UTILIZING EFFECTIVE IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Utilizing Effective IT Project Management

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) projects are uniquely challenging in today's global company. Project Managers must balance customer expectations with the capabilities of delivery teams within organizations. A project manager should cover all areas of IT project management, hardware (i.e. desktop migrations; desk side service implementations), software, System Integration, and human resources. Project managers should have cost effective solutions while uncovering critical success factors and hidden risks that are inherent in IT based projects.

Table of Content

CHAPTER ONE4

INTRODUCTION4

CHAPTER TWO10

LITERATURE REVIEW10

Role of top management10

CEO-CIO relationship12

IS department structure14

IS planning process16

IS implementation17

Effective performance of IS function18

CHAPTER THREE55

RESEARCH METHOD55

CHAPTER FOUR58

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION58

Analysis of case studies58

IS management in developing countries?73

CHAPTER FIVE78

CONCLUSIONS78

REFERENCES82

Chapter One

Introduction

As we progress in the new millennium and information age, numerous organizations around the world are undergoing huge transformation efforts to cope up with the altering enterprise environments. Increased domestic and global competition, economic downturns, quickly altering market tendencies, and volatile economic markets have all expanded the force on organizations to come up with productive responses to endure and succeed. Further, alleviate of international trade obstacles, economic liberalization, globalization and deregulation has thrown some trials to organizations in developing countries like India. To competently respond to the fast alterations in the external environment, some companies have turned to information technology (IT) to improve their productivity and competitiveness.

Until mid-1990s, numerous Indian organizations had operated under a protected economic regime distinuished by restricted competition and a highly regulated environment. This enterprise atmosphere had produced in restricted focus on process efficiencies, centralized control organisations, highly formalized enterprise backgrounds and need of professional enterprise practices. However, following the economic liberalization and opening up of the economy to foreign competition, Indian organizations have been forced to adopt modern enterprise practices and strategies. In an effort to enhance their competitiveness, some organizations have turned to IT for improving enterprise processes and exploiting efficiencies in the worth chains. Stories of thriving exploitation of IT in the Indian context have been documented in the publications (e.g. Data Quest, 1996; Banerjee, 2001; Walsham & Sahay, 1999). However, investigations have also emphasised the trials faced by Indian companies in exploiting and utilising IT ( Saxena & Sahay, 2000). Despite the detail that numerous Indian organizations have often been cognizant of the require to exploit IT, the expanded claims on the IT has made the administration of information schemes (IS) function a critical one.

As IS applications and their capabilities have amplified in complexity, dimensions, come to and scope, the task of organising a company's information schemes function has become critical, tough and intricate. For Indian organizations, productive conceive of IS function has presumed larger importance for some reasons: Firstly, Indian organizations have expanded their investments in IT by manifold. As the IT expending increased at a rate of 20% in the Asia-Pacific region (Data quest, 2001), the overall IT expending in India was approximated to grow by 56% in 2002 ( Dataquest, 2001). This important boost in IT investments necessitates apt IS organization to double-check productive deployment and utilization of ...