Question

Managing Technology Projects

The focus of chapter 14 is on the topic of Project Management as it relates to information technology projects. The key to any successful project is effective project management. The lack of good project management will likely lead to a series of setbacks such as cost overruns, time slippage, or poor technical performance among many other possibilities. Additionally, as the level of project complexity increases, the associated risk also becomes greater. Large enterprise projects are often complex and involve higher levels of risk that must be carefully managed.

By doing a search of the internet, or by other research methods, find an example of an organization that used project management methodology to implement an information system solution. Describe the role that project management played in either the success of the project or in the aspects of the project that failed

Ponder the following questions (answer as many as you can):

1) What rationale did the organization use to justify taking on this particular project? How did they determine the business value of the project?

2) What do you believe were the critical success factors or key performance indicators, as described in the Laudon text, for this organization? What role did they play, if any, in the development of the information system requirements?

3) What were some of the risks associated with implementing this project? How did the project team control these risks?

4) Did the project achieve the desired results? What aspects of the project did not go as well as planned?

5) If you were the project manager, what things would you have done differently?

Answer 1

ANSWER:

Project management is indigenous as all the projects are having different scope, different resources, and different deliverables. Assumption and constraint are different in every project, time line is also changed, risks will be also different from project to project. So, managing a project is always a new challenge for the project manager.

There are different project management methodologies like, Waterfall, Critical path method, Critical chain method, Agile , Scrum, CANBAN, PMI/PMBOK etc. All the methodologies are different from each other but all of them are having the same purpose and that is to successfully deliver the deliverables in the stipulated time period with the money and resources provided and bring net profit to the organiaation.

As an example, Some divisions of ABB use Scrum for their projects. The IT department works on Scrum and there are several reasons that they are working on scrum and they are as follows,

1. The scope is changeable and depends on the market demand and customer acceptance
2. The improvements are always monitored and if required changed
3. Product can work some of the functionalities and functionalities can be added sequentially
4. Time line of the project is very strict, etc.
In this method there are only few roles and they are as follows.

1. Product manager : who is the responsible person for the delivery and face to the customer for the scrum team
2. Scrum Master : This person is working as an organiser and his responsibility Is to ensure that people in the scrum team understand their roles and responsibilities. And He ensures that the scrum is followed in the team and team members are not getting other impediments.
3. Development Team: These are the group of people who are responsible for their own delivery and responsible for their team delivery.
1. Any organisation before taking any project looks at it from different angle and when it satisfies all the aspects of it then they choose to take up the project. The aspects they look into are
Strategic alignment : The project is aligned with the organisational strategic goal or not.

Clear Focus and Objective : The objectives are clearly mentioned or not.

Realistic Project planning : The planning here means the main 2 elements of the project and they are cost and schedule is aligned with the scope of the project or not.

Risk management : What are the positive and negative risks involved in the projects according to the present assumptions and constraints.

Subject matter Expertise : Do they have the subject matter expertise or not.

Once the project is in the creating charter phase there are some documents which are received from the customer and the sponsor of the project along with the project manager make the project scope statement from it. While doing this they take some assumptions and find out some constrains. Based on these they look at the high level risks which may be positive risk (can be called opportunities) or negative risk. Then they find out that the risks can be mitigated or removed . If the risks can be mitigated or removed what is the cost involved in that. At this stage of the project the organisation cannot do the quantitative or qualitative risk analysis and find out the exact cost of the risk mitigation. but they can find out high level risks and can keep the management reserve according to that.

. Critical success factors or CSF are those factors for which any of the project meets its success in terms of successful on time deliveries with the money provided for the project. There are many factors in a project can become critical success factors and they may change according to the project but still here I am mentioning some factors which are common to all the projects.   
. Strategic Planning : For any project Planning is the most important phase where it takes maximum time for the project manager and the team to plan the scope by collecting requirements and then they break the total project into different phases and make the work breakdown structure. After that the assign the work to the particular person or team according to their areas of expertise. Then the schedule is planned , activities are defined and budget plan is done according to the activities. During this time resources are also planned that what are the resources required for which activity and during which phase. Quality of the deliverables are also planned to be checked. Then the risk management plan takes place and this is the time to work out quantitative or qualitative risk analysis and find out the exact cost of the risk mitigation.
. People and Develop them: The next important factor is the people who will do the work. It is good to have competent people in the organisation but as the requirement changes according to the project and any organisation cannot hire different people for different project, they train and develop the existing people according to the project need.
. Operation Process: Now process of operation is another important factor. Which operation process to be followed is to be defined and followed accordingly.
. Finance : What are the availability status of the money, facility equipment are also important factor. These has to be defined with the customer that how the money will be released during which phase of the project and how that money will be utilised in the project execution. Weather the facility available and equipment are sufficient for the project execution or they need to be purchased or hired etc. So, finance plan is very important in all the respect.
. Risks are always 2 types Positive risk which we call as opportunity and negative risk. In the project there were many risks which were planned and they are as follows.
. The customer requirement can change during execution phase. : for that there was a clear point described in the charter that in case any change of scope during the execution there will be additional time and cost will be provided and they will agreed mutually.
2. If some output goes wrong: we have a backup plan for that and a set of team is planned for that.
3. If we finish it before time: we mentioned a clause in the charter that additional cost will be paid to the organisation for each hour gain.
4. If we don’t get right resource: We have a development and training plan for the existing resources.
5. If we don’t deliver some functionalities on time: We have a contingency reserve for that

1. The project was achieved as per the planed way and they executed every functionality in right time.