IT PROJECTS

The Various Ways IT Projects Are Monitored and Controlled

The Various Ways IT Projects Are Monitored and Controlled

Introduction

A recent study, called IT Project Management has highlighted the need for a fundamental re-appraisal of project management research (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward 2006, 687-698). The study identified various directions for advancing research and was based on collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners (Gemino, Reich and Sauer 2008, 9-44). The directions identified were: complexity, social process, value creation, broader conceptualisation of projects, and reflective practice. Each direction can be seen as enhancing conventional wisdom. Taken as a whole, they amount to a substantial, even radical, re-statement of the nature of projects and project management. While academics and practitioners alike may accept the appropriateness of each new direction intellectually (Barthelemy 2001, 60-69), I need to articulate what this means to the project manager in practice. From the perspective of a project manager, there is the question of what kind of person would they need to be to embrace all directions and attempt to integrate them into a coherent management approach. In short, we need to understand the mindset that will drive project managers to advance practice in the ways implied by the Rethinking Project Management (RPM) agenda. Concurrently with the PM research, I investigated how information technology (IT) project management has been changing and why. The IT sector was chosen because there has been such pressure for improvement that it was reasonable to expect to find evidence of innovation in practice. My focus was on identifiable changes to project management.

Project Management Framework

The conclusions of RPM can be summarised in terms of a set of directions for research. They are positioned as representing aspirations for future development of knowledge and practice (Schwalbe 2000, 310-312). However, since they are drawn from collaborations between academics and practitioners, they can be interpreted as early indications of how thinking and practice are actually developing. Individually and taken together, these directions represent a more expansive understanding of project management. They represent an addition to the conventional wisdom of an action-based perspective on project management characterised by PMBOK. Fig. 1 summarises the new directions suggested by the RPM project. It depicts projects as an economic (value-focused) and social process as well as an action process. It shows the space of project management as being open to broader conceptualisation. It depicts complexity as a characteristic that spans both the project's structure and processes and its environment.

Fig. 1. Combining rethinking project management research directions with the traditional approach to projects.

Rethinking Project Management starts with a new appreciation of the complexity of projects (Atkinson, Crawford and Ward 2006, 687-698). It moves us beyond the use of the lifecycle as the only correct way of viewing projects. It takes us toward a more pluralistic approach that values multiple ways of constructing and interpreting what projects are about, what is going on within them, and what techniques and approaches may be appropriate for managing them. (Marchewka 2003, 12-19)

An appreciation of projects as social processes takes us ...