Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/18157
have figured out that their problems are not unique. They also understand that the business solutions that have worked in other parts of their organization could be effective in helping them manage the many moving parts of complex e-discovery. These attorneys recognize the power of applying project management principles to the task at hand, and using integrated project management applications and practices to help determine efficiencies, manage resources and delegate tasks effectively. The marriage of project management and e-discovery has been a long time coming, recently gaining critical mass in the industry, as evidenced by recent works produced by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model’s Project Management Workgroup and The Sedona Conference’s “Achieving Quality in the E-Discovery Process.” Indeed, in their latest report on the e-discovery industry, George Socha and Tom Gelbmann stated that “project management . . . minimizes missteps and delivers more predictable, reliable, and cost-effective results.” From the standpoint of available solutions, e-discovery has become a complex playground. One of the biggest challenges is coordinating the resources used in the process to produce a repeatable, sustainable and defensible process. Project management tools and strategies facilitate the coordination of the many parties and point tools involved, promote communication and collaboration between those parties, create a record of the process, promote discipline and consistency, and provide a framework for compliance enforcement. “E-discovery project management allows e-discovery practitioners to develop meaningful metrics and improve the e-discovery process.” GAINING PERSPECTIVE ON E-DISCOVERY PROJECTS For attorneys who are not classically trained in concepts native to many business practitioners, it’s important to make a distinction between project management and organizational business process management. The two are separate but interconnected disciplines. In a nutshell, project management is an organized process designed to address a unique set of requirements with a defined start and stop, whereas organizational business process management comprises a set of repeatable, sustainable processes that can be improved upon on an ongoing basis. Project management is an essential step in moving toward process maturity. For those who have not yet taken this step, the most obvious litigation process in need of project management and its accompanying process maturation is e-discovery. www.iltanet.org Project Management 29