Project Management and Communication of Product Development through Electronic Document Management

Abstract

While the literature on project management and product development is voluminous, in reality little of it addresses the questions of document management of new organizational procedures to increase project development productivity, and of software development tools required to support and control these procedures. This research study develops a new methodology to integrate project management (activities, milestones, and resources) and document management (responsibilities, authorizations, workflows, archives, and storage). The aim of the integration is threefold. First, it aims to plan and to control activities and documents essential for product development. Second, it aims to ensure the management of documents in terms of responsibilities, authorizations, dissemination, and storage. And third, it aims to trace and locate documents for any type of product. Further, this study shows the value of electronic document management (EDM) in terms of improving the management and communication of concepts and ideas, whether it be for project teams or organizations, for reengineering basic business processes, or for leveraging long-run organizational memory through documents.