The Feasibility, Planning, Design and Implementation Phases of IT Projects - Essay Example

How Sustainability Issues can be addressed during the Feasibility, Planning, Design and Implementation Phases of IT projects Insert (s) Instructor’s name Course Code Date of Submission How Sustainability and Issues Surrounding Sustainability can be addressed during the Feasibility, Planning, Design and Implementation Phases of IT projects Introduction Sustainability and issues surrounding sustainability are currently one of the critical challenges facing the management of IT projects from the feasibility, planning, design and the implementation phases. An IT project is considered to be sustainable when the factors affecting its sustainability are effectively addressed during the project design. While the trend of addressing sustainability concerns have shown significant improvements with the last few decades, many IT projects still face difficulties with sustainability and often implemented at huge costs. This is particularly attributed to a number of factors some of which include poor integration of sustainability during the different phases of the projects. According to Labuschagne and Brent (2006, p.54), a sustainable IT project is the one in which the four main project objectives namely, effective environmental protection, prudent utilization of natural resources, recognition of the social needs of everyone as well considerations of the economic impacts of the project. Many authors particularly suggest that the best way to address sustainability and issues surrounding sustainability in information and technology projects is to incorporate the concepts of sustainability in the entire life cycle of the project, from its conception to its ultimate implementation. This paper critically analyzes how sustainability and issues surrounding sustainability can be addressed during the feasibility, planning, design and implementation phases of IT projects. The Concept of Sustainability in IT Projects In the management of IT projects, sustainability is primarily about integrating economic, social and environmental aspects into the design of the project. As a result, sustainability in IT projects often takes a number of different approaches some of which include social sustainability, environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and economic sustainability. With regard to environmental sustainability, an important concern during the design of an IT project is how to limit the environmental footprints of the project such as potential emission of green house gas, level of energy consumption and the production of wastes. On the other hand, the social sustainability aspect of an IT project that should be addressed during the entire cycle of a project design includes the contributions of the project to the social development goals. Secondly, social analysis is also done in the implementation phase of IT projects to address sustainability issues. Social analysis provides for a simplified ways of addressing sustainability issues. Implementation phase of IT projects uses a simple tool for social analysis thus providing a detailed estimation for Economic Rate of Return (ERR). Social analysis additionally gives sustainable guidelines which are skillfully important within the project management itself. Social analysis in the implementation stage may cordially act importantly the organizational external factors; these external factors would solve sustainability issues by necessitating an economic analysis conduct. Project sustainability is one of the major challenges to be implemented in both smaller and bigger economies. One of the ways in which sustainability issues are addressed in the implementation phase of IT projects is monitoring of the sustainability issues at an earlier stage. the tools used for the evaluation of sustainability issues at the implementation phase work hand in hand with the planning and monitoring tools at the monitoring stage of a project. Addressing Sustainability during the Feasibility Phase The feasibility phase forms the core of most IT projects and is primarily intended to provide the stakeholders of a given project with the basis to decide whether would be viable. In order to address sustainability or other issues related to sustainability, the feasibility phase should include determining whether the IT project conforms to the environmental and development priorities and objectives specific to the location. One of the ways through which the issues of sustainability can be addressed during this phase is to identify the environmental and sustainability problems to be addressed as well as the needs of the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the project. Some of the sustainability issues that should be addressed during the feasibility phase of a sustainable IT project include the administrative manageability of the project, adequacy of the demand for the outputs of the project, financial justification and feasibility of the IT project, the compatibility of the project with the traditions of the beneficiaries and finally, the sustainability of the project beyond the intervention period. Next, the issues and their most effective and realistic possible interventions can then be identified, analyzed and screened. Finally, a situational analysis of the sustainability issues based on evidence based conceptual framework can be used to generate key strategies and actions that can be applied for the intended project intervention based on the interests, needs, strengths and weaknesses of the key beneficiaries and stakeholders. Despite the wide-known fact that sustainability is intended to meet the prevailing requirements without suppressing the capability of the future generations to cater for their own requirements, IT projects still lack precise guidance on the varied perspectives of sustainability that should be captured in different requirement specifications. In response to this, Curran & Loureiro (2007) assert that feasibility studies should begin with a kick-off meeting with the intended beneficiaries of the project in question. The involved requirements engineer should sketch an initial draft of a Domain Model that follows a respective ontology. Being an outline of the business and operational arena, the model functions as a communication foundation to guide the discussions and provide an avenue for defining the project plans and goals of the next meeting. In an effort to explicitly model different perspectives of sustainability of the project domain, the requirements engineer provokes a discussion that is centered on the best way to highlight the identified perspectives in the later stages of design and implementation, which can be combined to form Project Vision. The plans that are defined as a result of the feasibility study can be referred to as the Goal Model. Sustainability during the Planning Phase The planning phase of an IT project comes after the feasibility phase and begins from the time the project has been formally approved and funded. The planning phase of an IT project is another important part of the project cycle in which a number of sustainability issues can be addressed. The planning phase of IT projects is crucial since it dictates the final outcome of the project. During this period, the project work is normally broken down into several specific tasks each of which is allocated resources. A number of sustainability issues are normally addressed during the planning phase because it is the phase of the project management where a comprehensive plan for economic, social and environmental impact aspects of the project is developed. For example, resources may be estimated and enlisted to ensure that all the sustainability issues are effectively addressed. Generally, addressing the sustainability concerns of an IT project at the onset of the project planning phase is critically important because it allows for adequate investment of time in research, evaluation, as well as institutional readiness to work towards sustainability of the project even before the funding is made available. The critical components to be addressed at this time include carrying our a comprehensive assessment of the social needs of the target community or country, appraising the potential problems likely to be faced and developing capacities for the eventual implementation of the sustainability issues. There are a number of ways through which the planning phase of an IT project can embrace sustainability. First, the project manager can create a sense of project ownership among the involved team and involving the relevant stakeholders. In this way, he increases familiarity with project goals thus increases the likelihood of the project to attain the set goals. Second, the project manager can use appropriate criterion in selecting the project staff. One of the approaches that can be adopted in selecting project staff is Belbin’s Model. The model can provide an efficient means of staff selection that is accommodative of issues like conflicting personal attitudes, variation in employee attitudes and differences in the level of knowledge and skills. Finally, the project manager can encourage the use of CASE tools like Project Libre in scheduling the project. Scheduling offers insight into the time, cost and quality constraints that pertain to the project under execution. Design Phase The design phased of an IT project is where the key sustainability steps such as the evaluation of the economic viability of the project and other sustainability concepts are incorporated into the project plan. The Domain Model, the Goal Model and the Project can together perform as input sources to the Usage Model. In essence, Usage Model will be instrumental in detailing use cases and user scenarios, which help in elaborating the project requirements whilst offering insight on the quality of the target project product. Apparently, the user stories or scenarios mentioned whilst defining the Usage Model will be could be of help when making decision on the best way to strike a balance between usability and security issues during a project design stage. Implementation Through the use of life cycle analysis coupled with the impact assessment regarding the ideas portrayed in the Project Vision, the requirements engineer can decide to persuade the intended customers that the project under execution shall be one that is environmentally sustainable in different business context (Golińska, Fertsch & Gómez, 2011). In this way, he gets to curb incidences of user resistance that is typical of nearly every IT project during the implementation phase of a project process. One of the ways in which sustainability issues are addressed in the implementation phase of IT projects is monitoring of the sustainability issues at an earlier stage. the tools used for the evaluation of sustainability issues at the implementation phase work hand in hand with the planning and monitoring tools at the monitoring stage of a project. The implementation phase of IT projects, several analyses such as economic analysis or estimation on Economic Rate of Return (ERR) are carried out in order to address the sustainability issues. Secondly, social analysis is also done in the implementation phase of IT projects to address sustainability issues. Social analysis provides for a simplified ways of addressing sustainability issues. Implementation phase of IT projects uses a simple tool for social analysis thus providing a detailed estimation for Economic Rate of Return (ERR). Social analysis additionally gives sustainable guidelines which are skilfully important within the project management itself. Social analysis in the implementation stage may cordially act importantly the organisational external factors; these external factors would solve sustainability issues by necessitating an economic analysis conduct. On the other hand, a flow chart may be generated at the implementation phase of IT projects to address the sustainability issues experienced throughout the project formulation. A flow chart describes all the constraints to sustainability. A modulated flow chart is an additional tool for the project managers and planners to become aware of elements that overly threaten sustainability. A well-structured flow chart at the implementation phase of IT projects would therefore make efforts to aptly uphold only well-planned sustainable provisions. This would ultimately mitigate both internal and external threats to sustainability. Lastly, flow chart in the implementation phase incorporates the elements of sustainability rightly at the designing stage. Even before a product of an IT project is presented to customers, the involved team needs to carry out some test exercises. To be successful, the test crew needs to follow a well-written test plans that constitutes a number of test cases whose structure is informed by the business specifications defined during the feasibility phase thus making the projects more sustainable (Millett & Estrin, 2012). Conclusion In conclusion, in view of the way rapid changes in technology and economic aspects of a state would affect IT projects, team members taking part in different projects should be able to plan them in such a way, that a step chosen or a decision made during a single phase directly or indirectly breeds a positive impact on another phase of the same project. Through this, IT projects will be rendered more capable of satisfying the present requirements associated with a given phase while making sure that the future phases of the selfsame project are capacitated to meet their own requirements. References Curran, R., & Loureiro, G.2007. Complex systems concurrent engineering: collaboration, technology innovation and sustainability : [proceedings book of the 14th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, CE 2007 ...]. London, Springer. Golińska, P., Fertsch, M., & Gómez, J. M. 2011. Information technologies in environmental engineering new trends and challenges. Berlin, Springer. Labuschagne, C., & Brent, A. C. 2006. Social indicators for sustainable project and technology life cycle management in the process industry, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 11(1), pp. 3-15. Millett, L. I., & Estrin, D. (2012). Computing research for sustainability. Read More