Information Technology Project Teams Research Articles

Social relationships in IT project teams: its role, complexity and the management thereof

Compared to other projects, information technology (IT) projects, characterized by emergency and uncertainty, are unique. To implement an IT project successfully, many aspects need to be monitored and carefully controlled and managed. One such aspect is social relationships. All IT professionals are exposed to, and in many cases involved, in the phenomenon of social relationships. These relationships are used by software project team members for personal as well as professional purposes. In most cases the impact of these relationships on the success or failure of any given IT project is ignored by IT management. Little attention is given thereto in the literature and this paper attempts to make a contribution in terms of giving a broad perspective of the complexity, the impact, as well as the management of such relationships. This paper demonstrates that these relationships play a significant role and should be managed in such a way that the team members and the project as a whole can reap the benefits thereof. A conceptual framework is proposed for the management of these relationships.

IT projects success factors: a literature review

Information Technology (IT) projects are enablers of organizational transformation and business growth. Despite the contribution of methodologies and frameworks for project management, the ratio of failed IT projects remains high; then, studying critical success factors of IT projects persist as an essential issue for researches and practitioners. This paper presents a systematic literature review focused on compiling and synthesizing project success factors in IT projects. The literature search was conducted using primary journal articles until 2017. All studies agree on the relevance of studying the critical success factors in IT projects given their particular characteristics. The results indicate there is no clear definition of project success concept; our review consolidates the IT success criteria into time, budget, project management, system quality, user satisfaction, and economic value. Also, there a vast and overlapped list of factors; so, this research proposes a structure that synthesizes the most referenced critical factors that have in common soft attributes as involvement, support, communication, and commitment. Findings reinforce the relevance of soft skills in IT project teams.

The Effect of Conflict and Knowledge Sharing on the Information Technology Project Team Performance

The existent literature lacks papers that explored the proposed model, which examines how process, relationship, and task conflict impacts knowledge sharing and the subsequently perceived team performance in the information technology (IT) development process. The proposed research model adds knowledge sharing to prior studies that explored how the types of conflict impacted team performance. The hypotheses were tested using a field survey, which was distributed to IT project team members. While team members who experience task conflicts tend to share more knowledge and perform better, members who experience more process or relationship conflicts are less likely to share knowledge, and the team performance is also impacted. The results offer insights to explain how the different types of conflict can affect knowledge sharing and subsequently group processes within IT project teams and, ultimately, improve or degrade performance.

Towards a Reference Framework for Generational Analyses on Information Technology Professionals

In light of the sociology of generations, this theoretical trial relates literature on information technology (IT) professionals, IT professional management, IT project teams, and generational studies to elaborate a reference framework that supports the research on the intergenerational dynamics of the field. The proposed framework offers a definition and structure for the concept of IT generation and contemplates the dimensions related to (1) technological contemporary changes, (2) culture bearers, (3) continuous nature of generational change, (4) generational succession, (5) knowledge transmission and sharing, and (6) intergenerational conflict, allowing future empirical research on the IT generational phenomena.

A Risk Mitigation Framework for Information Technology Projects: A Cultural Contingency Perspective

As new information technology (IT) platforms continue to emerge, the technical project risk associated with developing IT projects for these platforms is particularly challenging for organizations. We develop a nomological network of people, process, and technology to gain insight into how the effect of technical project risk can be mitigated at the IT project team level. Drawing on cultural contingency theory, the IT project risk framework, and the IT project management literature, we elaborate on the IT project team composition and team processes necessary to mitigate technical project risk. We tested the nomological network by conducting a field study of 325 IT project teams over a 3-year period at a large corporation in China. We found that project risk mitigation processes mediated the effect of IT project teams’ cultural composition on IT project performance, and the effect of these processes on IT project performance was stronger under high levels of technical project risk compared to low levels of such risk. By incorporating the cultural contingency theory into developing a nomological network of technical risk mitigation processes, this work not only contributes to the IT project management literature, but also provides suggestions for practitioners on how to better leverage people, process, and technology in mitigating IT project risks.

What Happens to Female Employees in Skewed IT Project Teams in Sri Lanka? Revisiting Kanter

Post-war Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on the promising future of the Information Technology (IT) industry to contribute considerably to the economic and social development of the country. Given the reported skill shortage and gender imbalance in the IT sector, female participation and retention is greatly advocated and promoted. In this milieu, we aim to understand what happens to female employees in male-dominant IT project teams, and the challenges and issues they face, as well as the related causes, using Kanter’s Theory of Group Proportions as the theoretical lens. Such understanding will provide a backdrop to develop ways and means of attracting and retaining females in the IT industry in Sri Lanka. Employing qualitative inquiry, we carried out in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with 14 informants—10 female team members and four male team counterparts—from six IT companies. We identified four main challenges and issues females face in working alongside males where females strive to prove their technical and leadership capabilities, gain acceptance of the dominants in the team, overcome role entrapment and gain due recognition for their hard work. In facing these challenges females use various strategies and changes of behaviour which can ultimately lead to work pressure, strained relationships and anxiety for females. While these challenges are largely comparable to the main phenomena and experiences explained by Kanter, it appeared that gender-role stereotyping and sexist attitudes prevailing in the work setting, rather than the numerical minority status of females as mentioned by Kanter, gave rise to these situations.

Conflict resolution effectiveness on the implementation efficiency and achievement of business objectives in IT programs: A study of IT vendors

ContextThe information technology (IT) field presents a unique context for the management of multiple projects because of the variety of stakeholders involved, the complexity of interdependencies among projects, and the frequent use of external vendors. In practice, IT vendors typically employ advanced project governance techniques such as program management to work effectively with the numbers and variety of clients while still pursuing the benefits of a single oversight. These structural features lend themselves to conflict across teams with individual requirements. However, little research exists on program management, much less in the IT context, that represents conflict across IT project teams. ObjectiveIn this study, the effectiveness of conflict resolution on the implementation efficiency and fulfillment of business objectives is studied through the lens of constructive controversy theories. A number of hypotheses are derived by tailoring the constructive conflict resolution concepts to IT context and making a comprehensive literature review to identify the mediator and dependent variables. A model is developed to consider the management of conflict across multiple projects combined into a single program. MethodA quantitative questionnaire related to the program environment was developed for five variables to include conflict resolution, cognition-based trust, interpersonal cooperation, business objectives and implementation efficiency. The hypotheses were tested by performing a survey study, where a number of well-established measures in the literature were used. 92 paired responses from program teams in 38 organizations located in India were obtained and represent a variety of individual characteristics, and program sizes. ResultsThis study identified the composite role of constructive conflict resolution and cognition-based trust in improving interpersonal cooperation. The impacts of constructive conflict resolution on business objectives were not fully mediated by cognition-based trust and interpersonal cooperation, although implementation efficiency is fully mediated. ConclusionThe management of conflict promotes trust and interpersonal cooperation necessary to improve the efficient completion of the program and benefits to the organization.

Role and impact of social relationships and networks in a software project team environment – a conceptual framework

The establishment of social relationships between information technology (IT) project team members is a phenomenon all IT professionals are exposed to and, in many cases, involved in. Furthermore, these relationships are used by IT project team members for personal as well as professional purposes. The question is what positive or negative contributions do these kinds of relationships have on the project itself? Past studies have placed little focus on these social relationships and networks, and have failed to take cognisance of their importance in the IT project environment. This paper demonstrates that social relationships and networks in the IT project environment play a significant role in project teams and should be managed in such a way that the team members and the project as a whole can benefit from them. A partial grounded theory (GT) research approach was followed. Interpretive patterns from GT enabled inferences to be drawn about the role and impact of social relationships and networks in IT project teams. The research findings provide practical considerations and highlight potential problem areas. A conceptual framework is proposed to support management in decision making and to give them a better understanding of the complexities involved in such relationships.

Coaching IT project teams: a design toolkit

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed explanation of a design toolkit for coaching project teams.Design/methodology/approachIt is first explained that approach to coaching teams using a measure that captures the real and ideal interactions for the 12 information technology (IT) project teams in this paper.FindingsBased on the analysis of data from the coaching sessions, characteristics of a design toolkit are proposed for coaching IT project teams.Research limitations/implicationsA more comprehensive picture of team learning that takes into account non‐measurable dimensions of interaction might be of value in the kernel theories. More cases are required to verify the design theory in other contexts.Practical implicationsProject managers and team leaders can benefit form this design toolkit to approach coaching their teams.Originality/valueThis approach complements current models of team coaching.

Factors Influencing Knowledge Sharing in Information Technology Projects

Even though today's corporations recognize they need to understand modern project management techniques, many researchers continue to provide evidence of poor success in information technology (IT) projects. Given that project performance is known to be positively associated with project knowledge, a better understanding of how to effectively manage knowledge in IT projects should have considerable practical significance for increasing the chances of project success. Using a combined qualitative/quantitative method of data collection in multiple case studies spanning four continents and comprising a variety of organizational types, the focus of this current research centered on the question of why individuals working within IT project teams might be motivated towards, or inhibited from, sharing their knowledge and experience in their activities, procedures, and processes. The research concluded with the development of a new theoretical model of knowledge sharing behavior, the Alignment Model of Motivational Focus. This model suggests that an individual's propensity to share knowledge and experience is a function of perceived personal benefits and costs associated with the activity, balanced against the individual's alignment to a group of institutional factors. These factors are identified as alignments to the project team, to the organization, and, dependent on the circumstances, to either the professional discipline or community of practice to which the individual belongs.

Creating winning information technology project teams in the public sector

Can we import the high‐performance team theory developed in the private sector into the public sector in order to improve the success rates of information technology (IT) projects? This article proposes that public organizations can create effective workgroups (weaker than the private sector’s high‐performance teams but stronger than the weak committees that typically manage public IT projects) in order to improve the chances of concluding IT projects successfully. Two remarkably similar Internet projects in Israel’s Ministry of Trade and Commerce and the Jerusalem Municipality are described, compared, and analyzed. The first adopted the workgroup project model and was concluded successfully. The second adopted the committee project model and ran into problems and delays. Lessons are gleaned from these case studies on how to staff, structure, and supervise public IT workgroups.