Methodical ICT Project Management

Abstract

IntroductionThe contemporary reality is characterized by an increased number of problems and their interrelationship in all spheres of human activity, as well as management problems. This results in an increased risk within the organization's activity. To confine the risk, the problem solutions are more and more often \searched through establishing and management of the project [Spacek, Vacik 2016, pp. 14-30]. This results in an enhanced interest in professional methods of project management.The project management worked out a comprehensive and differentiated offer of management methods. The abundance of these methods results from the complexity and specificity of projects and from individual experiences and preferences of project managers and participants.On the one hand a comprehensive offer enables a choice of methods relevant to the projects specificity and conditions of their accomplishment, on the other hand it requires a good knowledge of a wide spectrum of existing methods, their limitations and possibilities [Trocki (ed.) 2011, p. 7].ICT projects, pursuant to a more comprehensive depiction used in the article, comprise all projects the final product of which is based on the Information and Communication Technology1 (ICT), connected with communication, collecting, processing and dispatching of information. These are projects devised to be used by external clients - public enterprises and institutions, combining the projects whose final product is mostly related to creation of software or services connected with its development, servicing and maintenance, the projects whose final product mostly comprises the hardware or services connected with it, telecommunication projects, as well as electronic and electro technical projects, or these are interdisciplinary projects in which we could hardly indicate a dominant specialty, e.g. corporation networks projects.Searching for a reply to the question how to improve implementation of ICT projects was a cause of the interest in methodologies of management of such undertakings.Until recently in Poland, to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of project management, universal methodologies such as PMBoK®, PRINCE2 or Project Cycle Management [Wyrozcbski 2010; Kaczorowska 2013; Trocki (ed.) 2015] were carried out. So studies on special, complex and detailed methods of ICT project management were undertaken with the aim to fill in the diagnosed research gap.As the projects are very often used as tools for accomplishment of the organization's objectives [Nowak, Trzaskalik, Twardoch 2013, pp. 49-64] and because of the multitude of project management methodologies, this subject should be discussed comprehensively.Selected for the analysis were MSF (Microsoft Solutions Framework) methods, RUP (Rational Unified Process) and SCRUM as representatives of ICT project management methodologies, i.e. involving the specificity of this type of undertakings. Furthermore, all methodologies selected for the analysis are based on a spiral approach to ICT project implementation (this facilitates their comparative analysis). Excluded from the analysis was the HERMES methodology - project management within ICT (worked out by the Swiss federal administration) because its scope comprises the management of single projects of ICT and ASAP Accelerated SAP - worked out by Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing because it focuses on one of the last phases of the information project lifecycle, i.e. implementation of the ready-made information system SAP R/3.The article consists of two parts - theoretical and empirical. The former comprises a survey of specialist literature. The most important results of empirical part include the general and personalized (taking into account the characteristics of organization from the ICT sector and the projects it implements) model of evaluation of the needs and selection of methodological support for ICT project management. …