Chapter 14: Managing Projects

Summary:

Up to this point, our textbook has shown us What information systems are, Who utilizes them, Where in an organization they should be implemented, and Why they are critical to conducting business today. That is 4 out of the 5 W’s. There is a very high failure rate among IS projects, and chapter 14 answers the question of How to ensure success with information systems projects.

To me, project management consists of three controls; being on-time, on-budget, and on-track. A good project manager accomplishes this by being heavily involved in planning, assessing risk, acquiring resources, organizing, directing, and analyzing results.  Within these activities are five major variables that must be considered: scope, time, cost, quality, and risk.

In the early stages of project management there are typically many different courses of action available for solving problems or improving performance. During this phase, proper selection of which projects to pursue is key to success and should be driven by an organizations overall business strategy. In larger corporations, there is usually a management structure already in place that is responsible for making the decision on which projects will receive priority and deliver the greatest benefit to the company. To help make these decisions, management must have a clear understanding of its information requirements, both in the near-term and the far-term. A tool for the analysis of these requirements is the critical success factors (CSF’s) of managers. Examples of CSF’s include styling, quality, and increased profits. Another useful way for selecting projects is through the use of a scoring model, which assigns weights, or values, to selected criteria and then calculates the total score.

To ensure that a project remains on-budget, a firm must assess the business value of a proposed project in relation to cost and benefits. Benefits can be classified as either tangible, quantifiable or able to be assigned a monetary value, or intangible, not immediately quantifiable such as improved customer service but may lead to gains in the far-term that can be assigned a monetary value. Even in projects where benefits exceed the costs, additional analysis should be utilized to determine the feasibility and overall value of investing in long-term projects. In these situations, capital budgeting models are an effective technique for making these assessments.

As I stated in my review of chapter 8, a well thought out plan always includes a risk assessment. When managing risk in relation to information systems projects, there are three key factors to take into consideration: 1) project size, 2) project structure, and 3) experience with technology. All three are defined in depth in this chapter of our textbook. With the exception of experience with technology, most risk factors are mainly organizational. The highest failure rates are attributed to those that involve enterprise applications or process reengineering because they demand widespread organizational change.

Finally, once a project has been chosen, it must be introduced to the firm through implementation. This refers to all of the actions that are associated with the adoption, management, and routinization of a new information system. This can have a massive impact on a firm’s behavioral and organizational structure and requires careful change management. Vital to this step is the support of management at all levels of the organization. Again, risk factors can rear their ugly heads during the implementation phase of a project but these can be mitigated through the careful application of a combination of internal and external integration tools, formal planning tools, and formal control tools.