Computing - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages... 1-22) use it as an independent variable. Project selection is the procedure of approving or rejecting projects. Project benefits are weighted against criteria to obtain the approval to use corporate resources (Cai et al., p. 6).
Project scheduling, estimating, and budgeting is another tool in the monitoring and control of large IT projects. Scheduling is laying out in advance the time and place of work and the resources required. The status of work is monitored and controlled by comparing to the schedule laid out. Estimating is quantifying the resources needed to finish the project. It could be done by a process called knowledge management. Budgeting is usually prepared by the finance department before the start of the project to plan the costs of the project (Cai et al., p. 6-7). Scheduling, estimating, and budgeting are especially important in large IT projects that are more complex (Cai et al., p. 10). Indeed, Prasad (p. 125) found evidence that inaccurate estimates and lack of control by comparing the budget to the actual predicts budgets overruns.
A study conducted by Yetton et al. (2000) found that planning is yet another effective tool in the monitoring and control of large IT projects for UK and New Zealand businesses and governments. Poor planning will result in inefficiencies in development and overrunning of budgets (Yetton et al., 2000). An example is the Transfer and Automated Registration of Uncertified Stock (TAURUS) undertaken by the London Stock Exchange in the early 1980s to automate stock trading (Willcocks and Griffiths (p. 219-221). Money was splurged into the project even before the operating architecture had been planned (Willcocks and Griffiths, p. 220). There were no clear goals and procedures were not followed, leading to delays. Cai et al. (p. 9) suggested incorporating scheduling into contractual agreements with suppliers so as to facilitate better planning. Richl (p. 328) proposed that the systems development life cycle should be the framework used for planning. The systems development life cycle approach consists of six stages including the system study stage, system analysis stage, detailed design stage, system implementation stage, system conversion and cut-over stage, and post implementation audit stage.
Project team management and selection is also an effective tool to monitor and control large IT projects (Cai et al., p. 11). Yetton et al. (2000), in their study of system development performance of UK and New Zealand businesses and governments, found support for their hypotheses that project team conflict and budget variances are positively related. They also found that project staff instability and budget variances are positively related. They attributed the reasons to delays and learning costs of new employees. Similar results hold for the USA business sector. Jiang and Klein (2000) found significant relationships between intensity of conflict and project efficiency. Besides managing team conflicts and instability, team expertise and clarity of roles among team members are also found to be related to project efficiency by Jiang and Klein (2000). The proxies for project efficiency in Jiang and Klein (2000)'s study are "ability to meet project goals", "amount of work produced", "quality of work produced", "adherence to schedules", "efficiency of operations", "speed of operations", and "adherence to budgets". These parameters could be used to monitor ...Download file to see next pagesRead More