Managing IT Projects

Managing IT Projects

Introduction

                Today, the landscape of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) has grown in complexity and sophistication. The information systems are so large and complex that teams of architects, engineers, programmers, analysts, and users must collaborate to build hardware and software driving the enterprises while the cost of the upgrade, maintenance continue increasing significantly. With the high rate of failure, e.g., 67% in IT projects, managing them becomes a big challenge to high-level managers and business leaders (Sauer, Gemino & Reich, B., 2007). This document will discuss IT projects, and project management (PM) that includes PM process and PM knowledge, especially it focuses on the trade-offs between time, cost, and scope in designing a project plan in depth.   

IT Projects

            Business projects, particularly IT projects consist of a set of one-time activities that transform the current tasks or jobs into the desired new ones. Companies usually use new products and processes to compete for market shares and revenues where projects are needed beyond daily operations. It becomes difficult to keep the IT projects aligning with dynamic business strategy and planning (Pearlson & Saunders, 2004) 

            Project Management Institute (2004) defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. Temporary means that every project has a definite beginning and a definite end.” Project stakeholders are a project manager, project sponsor, project team, employees, and customers who involve in the project as shown in Figure 1.

            Figure 1: Project stakeholders and the relationships.

Source: Adapted from Project Management Institute (2004)

            Since the business projects are often huge and complex, the project manager may divide the project into smaller subprojects with distinct tasks for quality control, and outsourcing to limit costs. For efficiencies, a general manager can choose to organize several projects from a larger program as a framework to manage competing resources and shifting priorities. IT projects that are a specific type of business project done by IT department include an associated business case with significant amounts of technology.

In general, a project includes four elements:

          a. Project management includes a project sponsor who initiates the project, a project manager who manages project execution and coordinates activities to be on time and within budget,

          b. A project team has members who work together to ensure all activities to be accomplished correctly and efficiently.

          c. A project cycle plan is a methodology and schedule used to execute the project. 

          d. A project dictionary is a common project vocabulary to allow members to understand the project and communicate properly.

    The IT projects, which are more complex, have a higher risk of failure. They are difficult to estimate. Most IT software projects fail to meet schedules and budgets due to poorly estimating techniques, ineffectively monitoring progress protocols and wrong impression that schedule slippage can be fixed by adding additional human resources.

Project Management

            Project management is a process to apply knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to manage project activities to meet project requirements and provide deliverables. The process used to develop an IT project establishes the foundation for the project itself. A project plan along with the contingency planning must be clear and definitive to address implementation issues, areas of concerns, and the gaps. A strong project plan serves as a project principle and guidelines as a reference document to all involved members who can make vital decisions during activities execution (Pearlson & Saunders, 2004).   

     1. Project management models

            Systems development is a set of activities used to build an IS. To manage the bigger and more complex IT systems, a number of system development life cycle (SDLC) models have been developed and evolved in a few decades. SDLC is typically seen a process of designing and delivering the IT systems.  The SDLC models include waterfall, fountain, spiral, build and fix, rapid prototyping, incremental, and synchronize and stabilize. Most of those SDLC models fail to deliver the good IY systems.

For examples, the traditional waterfall model consists of a sequence of stages where the output of each stage becomes the input of the next in seven stages: (a) project planning, (b) systems analysis, (c) systems design, (d) implementation, (e) integration, (f) acceptance, installation and deployment, and (g) maintenance (Kay, 2002). The waterfall model and others fail to meet objectives because the skills of estimating costs and schedules are difficult to obtain, and scope of the objectives are too broad (Pearlson & Saunders, 2004). However, the spiral model with technology for managing source code that is combined with the synchronize and stabilize method offers project teams to work effectively in parallelism (Cusumano & Yoffie, 1999)  

            Some newer methodologies such as an iterative approach and agile development approach  that tend to be more people-oriented  than process-oriented deliver better IT systems, e.g., XP (Extreme Programming), Crystal, Scrum, Feature-Driven Development, and Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) (Beck, 2000). Figure 2 displays a better iterative approach for systems development.

            Figure 2: An iterative approach for developing IT systems.

Source: Adapted from Pearlson and Saunders (2004).

The Agile SDLC is at highly collaborative, iterative, and incremental levels as depicted in Figure 3 below:

            Figure 3: An Agile SDLC for developing IT systems.

Source: Adapted from Ambler (2012).

     2. Project Management Process

            A project management process usually is an approach to organize the ongoing activities of the project in an enterprise (Ducan, 1993). There are three basic project management processes: (a) Planning: Devise a workable scheme to accomplish an objective, (b) Executing: Carry out the plan, and (c) Controlling: Measure progress and take corrective actions when needed. A strategic plan can last 5-10 years but a crisis response plan can be used 5-10 days. Planning is a constant, not onetime event.    

            The basic project management process consists of five phases as shown in Figure 4 below:

          - Initiating: A description of the product in a project and project objectives.

          - Planning: A project plan.

          - Executing: Completed project deliverables.

          - Monitoring and Controlling: Check progress, identify problem, plan corrective action.

          - Closing: Acceptance of the project results. 

            Figure 4: A basic project management process.

Source: Adapted from Ducan (1993) - (Project Management Institute).

These phases are iterative and repetitive at varying levels in intensifying throughout the project over time as shown in Figure 5.

            Figure 5: An iterative and repetitive project management process over time.

Source: Adapted from Ducan (1993) - (Project Management Institute).

The interactions between these phases are applied to most of projects at most of the time, but they can be modified to meet project-specific applications. Notice that the IT project can be at risk when additional cost or loss occurs due to the choice of alternatives such as complexity, clarity, and big size (Applegate, Austin, & McFarlan, 2007).

     3. Project Management Knowledge

Knowledge is the processed information among individuals, individuals to

groups, or across groups while knowledge management is a process of coordinating of knowledge. In IT project, knowledge is an understanding of the project management or relationship between project stakeholders with a notion of the idea that is acquired by study, investigation, observation or experience not based on assumptions or opinions (Ahlemeyer-Stubbe & Coleman, 2014). Knowledge is considered as intellectual capital (IC) or at least part of IC, a valuable organizational asset that requires identifying, managing, sharing and protecting for competitive advantage in the marketplace (Erickson and Rothberg, 2014). Nonaka (1990) denoted four knowledge conversion processes in the SECI (Socialization, Externalization, Combination, and Internalization) model as 

            Figure 6: SECI model denotes knowledge creation through organizational sharing.

Source: Adapted from Nonaka and Tajeuchi (1995).

                         (I = Individual; G = Group; Org =  Organization) 

            Project management knowledge is an emerging discipline that draws on ten fields: integration, scope, time, cost, quality, procurement, human resources, communications, risk management, and stakeholder management. For instance, IT project integration requires hardware, software, materials, supply, engineering, schedule, product structure, project control, communication, etc.

Discussion

     This section focuses on two comprehensive questions related to three elements (i.e., cost, quality, and time) when designing a project plan.

     As defined previously, project management (PM) is a process to apply knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to manage project activities to meet project requirements and provide deliverables. The quality of the project in PM is determined by the project equilateral triangle with the balance of three elements: scope, time, and cost as shown in Figure 7. The scope consists of a description of product’s quality, features, and functions, and project scope. Time is the time required to complete the project. And the cost is a budget to carry out the project. 

            Figure 7: A project triangle with a balance of three elements: scope, time, and cost.

Source: Adapted from Pearlson and Saunders (2004).

     1. Why it is important to manage the trade-offs?

            The PM always involves trade-offs of scope, time, and cost in the project triangle. It is the manager’s responsibility to manage trade-offs in a proper balance. It is important to manage the trade-offs properly because the shift of either element would cause failure in PM. When making the trade-offs, it is unlikely for manager(s) to foresee the unexpected failure. For example, the trade-off of quality at low-grade rivets to build three ships (scope) in a timely fashion (time) by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Titanic was disastrous (McCarty & Foecke, 2007). In contrast, a successful balance of scope, time, and cost provides a high-quality project in which users’ needs and expectations are met correctly. 

            The skillful PM is about successfully juggling there three elements (scope, time, and cost) by shifting the triangle’s base to keep it in balance. Change in one side will affect one or both of other sides. Notice that most of the projects, only two elements can be optimized, and the third elements must be used to adjust to maintain the balance. The project stakeholders have a right to decide on overriding the key success factors/elements (scope, time, and cost) where the project manager has a responsibility to show the impact on the project of selecting these factors to the stakeholders.

     2. Why does it take a long time before troubled projects are abandoned or brought under control?

            It takes a long time before troubled projects are abandoned or brought under control because the projects, particularly IT projects, are complex, huge, and highly interactive with multiple complex sets of tasks that rely on each other to make a completed system (Sauer, Gemino & Reich, 2007). For example, managing the projects by using the man-months metric is linked to more underperformance than managing projects by using other metric of size (i.e. budget, duration, team size) because managers only know the results for a root-cause analysis after the projects are done. If the project is off schedule, it may be that the project is incorrectly designed in the first place. An option to put additional people on the project just hastens the process to an inappropriate end (Pearlson & Suader, 2004). Furthermore, the project can easily get off track if customer representatives are not clear about what final outcome that they really want until near the end.

            Some other drawbacks that contribute to delay in recognizing the troubled projects are documentation, scalability, incomplete operational version, difficulty in integration across a broad range of requirements, and system design flaws.  For example, the customer may not know that the IT system is not scalable until near to the end of the project.

Conclusion

            The document presented a concept of IT projects in designing of the project plan. Project management was defined along with discussion of several project management models, project management process, and project management knowledge. The project triangle of three elements (i.e., scope, time, and cost) was described in balance for a good quality product with the focus on trade-offs of these elements in IT projects. The writing also responded to the question of why it took a long time before the projects were abandoned or brought under control.    

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