ITSS 3300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Organizational Culture, Valuation Of Options, Project Management
26 Jun 2018
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CH 14& CH 15 REVIEW QUESTIONS
What are the objectives of project management and why is it so essential in developing information
systems?
Good project management is essential for ensuring that systems are delivered on time, on budget,
and provide genuine business benefits. Project management activities include planning the work,
assessing the risk, estimating and acquiring resources required to accomplish the work, organizing
the work, directing execution, and analyzing the results. Project management must deal with five
major variables: scope, time, cost, quality, and risk.
2. What methods can be used for selecting and evaluating information systems projects and
aligning them with the firm’s business goals?
Organizations need an information systems plan that describes how information technology supports
the attainment of their business goals and documents all their system applications and IT infrastructure
components. Large corporations will have a management structure to ensure the most important systems
projects receive priority. Critical success factors, portfolio analysis, and scoring models can be used
to identify and evaluate alternative information systems projects.
3. How can firms assess the business value of information systems projects?
To determine whether an information systems project is a good investment, one must calculate its
costs and benefits. Tangible benefits are quantifiable, and intangible benefits that cannot be immediately
quantified may provide quantifiable benefits in the future. Benefits that exceed costs should be
analyzed using capital budgeting methods to make sure a project represents a good return on the
firm’s invested capital. Real options pricing models, which apply the same techniques for valuing
financial options to systems investments, can be useful when considering highly uncertain IT investments.
4. What are the principal risk factors in information systems projects?
The level of risk in a systems development project is determined by (1) project size, (2) project
structure, and (3) experience with technology. IS projects are more likely to fail when there is insufficient
or improper user participation in the systems development process, lack of management support,
and poor management of the implementation process. There is a very high failure rate among
projects involving business process reengineering, enterprise applications, and mergers and acquisitions
because they require extensive organizational change.
5. What strategies are useful for managing project risk and system implementation?
Implementation refers to the entire process of organizational change surrounding the introduction
of a new information system. User support and involvement and management support and control
of the implementation process are essential, as are mechanisms for dealing with the level of risk
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Document Summary
What are the objectives of project management and why is it so essential in developing information. Good project management is essential for ensuring that systems are delivered on time, on budget, and provide genuine business benefits. Project management activities include planning the work, assessing the risk, estimating and acquiring resources required to accomplish the work, organizing the work, directing execution, and analyzing the results. Organizations need an information systems plan that describes how information technology supports the attainment of their business goals and documents all their system applications and it infrastructure components. Large corporations will have a management structure to ensure the most important systems projects receive priority. To determine whether an information systems project is a good investment, one must calculate its costs and benefits. Tangible benefits are quantifiable, and intangible benefits that cannot be immediately quantified may provide quantifiable benefits in the future.
