informal projects, the answers

of the initial and final questionnaires were compared.

In the initial questionnaire, applied before using the

tool, participants comment on both how their

informal projects were generally managed and tools

they were used to. In the final assessment (after using

the prototype), all participants responded about the

usage of the app in project management.

Figure 5: Communication tools previously used by

participants.

In both initial and final questionnaires, there were

similar questions to compare experiences when not

using and when using the proposed approach. To

assess whether the application aided in project

management, three statements were presented: “The

used approach aided in Project Planning”, “The used

approach aided in Project Execution” and “The used

approach aided in the Project Monitoring and

Control”. Two other statements were made to assess

whether the approach helps in the Project

Management (statement: “The used approach helps in

the project participation”) and whether the members

were recognized for their participation in project

management (statement: “The used approach helps in

the project recognition”). They were also asked

whether they were satisfied with the current

management of their informal projects (statement: “I

am satisfied with the used approach to manage my

informal projects”).

For all the statements, respondents should answer

using a scale from 0,2 to 1, where “0,2” means

“Strongly Disagree”, “0,4” means “Disagree”, “0,6”

means “Neutral”, “0,8” means “Agree”, and “1”

means “Strongly Agree” with the statement.

5.2 Results

Figure 6 shows the “averages” of the responses with

respect to aid in Project Management without and

with the approach. With respect to the statement “The

used approach aided in Project Planning”, most of the

answers were “Neutral” and “Agree” without using

An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects

the app. In the final questionnaire, almost all

respondents answered “Agree” and “Strongly Agree”

about the usefulness of the app in planning.

With respect to the statement “The used approach

aided in Project Execution”, most of the participants

answered “Neutral” or “Agree” before using the app.

In the final questionnaire, all respondents answered

“Agree” or “Strongly Agree” about usefulness of the

app in the project execution.

With respect to the statement “The used approach

aided in Project Monitoring and Control”, most of the

participants answered “Disagree” before using the

app. In the final questionnaire, all respondents

answered “Strongly Agree” about usefulness of the

app in the project monitoring and control.

Figure 6: Aid in the Project Management.

The members were asked if they were encouraged to

participate and if they were recognized for their

participation in project management before and after

the experience with the app. The purpose of the

comparison is to verify whether the provision of

information for monitoring, the like mechanism and

the notifications of the app contributed to

participation and recognition.

Figure 7 shows the “averages” of the responses

with respect to participation and recognition of

members using the project management approach.

With respect to the statement “The used approach

helps in the project participation”, most of the

participants answered “Agree” before using the app.

In the final questionnaire, most of the respondents

answered “Strongly Agree” about usefulness of the

app in the project participation.

With respect to the statement “The used approach

helps in the project recognition”, most of the

participants answered “Neutral” or “Agree” before

using the app. In the final questionnaire, most of the

respondents answered “Agree” or “Strongly Agree”

about usefulness of the app in the members’

recognition.

Figure 7: Incentive to participation and recognition of

members.

With respect to the statement: “I am satisfied with the

current approach to manage my informal projects”. In

both groups, most of the participants answered that

they were neutral with their previous approaches. In

the final questionnaire, they were asked again about

satisfaction, but this time in relation to the proposed

approach. In both groups, the participants answered

that they agreed or strongly agree with the proposed

approach.

Considering the results, the proposed approach

was able to meet the expectations to support the

participation of members in the collaborative

management of informal projects and satisfy the

participants with respect to the project management.

6 DISCUSSIONS AND

IMPLICATIONS

In order to support members on the participation of

the collaborative management of informal projects, it

is essential to have an approach that assists and

encourages the members in the management

processes. Although the communication is an

essential mechanism in collaboration, it does not

suffice. Other mechanisms need to be considered for

a successful management of informal projects. In this

work, we employed and analysed the mechanisms of

motivation to encourage the participation and

recognition of participants.

Our proposal considers that the management is

decentralized, and that members share

responsibilities. If members have different views, the

management may result in conflicts and deadlocks,

which may hinder the project progress. We

understand that when these situations occur, the

members must assume their responsibilities also in

solving the aroused issues. The approach does not

assure project completions with success. The

approach leaves to the members to discuss and come

to decisions. We also understand that the decision

ICEIS 2017 - 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

can be hard, for instance, the decision can indicate

removal of a member, or even end the project. We

did not provide any investigation about conflicts and

ambiguities and we did not identify any specific

mechanism to identify, avoid, and solve ambiguities

and conflicts. We consider that this is a future work.

The incentive mechanisms were designed,

implemented, and used however; it is difficult to

evaluate how each incentive is separately effective.

Incentives work as package, and they depend how the

participants perceive and experience them.

The case studies consider only informal projects,

but nothing prevents the approach of being used in

formal and organizational projects. We think that

other types of project can benefit from the proposed

guidelines. We believe that the basic condition to use

our approach successfully is that the members must

be motivated and committed to the goals of the

project.

Collaborative research projects have emerged as

a particular form of academia-industry interaction.

They present specific features and demand

adaptations and adjustments to existing project

management approaches. Research projects operate

under considerable uncertainty and depend on

creativity and collaboration. They require freedom

and flexibility, specific management and new forms

of organization, commitment and involvement of all

project parties aiming to achieve success (Brocke,

2015). For the features discussed, we believe that

collaborative research projects are a potential target

to our proposed approach.

Agile Project Management (APM) is an approach

based on a set of principles, whose goal is to render

the process of project management simpler, more

flexible and iterative in order to achieve better

performance, with less management effort, and

higher levels of innovation and added value for the

customer (Chin, 2004) (Conforto, 2014). APM theory

recommends the use of certain practices and tools,

such as the concept of product vision, iterative

development; and the use of visual artefacts such as

boards, panels, and sticky-notes. There are at least

two “enablers” necessary for APM implementation:

dedicated and co-located teams and the active

customer involvement during the entire product

development cycle. Our approach differs from APM

at least in three ways. First, our approach is not

customer involvement-oriented. It does not employ

iterative development process either. Third, it does

not require co-located teams. Nevertheless, our

approach shares some common elements with APM.

They include creating the project scope with little

description and creating the project plan

collaboratively with shared responsibility.

In the case studies, only individual member

satisfaction with the approach was asked. The

answers of satisfaction cannot be generalized and

does not imply that the results of the project will be

achieved. Corporatism may emerge, i.e. the members

may be focused only on their interests and not on

project’s goals. In order to avoid such a situation, we

conjecture that group values and rewards based on

project’s goal must be considered.

We think that the results of the case studies are

preliminary and limited, but they are also

encouraging indications. More experiments must be

made to improve the confidence in the initial findings.

We also remind that our approach was only

possible because of current available technology for

communication and mobility provided by mobile

devices. The technology enables instant and timely

communication for almost all users. It is difficult to

imagine applying the approach without the aid of the

technology.

7 CONCLUSIONS

We proposed a novel approach to support the

participation of members in the collaborative

management of informal projects. The approach is

based on cooperative work and motivation

mechanisms. In the approach, members share

responsibility for the project management. Guidelines

for the project creation, definition of activities,

assignment of responsibility, incentives to

contribution, incentives to recognition, and project

visibility were considered as requirements in a mobile

application that was implemented and used in the case

studies. The results of the case studies showed that the

proposed approach aids in the planning, monitoring

and control, and encourages the participation and

recognition of members in project management.

Some future work can be derived from this work.

The first is the use of the approach in large groups, to

verify the scalability of member participation. Some

mechanism of hierarchy of groups and activities may

be necessary if the group is large.

In addition to use of the approach in larger groups,

it is necessary to validate the use of the approach with

more experienced professionals who are more used to

project management methodology and tools. It is

interesting to identify what factors are relevant in

terms of success. For instance, it is of interest to

check if the proposed approach suffices when it is

An Approach to Collaborative Management of Informal Projects

used in groups with committed participants or if it

requires some complements.

In general, groups are not fixed over time; they

evolve due to the members’ interests and demands.

Groups that promote their own evolution, are called

self-organizing groups. We believe the self-

organization aspect is an aspect for further

investigation in our proposal. In a self-organizing

approach, the guidelines could be redefined or

adapted to satisfy the group’s needs.

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