Project Management for Business: National Programme for Information Technology - Term Paper Example

Project management for business Contents Contents 2 Part Earned value 3 Executive summary 4 Part 2 5 Introduction 5 Background 5 Discussion 6 Conclusion and recommendation 8 References 9 Part 1: Earned value The earned value method is used to analyse the budget of a project. The indicators in the EV analysis like Schedule Variance (SV), Cost Variance (CV), Schedule Performance Indicators (SPI) and Cost Performance Indicators (CPI) are used to determine whether there is sufficient amount of money available in the budget of a project and whether the project can be completed within the predefined period stated for the project completion (Marshall, 2007). The formula for earned value is given below. The earned value (EV) for this project is £2.3 billion+ £12.4 billion =£14.7 billion over a period of 15 years from 2002 to 2016. The planned value (PV) for the project is £12.4 billion. The actual cost (AC) for the project is £6.46 billion incurred by 2011. Variances for a project can be positive or negative. There are two variances used in earned value method. These are the schedule variance (SV) and the cost variance (CV). A positive variance is considered good because it indicates that the project is under budget and is ahead of the pre-defined project schedule. Positive variances are useful in re allocating resources and capital from the positive variance tasks to the tasks having negative variance so as to maintain adequate balance and consistency in the project. The opposite happens for negative variances. Two key ratios are used in the earning value analysis. These are Cost Performance Index (CPI) and the SPI. An index of more than 1 is consider good as it indicates that the project is under budget and is age had of the fixed schedule (Philipson and Antvik, 2009). The opposite goes for a performance index lower than 1. SV = EV-PV = £14.7-£12.4 = 2.3. The SV for the project is positive. This indicates that the project is running ahead of the timing schedule. Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = EV/PV =£14.7/£12.4= 1.19 The SPI for the project is more than 1 which indicates a high feasibility of the project in terms of schedule. CV = EV-AC= 14.7- 6.46= 8.24 The CV is high which indicates that the project is running ahead of the budget schedule. Cost Performance Index (CPI) = EV/AC= 14.7/ 6.46= 2.28 The cost performance index is more than 1 which indicates that the project is a strong initiative in terms of cost budgeting (Quentin and Koppelman, 2005). Executive summary The report discusses the importance of project role, process responsibilities and stakeholder management with respect to a prestigious project of the government of the United Kingdom which is the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) of National Health Service (NHS). The report identifies the key reasons of the management of the project which led to the subsequent failure of the project. The report is structured with a background given on the relevant project, a discussion of the key factors affecting the project and suitable recommendations given in order to establish how the project can be sufficiently improved. Part 2 Introduction The National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) is an important systems project started by the government of United Kingdom. The project has been criticised due to the huge number of loopholes that have been identified on the project structure and the key aspects of project management. Project roles, responsibilities and stakeholder management are key aspects which decide the success or failure of a project. Therefore, the following report is prepared with the view of identifying these key aspects of the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) and is aimed at understanding why the project has been a failure despite the high scale operations and initiatives associated with it. Background The National Programme for Information Technology is a project initiative taken up by the National Health Service (NHS). The National Health Service (NHS) has to handle vast amounts of information in order to function effectively and safely. The National Programme for Information Technology is a ten year programme aimed at creating opportunities for the use of Information Technology in the NHS (The Guardian, 2013). The main use of information technology in the NHS is for improving the way information is managed and processed in the organization and for improving the quality and services dedicated to patient care. At the core of the National Programme for Information Technology lies the NHS Care Records Service aimed at ensuring the availability of relevant parts of clinical records of patients for general use in the health service systems. The programme is till date the largest single investment project in the domain of Information technology in the United Kingdom. If successful this project is expected to have multiple benefits on the health services sector of the United Kingdom. Some of these services include patient safety, financial improvement, service benefits and other benefits that will considerably enhance the prevailing healthcare system in the United Kingdom (Clark, 2012). Discussion The National Programme for Information Technology started by NHS was one of the highest investment ambitious projects started by the government of United Kingdom. It involved the ambitious policies which were formulated around the government reforms of the United Kingdom and was established with the aim of adding much value to the healthcare system in the country. However, not only has the prestigious project failed to live up to the expectations from it, but the project is identified with flaws and shortcomings in management which are key asp vets of a project that should have been looked into as primary priority . Therefore, certain critical shortcomings have been noticed in the role of the project, the stakeholder management and the key responsibilities of the project (Schwalbe, 2009). The main aim of the National Programme for Information Technology was to improve the healthcare service systems included in the National Health Service (NHS). However, it was identified that the role of the project in enhancing the health services of the NHS was lacking in many dimensions (BBC news, 2013). The project simply did not match up to the requirements of the National Health Service (NHS). The programme was devoid of proper clinical management and engagement. The focus of the project was given more on technological aspects and less on the service improvement (Hefford, 2013). The project also missed the important aspect of introducing comprehensive selling programmes for helping the NHS executives and clinicians to understand the concept and extract maximum benefits from it. The procurement system of the project was also lacking in many aspects. The appointed suppliers were not briefed properly about the actual scale of requirements of the project and as such, the suppliers of the project failed to understand the complexity of the National Health Service (NHS) systems and its exact power and role in the clinical community (Maughan, 2010). The commercial agreements with the main suppliers for the project were poorly crafted and lacked on a number of key requirements. The high level of disagreements and confusion in the sourcing processes led to the main two suppliers of the project, Fujitsui and Accenture to leave the project in the middle of the progress (Wray, 2008). This was indicative of the fact that the project was not managed accordingly to meet its main objectives. The project took up an aggressive approach to manage its suppliers. This was counterproductive for the success of the project (Moraes, 2013). Thus, the inadequate management in procurement and supplier management was a main reason for the subsequent failure of the project. Also, a highly stringent and top down approach in managing the project was another main reason which led to the failure of the project. The controlled approach resulted in issues like the creation of needs by the NHS Connection for Heath Development which were not deliverable by the existing products and features, incomplete agreements with the local suppliers and lack of proper financial support for supporting the activities of the project on such a massive scale of operations (National Audit Office Report, 2006). The use of politics has always played a key role in the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT). The inception of the project was driven by the political reforms in the country (House of Commons, 2012). The project was built on highly ambitious and unrealistic terms and objectives. For example, the project was aimed to be implemented for a period of 10 years which seemed to be an over ambitious and practically non achievable target (Robert, 2013). The project failed to gain confined in the National Health Services community and was not supported by the coalition government. Conclusion and recommendation The project has been criticised for the associated drawbacks and many discussions have been made to identify and explain the reasons for the substantial discrepancies and failures associate with the project. However, the common idea is that the main implementation phase of the National Programme for Information Technology has the above discussed associated project management problems. Some reviews have identified the project to be slow, cumbersome and poorly implemented. This hints at the fact that the project has not been well managed. Though the project is in a declining state, it can be revived through the use of suitable project management practices. Increasing the transparency between the project management and the stakeholder groups like the suppliers, customers and the general public can lead to improvements in the project. Devising strong supplier relations would help to improve the functionality of the project. Also, infusing more transparency in stakeholder management practices would reinforce the factors of the reliability and continuity of the project in line with its primary objectives. References BBC news. 2013. NHS IT system one of worst fiascos ever, say MPs. [Online]. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-24130684. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. Clark, J. 2012. Project Management Lite: Just Enough to Get the Job Done...Nothing More. New York: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform Hefford, R. 2013. Why the NHS National Programme for IT didnt work: Some good reasons why the scheme was pretty much doomed from the start. [Online]. Available at http://www.cio.co.uk/insight/strategy/why-nhs-national-programme-for-it-didnt-work/. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. House of Commons. 2012. Great Britain Parliament Select Committee on Public Accounts. Assurance for major projects fourteenth report of the Select Committee on Public Accounts. [Online] Available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/384/38405.htm. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. Marshall, R. 2007. The Contribution of Earned Value Management to Project Success of Contracted Efforts. Journal of Contract Management. Vol. 14(1). Maughan, A. 2010. Six reasons why the NHS National Programme for IT failed. [Online]. Available at http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Six-reasons-why-the-NHS-National-Programme-for-IT-failed. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. Moraes, R. O. 2013. Maturity and performance in information technology project management. International Journal of Information Technology Project Management. Vol. 8(1). National Audit Office Report. 2006. The National Programme for IT in the NHS. [Online]. Available at http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0506/department_of_health_the_nati.aspx. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. Philipson, E. & Antvik, S. 2009.  Earned Value Management - an introduction. Sweden: Philipson Biz. Quentin, F. & Koppelman, J. 2005. Earned Value Project Management (Third Edition Ed.). Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute. Robert, P. 2013. Guide to Project Management: Getting it right and achieving lasting benefit. New York: Wiley. Schwalbe, K. 2009. Information Technology Project Management. Boston: Cengage Learning. The Guardian. 2013. Abandoned NHS IT system has cost £10bn so far. [Online]. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn. [Accessed on 11 July 2014]. Wray, R. 2008. Second contractor drops out of £12bn NHS computer upgrade. [Online]. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/may/29/nhs. 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