IT Project

Management
The Project Management and
Information Technology
Context
Objectives
• Describe the systems view of project management and how it applies to
information technology (IT) projects
• Understand organizations, including the four frames, organizational
structures, and organizational culture
• Explain why stakeholder management and top management
commitment are critical for a project’s success
• Understand the concept of a project phase and the project life cycle, and
distinguish between project development and product development
• Discuss the unique attributes and diverse nature of IT projects
• Describe recent trends affecting IT project management, including
globalization, outsourcing, virtual teams, and agile project management

Projects Cannot Be Run in Isolation

• Projects must operate in a broad organizational environment
• Project managers need to use systems thinking:
• taking a holistic view of carrying out projects within the context of the
organization
• Senior managers must make sure projects continue to support
current business needs

A Systems View of Project Management

• A systems approach emerged in the 1950s to describe a more
analytical approach to management and problem solving
• Three parts include:
• Systems philosophy: an overall model for thinking about things as systems
• Systems analysis: problem-solving approach
• Systems management: address business, technological, and organizational
issues before making changes to systems
Figure 2-1. Three Sphere Model for Systems
Management
Figure 2-2. Perspectives on Organizations
What Went Wrong?
• In a paper titled “A Study in Project Failure,” two researchers
examined the success and failure of 214 IT projects over an
eightyear period in several European countries.
• The researchers found that only one in eight (12.5 percent) were
considered successful in terms of meeting scope, time, and cost
goals.
• The authors said that the culture within many organizations is often
to blame
• Among other things, people often do not discuss important
leadership, stakeholder, and risk management issues
Organizational Structures
• 3 basic organization structures
• Functional: functional managers report to the CEO
• Project: program managers report to the CEO
• Matrix: middle ground between functional and project structures; personnel
often report to two or more bosses; structure can be weak, balanced, or
strong matrix
Figure 2-3. Functional, Project, and Matrix
Organizational Structures
Table 2-1. Organizational Structure
Influences on Projects
Organizational Culture
• Organizational culture is a set of shared assumptions, values, and
behaviors that characterize the functioning of an organization
• Many experts believe the underlying causes of many companies’
problems are not the structure or staff, but the culture

Ten Characteristics of Organizational Culture

• Member identity* • Reward criteria*
• Group emphasis* • Conflict tolerance*
• People focus • Means-ends orientation
• Unit integration* • Open-systems focus*
• Control
• Risk tolerance*

*Project work is most successful in an organizational culture where

these items are strong/high and other items are balanced.

Stakeholder Management
• Project managers must take time to identify, understand, and
manage relationships with all project stakeholders
• Using the four frames of organizations can help meet stakeholder
needs and expectations
• Senior executives/top management are very important
stakeholders

Media Snapshot
• The media have often reported on mismanaged IT projects,
including the disastrous launch of the website healthcare.gov in
October 2013
• Forbes ran an article on called “Healthcare.gov: Diagnosis: The
Government Broke Every Rule of Project Management”
• President Obama formed the “Obama Trauma Team” of star
performers from several organizations to help fix the site

The Importance of Top Management

Commitment
• People in top management positions are key stakeholders in
projects
• A very important factor in helping project managers successfully
lead projects is the level of commitment and support they receive
from top management
• Without top management commitment, many projects will fail.
• Some projects have a senior manager called a champion who acts
as a key proponent for a project.

How Top Management Can Help Project

Managers
• Providing adequate resources
• Approving unique project needs in a timely manner
• Getting cooperation from other parts of the organization
• Mentoring and coaching on leadership issues
Best Practice
• IT governance addresses the authority and control for key IT
activities in organizations, including IT infrastructure, IT use, and
project management
• A lack of IT governance can be dangerous, as evidenced by three
well-publicized IT project failures in Australia (Sydney Water’s
customer relationship management system, the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology’s academic management system, and
One.Tel’s billing system)
Need for Organizational Commitment to
Information Technology (IT)
• If the organization has a negative attitude toward IT, it will be
difficult for an IT project to succeed
• Having a Chief Information Officer (CIO) at a high level in the
organization helps IT projects
• Assigning non-IT people to IT projects also encourage
more commitment
Need for Organizational Standards
• Standards and guidelines help project managers be more
effective
• Senior management can encourage
• the use of standard forms and software for project management
• the development and use of guidelines for writing project plans or providing
status information
• the creation of a project management office or center of excellence
Project Phases and the Project Life Cycle
• A project life cycle is a collection of project phases that defines
• what work will be performed in each phase
• what deliverables will be produced and when
• who is involved in each phase, and
• how management will control and approve work produced in each phase
• A deliverable is a product or service produced or provided as part
of a project
More on Project Phases
• In early phases of a project life cycle
• resource needs are usually lowest
• the level of uncertainty (risk) is highest
• project stakeholders have the greatest opportunity to influence the project
• In middle phases of a project life cycle
• the certainty of completing a project improves
• more resources are needed
• The final phase of a project life cycle focuses on
• ensuring that project requirements were met
• the sponsor approves completion of the project
Figure 2-4. Phases of the Traditional Project
Life Cycle
Product Life Cycles
• Products also have life cycles
• The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a framework for
describing the phases involved in developing and maintaining
information systems
• Systems development projects can follow
• Predictive life cycle: the scope of the project can be clearly articulated and the
schedule and cost can be predicted
• Adaptive Software Development (ASD) life cycle: requirements cannot be
clearly expressed, projects are mission driven and component based, using
time-based cycles to meet target dates
Predictive Life Cycle Models
• Waterfall model: has well-defined, linear stages of systems
development and support
• Spiral model: shows that software is developed using an iterative or
spiral approach rather than a linear approach
• Incremental build model: provides for progressive development of
operational software
• Prototyping model: used for developing prototypes to clarify user
requirements
• Rapid Application Development (RAD) model: used to produce
systems quickly without sacrificing quality
Figure 2-5. Waterfall and Spiral Life Cycle
Models
Agile Software Development
• Agile software development has become popular to describe new
approaches that focus on close collaboration between
programming teams and business experts
• See the last section of this chapter and Chapter 3 for more
information on agile
The Importance of Project Phases and
Management Reviews
• A project should successfully pass through each of the project
phases in order to continue on to the next
• Management reviews, also called phase exits or kill points, should
occur after each phase to evaluate the project’s progress, likely
success, and continued compatibility with organizational goals

What Went Right?

• "The real improvement that I saw was in our ability to⎯in the words of Thomas
Edison⎯know when to stop beating a dead horse.…Edison's key to success was that he
 failed fairly often; but as he said, he could recognize a dead horse before it started to
smell...In information technology we ride dead horses⎯failing projects⎯a long time
before we give up. But what we are seeing now is that we are able to get off them;
able to reduce cost overrun and time overrun. That's where the major impact came on
the success rate.”*

• Many organizations, like Huntington Bancshares, Inc., use an executive steering

committee to help keep projects on track.

• Some projects still go on a long time before being killed, like Blizzard’s Titan game
project.

• *Cabanis, Jeannette, "'A Major Impact': The Standish Group's Jim Johnson On Project Management
and IT Project Success," PM Network, PMI, Sep.1998, p. 7
The Context of IT Projects
• IT projects can be very diverse in terms of size, complexity, products
produced, application area, and resource requirements
• IT project team members often have diverse backgrounds and skill
sets
• IT projects use diverse technologies that change rapidly. Even within
one technology area, people must be highly specialized
Recent Trends Affecting IT Project
Management
• Globalization
• Outsourcing: Outsourcing is when an organization acquires goods
and/or sources from an outside source. Offshoring is sometimes
used to describe outsourcing from another country
• Virtual teams: A virtual team is a group of individuals who work
across time and space using communication technologies
• Agile project management
Important Issues and Suggestions Related to
Globalization
• Issues
• Communications
• Trust
• Common work practices
• Tools
• Suggestions
• Employ greater project discipline
• Think global but act local
• Keep project momentum going
 • Use newer tools and technology

Outsourcing
• Organizations remain competitive by using outsourcing to their
advantage, such as finding ways to reduce costs
• Their next challenge is to make strategic IT investments with
outsourcing by improving their enterprise architecture to ensure
that IT infrastructure and business processes are integrated and
standardized (See Suggested Readings)
• Project managers should become more familiar with negotiating
contracts and other outsourcing issues
Global Issues
• Outsourcing also has disadvantages. For example, Apple benefits
from manufacturing products in China, but it had big problems
there after its iPhone 4S launch in January 2012 caused fighting
between migrant workers who were hired by scalpers to stand in
line to buy the phones.
• When Apple said it would not open its store in Beijing, riots resulted
and people attacked security guards. The Beijing Apple Store has
had problems before. In May 2011, four people were injured when
a crowd waiting to buy the iPad 2 turned ugly.
Virtual Teams Advantages
• Increasing competiveness and responsiveness by having a team of
workers available 24/7
• Lowering costs because many virtual workers do not require office
space or support beyond their home offices.
• Providing more expertise and flexibility by having team members
from across the globe working any time of day or night
• Increasing the work/life balance for team members by eliminating
fixed office hours and the need to travel to work.
Virtual Team Disadvantages
• Isolating team members
• Increasing the potential for communications problems
• Reducing the ability for team members to network and transfer
information informally
• Increasing the dependence on technology to accomplish work
• See text for a list of factors that help virtual teams succeed,
including team processes, trust/relationships, leadership style, and
team member selection
Agile Project Management
• Agile means being able to move quickly and easily, but some people feel
that project management, as they have seen it used, does not allow
people to work quickly or easily.
• Early software development projects often used a waterfall approach, as
defined earlier in this chapter. As technology and businesses became
more complex, the approach was often difficult to use because
requirements were unknown or continuously changing.
• Agile today means using a method based on iterative and incremental
development, in which requirements and solutions evolve through
collaboration.
• See the Resources tab from www.pmtexts.com for more info
Agile Makes Sense for Some Projects, But
Not All
• Many seasoned experts in project management warn people not to
fall for the hype associated with Agile.
• For example, J. Leroy Ward, Executive Vice President at ESI
International, said that “Agile will be seen for what it is … and
isn’t….Project management organizations embracing Agile software
and product development approaches will continue to grow while
being faced with the challenge of demonstrating ROI through Agile
adoption.”*
 *J. Leroy Ward, “The Top Ten Project Management Trends for 2011,” projecttimes.com
(January 24, 2011).

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

• In February 2001, a group of 17 people that called itself the Agile
Alliance developed and agreed on the Manifesto for Agile Software
Development, as follows:
• “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it
and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan”*
*Agile Manifesto, www.agilemanifesto.org.

Scrum
• According to the Scrum Alliance, Scrum is the leading agile
development method for completing projects with a complex,
innovative scope of work.
• The term was coined in 1986 in a Harvard Business Review study
that compared high-performing, cross-functional teams to the
scrum formation used by rugby teams.
Figure 2-6. Scrum Framework
Kanban
• Technique that can be used in conjunction with scrum
• Developed in Japan by Toyota Motor Corporation
• Uses visual cues to guide workflow
• Kanban cards show new work, work in progress, and work
completed
Agile, the PMBOK® Guide, and a New
Certification
• The PMBOK® Guide describes best practices for what should be
done to manage projects.
• Agile is a methodology that describes how to manage projects.
• The Project Management Institute (PMI) recognized the increased
interest in Agile, and introduced a new certification in 2011 called
Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP).
• Seasoned project managers understand that they have always had
the option of customizing how they run projects, but that project
management is not easy, even when using Agile.

Summary
• Project managers need to take a systems approach when working on
projects
• Organizations have four different frames: structural, human resources,
political, and symbolic
• The structure and culture of an organization have strong implications for
project managers
• Projects should successfully pass through each phase of the project life
cycle
• Project managers need to consider several factors due to the unique
context of information technology projects
• Recent trends affecting IT project management include globalization,
outsourcing, virtual teams, and Agile

References
• https://www.accord.edu.so/web/content/33460?download=true&a
ccess_token=bb2b556c-9cbc-4ca8-9542-452369e0540c
• Information Technology Project Management, Eighth Edition, Kathy
Schwalbe