1. Issues and challenges

To understand the issues at stake in this article, let's take a look at the problems a project manager faces during the course of a project, as well as before and afterwards.

Any project - and this is even truer of projects where IT is an issue - is a series of problems linked to specific situations, which the project manager has to solve as the project progresses. The result is a nominal load curve which always follows the same pattern, with three distinct phases: 1) the ramp-up phase, when the project team is set up, which corresponds to the design phase; 2) the cruising phase, which corresponds to the actual development phase; 3) the end phase, when the project is integrated and put into operation, which brings the project to a close, and prepares the way for the transition to maintenance, which will last as long as the delivered system is used. The slopes p1...