Information Technology (IT) projects are usually run by project managers who use processes such as scope, schedule, budget and quality management to get the job done. These skills are indeed prerequisite to success in completing a project, but other things are needed to deliver complex information technology projects in today’s fast-moving pressure cooker environment.
What do IT project managers need to do in order to be successful? This article examines key challenges to successful delivery of information technology projects, and gives tips, strategies and risk mitigations that can be used to structure and manage a project successfully.
A project is set in motion to achieve a result such as a business objective. A custom web application may be written to improve the productivity of a company’s workers. Enterprise resource planning software may be rolled out to consolidate a company’s data and streamline workflow and processes. Servers may be consolidated to achieve cost savings.
Fundamentally, a project changes an aspect of the organization of a business. A number of people have a stake in how such changes are implemented: managers may look for better productivity or higher sales; users of the software would like ease-of-use and time savings; internal auditors could be interested in security, adequate reporting and adherence to accounting and other standards.