Topic 1-

Why is project management critical to IS projects?

The project management is an important tool to plan schedules, budget and execute work to be accomplished in project management. Project managers are responsible for planning labor, equipment and financial needs for specific projects. Project management is a discipline of its own that is not specific to IS projects, but that is crucial to the success of any complex project. Health Care Management Organizational Design & Behavior

Debate Time: Does IT Offer a Competitive Advantage? (Go to page 386 of Chapter 13 in your textbook) Do you agree with the stated conclusions? Why or why not? Provide an example or two to support your views.

I would agree with the conclusions because it is not information technology that gives a company a competitive advantage; it's the way they use information technology that makes the difference. Companies like Facebook have gained competitive advantage by twisting and adding value to their existing technology to service their users.

Topic 2-

Project management is a discipline of its own that is not specific to IS projects, but that is crucial to the success of any complex project. Certainly not every IS project is complex enough to warrant a full-fledged project management team, but on projects of any reasonable complexity, mangling the project management will seriously jeopardize its success. An organization that excels at project management stands a much better chance of successfully adopting HIT than one that does not. Once the executive team defines the IS portfolio of funded projects, project management becomes crucial to the success of the project. The first step to initiating an IS project is developing the project charter. The charter should detail the project's objectives, scope, and intended results. Many of the inputs from the definition phase of the SDLC will be used to develop the project charter, including the feasibility analysis and requirements definition. The next key step is identifying the project manager. The project manager can be either a business manager or an IS manager, depending on both the need for technical expertise and the degree to which the project will affect the business unit.

Project managers' characteristics can affect the success of projects, including a range of nontechnical skills such as leadership, communication, organizational, and team-building skills; this is particularly true when there are high levels of change and uncertainty associated with the project (Martin et al., 2005). Two other key roles present in successful project management teams are the project sponsor and the project champion. The project sponsor is the business manager that is financially responsible for the project. This person should have participated in the development of the project proposal and the feasibility analysis. Once the project begins, he or she provides the funds for the project and oversees the project to ensure the benefits are realized. The sponsor may also be responsible for providing members of the project team, and for making other personnel that are not formal members of the project team available for activities such as defining the as-is system, providing end-user feedback on screen designs or prototypes of the new system, and system testing. The business sponsor needs to free up these personnel along with the project team members so they can provide the level of effort required to make the project a success; this means the sponsor needs to be at a high enough level of the organization to have the authority to make such decisions. For large projects that involve multiple business processes, this may mean that the project sponsor should be the CIO or the CEO.

Does IT Offer a Competitive Advantage?