Dynamics of IT project management

Overview

ABSTRACT

Computing projects generally include three stages: the designing stage, the development stage and the integration/exploitation stage. The desire to reduce costs or the time spent is often a source of failure. Indeed, the dynamics of the organization of interactions between the various key players of the project is the result of a chain of actions, behaviors and decisions where each link must fulfill its role, failing which the chain would break. It is thus necessary to design this process globally regardless of workload modifications. This article proposes to examine the necessary conditions for a sound project dynamics from different prospectives: technological, architectural, integration, organizational and human.

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AUTHOR

Jacques PRINTZ: Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM)

INTRODUCTION

Every project owner, every project manager and every IT project manager would like to see a project, or a set of interdependent projects, aimed at adapting the company's computerized systems, completed in the shortest possible time, without sacrificing quality. What's more, all the players in the various business lines, as well as management in general, want changes to the initial project to be taken into account on an almost continuous basis, right up to the extreme limit of what is possible, without of course disrupting the project or jeopardizing deliveries in progress.

It's this capacity that we call agility, or adaptability, to the socio-economic context, by analogy with what in production management we call flexible workshops. Over the last few decades, production has moved from a strategy based on supply to one based on end-customer demand: we need to meet demand as quickly as possible. Demand drives manufacturing.

In the world of IT, the manufacturing metaphor quickly finds its limits. An industrial assembly line is relatively stable, given the investment required to install it, whereas IT is subject to continuous modification. Much more is demanded of the programming part than of the hardware part of the manufacturing process, for it is here that the uniqueness - and greatness - of IT technology lies: processes can be programmed and changed without modifying the hardware; this is a decisive competitive advantage for those who know how to take advantage of it.

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