IT Project Management Research Articles

Project Management Assurance

CIOs are increasingly held responsible for generating a positive return on IT project investment. As a result, there is great interest for devising ways to assure successful project outcomes. By assessing the project throughout its lifecycle there is an increased chance of achieving success because potential risks can be identified and addressed before it is too late. In this paper, we introduce and describe the idea of project management assurance (PMA). We define project management assurance (PMA) as a set of assurance activities that are integrated with the IT (information technology) project management lifecycle. An internal group, independent of the project team, performs the assurance activities, which includes continual review of control mechanisms to assure adherence to standards, best practices and procedures. The objective of the PMA process is to assure project success by reducing risk, continuously assessing internal project controls, and improving overall project quality while conforming to the stated schedule and budget requirements.

Mastering IT Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques

Project Management JournalVolume 45, Issue 3 p. e2-e2 Cover to Cover-Book Review Mastering IT Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques Darren Dalcher PhD, PMP, Darren Dalcher PhD, PMPSearch for more papers by this author Darren Dalcher PhD, PMP, Darren Dalcher PhD, PMPSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 June 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21414Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume45, Issue3June/July 2014Pages e2-e2 RelatedInformation

A Risk Management Methodology Proposal for Information Technology Projects

There are problems in IT projects caused by the lack of an effective risk management. In this paper we proceeded a survey with managers and employees about most common risks within IT companies. We proceeded a literature review and executed a case study in a software development company and a government institution. We analyzed variables and risks in IT projects and proposed a risk management methodology that was evaluated by managers, with promising results. Our risk management methodology can be used to mitigate risks and obtain better results, improving the IT projects management process.

Análisis del riesgo en la administración de proyectos de tecnología de información

Se presenta una propuesta para que los gerentes de proyectos de tecnología de información cuenten con una metodología que les permita proponer un plan para enfrentar los riesgos y de esta manera tener una mayor probabilidad de éxito..

Model of a Maturity Capsule in Managing IT Projects

The main purpose of this article is to present a report on the development of a model of information technology management (MITM). This model is an answer to the need to support decision making in the selection of methods and information technologies. This article presents a multisequential model (MSM) of technology selection and a model for initial processing procedures (IPP) necessary for the MITM model. The presentation of the construction stages of both models is followed by a discussion on their verification processes in an environment of enterprise architecture development. Aggregated (within the process of IPP) variables are applied, such as the maturity of the client (C) and the provider/supplier (S), as well as the project negentropy (P), which is a measure of the project development state. Next, the concept of an integrated maturity capsule (C-S-P) is introduced. The work concludes with the authors’ observations, concerning mainly the purposefulness of using decision-making models in the management of information technology projects but also on the applicability of the methods of modeling such projects.

Performing Inquisitive Study of PM Traits Desirable for Project Progress

The accountability of a project's success/failure lies on shoulders of a PM (project manager). Undoubtedly, project management is tough task to bring about and this is the most challenging role within the project. The project manager role varies from project to project and may include communication & negotiation with stakeholders, along with leadership and management of the project. Therefore he must possess both hard and soft skills besides education and expertise to drive his team towards excellence. This scientific documentation presents an ideal blend of responsibilities and skills essential for a project manager to cope with the changing project environment. Technical skills necessary for an IT project manager, further elaborates this study. Index Terms—PM, Project Management, Responsibilities, Skills.

Requirement Analysis of E-Content for Visual Learners

This paper studies on IT Project Management (ITS510) subject which is taught by using textbook and simple PowerPoint slides. Due to ineffectiveness of teaching materials, this scenario becomes one of the reasons that affect the studentsâ?? result. Therefore, this study has been proposed specifically for visual learners to attract their attention in class. The objective of this study is to identify the user requirements of visual learners for E-content. ADDIE Model has been selected to complete this project. This model consists of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation phases. In this study, the researchers only focused on analysis phase. The questionnaire had been distributed to get the requirements from visual learner users. It is hoped that the requirement analysis can be used as an idea to design and develop future E-content for visual learners. At the end, it can give a lot of benefits to learners where they can access the content everywhere and anytime without time constraint. While, for educators, the E-content can help them to improve their teaching styles and it can be used as an aided tool to teach students in class.

Statistical Indicators for Measuring Innovation in IT Project Management

The concept of project management innovation is submitted and particular characteristics of IT project management innovation are depicted. The stages of innovative IT project development cycle are described. The characteristics that differentiate innovative IT project management from traditional IT project management are enunciated. The factors that influence the innovativeness level are studied and appropriate indicators are generated. Properties of the above mentioned indicators are analyzed. The quality of the proposed indicators is analyzed and ways for increasing the degree of innovativeness of the project are proposed. Conclusions are formulated on the topic of innovative project management.

RISK MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS

IT projects management is not free from risks which are created from various sources of the environment. Thus a comprehensive understanding of these possible risks and creating strategic policies to confront them are one of the fundamental requirements for successful implementation of IT projects. The risks faced during the implementation of IT Projects are not just related to financial aspects. IT Project Managers must embrace these fundamental issues with more holistic view, rather than merely focusing on the financial matters. In order to prevent the potential problems from arising or escalating into bigger magnitude, serious attention must be given to it before the implementation of any IT project. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the impacts of Knowledge Management (KM) on Risk Management (RM) in IT project implementation process.

A Conflict Resolution Tool for Project Managers: Evaporating Cloud

INTRODUCTION One of us (2nd author), a former owner of a $22M technology development firm, has first-hand experience observing, diagnosing, and leading projects from conceptualization stage to the termination stage in the capacity of a senior leader, project manager, functional manager, staff member as well as a client. Due to a myriad of reasons (e.g., significant uncertainty about decision-making authority, groups working with different goals and expectations), the author has witnessed conflicts of varying intensity (measured in terms of frequency and magnitude) at various stages throughout IT project life cycles. It's been well documented by The Standish Group International (1995) that only 16% of application development projects were considered successful in terms of being completed on time and with budget. There are many elements to an IT project and internal risks and external risks need to be facilitated according to Marchewka (2010), and with these risks tension and arise. In order to foster strong relationships and better communication between parties, as well as promote continued progress toward projects' objectives, the 2nd author has employed various resolution techniques and has many 'war stories' dealing with failed (i.e., not delivering on the agreed upon objectives) projects. Thus, a search for a better approach to management in particular and project management in general continues (literature overview in the next section further supports this assertion). Hence, this paper introduces Goldratt's evaporating clouds as an enabling tool to resolve conflicts and successfully implement theory of constraints (TOC)-based ideas to deliver projects on time, on budget, and within scope. The process of project management (PM) inherently requires input from and interactions among various stakeholders with different points of view about how to achieve project objectives throughout a project's life cycle. Thus, conflicts within a project are inevitable and even desirable (Tjosvold, 2008). Increasingly, organizations are recognizing conflicts as a source of innovation and creativity (Nemeth, Personnaz, Personnaz, & Goncalo, 2004) and are adopting a more strategic approach to managing conflicts. Thus, management (CM) competency is being recognized as useful by project managers but there is a dearth of systematic process approaches to resolve the conflicts (Lipsky & Seeber, 2006; Kerzner, 2006). The primary purpose of this article is to provide insight on a tool, the evaporating cloud (EC) developed by Dr. Goldratt, the founder of the Theory of Constraint (TOC), as a systematic approach for getting from a stage to a solution stage. Recently, much has been written about the EC (Gupta, Boyd, & Kuzmits, 2011), but its versatile applications in the PM area have not been addressed. This paper is organized as followed: in this section, we will further discuss the term conflict by briefly summarizing various types/categories of conflicts that occur in the project environment. In the second section, we discuss resolution techniques as suggested in various literature and show that there is still a need for a comprehensive tool and generic approach to resolve conflicts. In the third section, we provide a brief overview of relevant TOC concepts and introduce Goldratt's Evaporating Cloud (EC) as a structured and systematic management tool using a simple example from an IT project manager's perspective. In the fourth section, we discuss a real-world application using an EC webapp. We conclude this paper by acknowledging the limitations of our work and recommend future research to empirically test the usefulness of this tool for IT project managers. Conflicts in Projects: Definition and Types Although there is no one clear definition of conflict, in this paper we adopt a broad organizational conceptualization proposed by Rahim (i. …

An Adaptive and Preemptive Theory for Improving Systemic IT Project Failure Trends (“AdaPIT” Theory)

Information Technology (IT) systems have become an important competitive element across the great majority of industries, and technology projects are entrenched within all domains becoming larger and encompassing cross functional components. This increased technological dependency and transformation also increases the risk to organizations as a whole if something goes wrong. Pragmatically things often do go wrong and despite the evolution and sophistication of project management frameworks and methodologies a great percentage of IT projects are still failing. Although multiple actions have attempted to address this costly and prevailing trend, they have yet to positively and/or consistently impact it, even though it has caused additional management burdens and costly compliance requirements along the way. As the projections for IT investment increase by a magnitude of 3.5% (annual average) and IT project failures report losses in the billions (Gartner, 2011), this trend has become ever steeper over time. It is likely that the rates are even higher than the industry reports because individuals and organizations fear back lash when identifying and communicating perceived failures. The alarming (and increasing) rates of IT Project Failure 4 are strong indicators that this systemic trend has not yet been addressed from a causal perspective. The authors hence conducted extensive research in order to enable the assessment of this pervasive and costly issue through a unique approach and leveraged the social “lens” (one of the three fundamental research methodology pillars). Hypothesizing that the underlining key factors associated with this costly and pervasive trend could be traced to “soft factors” an extensive (multi-method) research effort based on three fundamental pillars (Grounded Theory, System Dynamics an Social Theory) has been conducted and has unveiled a new theoretical model promising greater understanding of IT (and potentially other) programs and projects. The IT project construct is looked upon by the researchers as “mini organizations” characterized by multiple changes and natural disruptions to the Social Order over time. The philosophical research framework was then operationalized by means of a four phased multi-method approach promoting a root cause identification of key factors driving IT project success and/or failures as well as their interdependencies and impacts. This paper presents the outcomes of this research (emerging theory), its key challenges and how they were overcome and discusses the Adaptive and Preemptive IT Theory (“AdaPIT”). In essence the “AdaPIT” Theory does not replace any existing IT project Management framework: it simply incorporates the identified Intangible Soft Factor (“ISF's”) into the applicable project construct. The main theory unveiled has been modeled and presented through multiple views that will be discussed in this paper. A summary analysis of the research findings will also be provided. It encompasses the author's representation from all data points collected throughout this investigation inclusive of their own experiences (“all is data”) as well as the review and feedback from industry practitioners, Grounded Theory subject matter experts and other technical and/or managerial personnel. The summary outcome (AdaPIT Theory) encompasses the data collection, analysis and hypotheses support process within the multi-method research framework.

IT Project Management Education in University

IT Project Management Education in University

IT project management capabilities enhancement impacts of contingent employment policy in Hong Kong organisations

Purpose – This paper aims to present a summary of findings of a doctoral thesis on the impacts of contingent employment on IT project management (PM) practices in three large representative Hong Kong organisations. It also presents the candidate's experience of the doctoral process in successfully completing the thesis as a mature and experience PM practitioner. Design/methodology/approach – This is a thesis research note reporting on the thesis that was undertaken as a series of case studies and includes reflections on the doctoral experience by the candidate and one of the two supervisors. Findings – The doctoral research findings are summarised and the URL link to the thesis is provided http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160254. Important findings about the way that the case study organisations managed the attraction, retention and career development of contingent workers are summarised. The nature of the doctoral journey is presented as findings through reflection. Practical implications – The thesis addresses a poorly researched area, contingent employment and the relationship between project managers and the organisations that hire them. The way that contingent workers develop their skills and how they may effectively engage in knowledge transfer is vital to organisational learning. Originality/value – The paper places its discussion in a Hong Kong context. There are few if any such studies in the PM literature in this region and consideration of HR issues for project managers are also an emerging area of research. The doctoral thesis reported upon and the link to it as provided allows readers access to a highly current source of literature and empirical work.

Atrasos em projetos de TI causados por falhas na gestão dos stakeholders

A Tecnologia da Informação (TI) tem passado por mudanças profundas e rápidas nas últimas décadas. Nesse contexto, as organizações devem estar preparadas para implementar, sob a forma de projetos, essas tecnologias da maneira mais rápida e efetiva possível, apresentando resultados antes dos de seus concorrentes. Portanto, pode-se notar que a entrega de um projeto no prazo cada vez mais curto é essencial. Considerando tais observações, o propósito principal deste estudo é o de explorar como falhas na gestão dos stakeholders de projetos de TI podem impactar, direta ou indiretamente, os prazos finais desses projetos. A pesquisa empírica realizada, de natureza qualitativa, é do tipo exploratória e contou com a participação de gerentes de projetos de TI e de gestores de gerentes de projetos de TI, os quais responderam a uma entrevista semiestruturada e forneceram documentos de apoio à pesquisa. As transcrições das entrevistas, assim como os documentos fornecidos, foram utilizadas para a análise de conteúdo dos dados. Como resultado final, as principais falhas na gestão dos stakeholders que podem prejudicar – em sua maioria, indiretamente – a entrega pontual dos projetos de TI são identificadas e exploradas.

Atrasos em Projetos de TI Causados por Falhas na Gestão dos Stakeholders

The Information Technology (IT) has undergone profound and rapid changes in recent decades. In this context, organizations must be prepared to implement these technologies, on the form of projects, as quickly and effectively as possible, providing results before its competitors. Therefore, it can be noted that the delivery of a project on time, ever shorter, is essential. Considering these observations, the main purpose of this study is to explore how failures in IT project stakeholder management may impact, directly or indirectly, the deadlines of these projects. The empirical research, qualitative in nature, is of the exploratory type and counted with the participation of IT project managers and managers of IT project managers, who answered a semi structured interview and provided documents in support of the research. The transcripts of the interviews as well as the provided documents were used for the analysis of data content. As a final result of this study, the main failures in the stakeholder management that may compromise – mostly indirectly – the timely delivery of IT projects are identified and explored.

Portfolio Selection Model for Enhancing Information Technology Synergy

This paper presents a methodological framework for IT project selection that focuses on the impact of synergy enhancement on portfolio return and risk. As the size of firms' IT investments continues to increase, the demand for strong methodologies for IT portfolio selection has been increasing. Using the mean-variance efficient frontier as a tool to balance portfolio return and portfolio risk, we develop a model for IT portfolio selection. Unlike existing IT portfolio selection models, in this framework, the enhanceable project interdependency, project synergy, is distinguished from the inherent project interdependency, project covariance. This model enables firms to examine the effect of synergy enhancement on project portfolio risk and highlights the benefit of portfolio management of IT projects.

UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ADOPTERS AND NONADOPTERS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

With the increased interest among organizations in managing Information Technology (IT) projects as a portfolio, there has been a growing need for research on factors influencing adoption of IT Project Portfolio Management (ITPPM). ITPPM allows organizations to improve the alignment of IT projects with organizational strategy, by balancing the risks and returns from inter-related projects. To contribute to our understanding of ITPPM, this study examines the adoption of ITPPM through the theoretical lens of diffusion of innovation. Using the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework, we model ITPPM adoption and test our model using survey data from 302 project managers. Our results show that an organization's external pressure, ITPPM costs, organizational support, quality of data on existing IT projects, number of IT projects within the organization, and business resistance are significantly related to the adoption decision. We also find interesting results in how expected benefits of ITPPM and compatibility are perceived as equally important by both adopters and nonadopters. In light of the increasingly complex IT project management environment faced by organizations, our paper helps managers to understand and focus on key enablers of ITPPM adoption and better manage ITPPM inhibitors.

How user risk and requirements risk moderate the effects of formal and informal control on the process performance of IT projects

Improving the management of information technology (IT) projects is of prime concern to both IS researchers and practitioners, as IT projects are notorious for poor process performance, frequently running over budget and behind schedule. Over the years, at least two separate streams of research have emerged with the aim of contributing to our understanding of IT project management. One of these focuses on the exercise of formal and informal controls, while another focuses on identifying and managing key risks such as those associated with requirements and users. Proponents of the control stream would argue that the exercise of formal and informal controls can improve process performance and there is some evidence that this is so. An obvious question that emerges, however, is how effective these controls are in the presence of particular risks. In this study, we seek to answer this question by developing and testing a research model that integrates these two streams of research. On the basis of data collected from 63 completed IT projects in China, we examine the moderating effects of requirements risk and user risk on the relationship between control (both formal and informal) and the process performance of IT projects. We contribute to the current state of knowledge by clearly demonstrating that both types of risk moderate the effects of formal and informal controls on performance. Specifically, both requirements risk and user risk were found to reduce the positive influence of controls on process performance, implying that implementing solid controls is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to ensure good process performance.

An IT Project Management Framework for Assessing the Dynamism of Culture under Globalization

Culture has been analysed in information systems (IS) projects as one of the soft issues that cause project failure. Increased outsourcing and collaboration call for an understanding of the dynamism of cultures in the wake of global influences as a first step towards managing cross cultural Information Technology (IT) projects. In this study, the authors propose a way of assessing cultural dynamics in the context of trans-national collaboration in IT projects. Using a mixed methods approach consisting of survey and semi-structured interviews for collecting evidence in Zimbabwe, a framework for assessing the current state of communalist culture is proposed. The study showed that in spite of the inroads of Westernization and Commercialization, a culture of sharing prevails although it is affected by sensitivity to cost burden and inroads of individualism.

Positive Psychology in Information Technology Project Management

This paper is an initial study on the impact of positive psychology on IT project management. Prior studies have found that High Psychological Positive Capital (PsyCap) of individuals is positively correlated with their work satisfaction and higher performance. PsyCap comprises individual's positive capacities of optimism, hope, resilience and efficacy. Drawing from Beck's cognitive theory, the authors hypothesized that High PsyCap PMs, when required to report bad news to a client, are inclined to consider the project-oriented reasons rather than the personal-oriented ones. As a result, they are more willing to report bad news compared to Low PsyCap PMs. A questionnaire consisting of four cases of bad news in IT projects, together with PsyCap tests, was distributed to professional communities on the internet. Data was collected from 42 respondents. The results of the statistical analysis have shown some support for our hypotheses. The research encourages more research on PsyCap contribution on various aspects of project performance and success. Such research may also have practical implications for PM recruiting and training.