Recent Trends Affecting Information Technology Project
The global economy has increasingly been growing thanks to changes in technology, finance, and critical procurement deals. This has had significant impacts on industries and organizations as well as their projects or operations. With the competitiveness of the global market, managements have identified new approaches aimed at satisfying the needs of their clients such as cost efficiency and product quality (Thorpe, Edum-Fotwe, & Mead, 1998). In the past years, there has been increased use of information technology as well when it comes to project management. Thus, this essay examines the recent trends affecting information technology project management.
In the past, global markets witnessed trade barriers since each country wanted to protect their local industries by imposing increased tax rates on import commodities. In recent years, globalization has enabled many nations to engage in trade services. This has been facilitated by information technology (IT) that has eliminated the tariffs that were witnessed initially. Skilled personnel and appropriate resources are required to work on IT complexities in project management (Ásólfsdóttir, 2012). For example, India has focused on IT studies to create an effective economy for herself. Globalization has been related to various impacts organizations. Information technology has enhanced global communication that has is one of the critical aspects of globalization. Effective communication techniques have been established that allow team members of an organization to communicate and share their progress. Creative ideas are shared by team members to improve the organizational performance. This boosts the trust of team members and sharpens their aggressiveness. Currently, information can be acquired by any person from the internet by accessing computers that are easily available in this new era. Based on these perspectives, it is evident that globalization has helped to enhance information technology project management in organizations.
Outsourcing has also influenced information technology project management. Outsourcing is related to the performance of organizational activities by identifying external agents. Studies show that many organizations use outsourcing for business motives. The use of an external vendor enables an organization to manage information systems and reestablish its business process. Through the development of IT, organization are effectively linked to the clients as it receives information systems and business values from the external agent to appropriately run its processes (Lacity & Rottman, 2009). Nevertheless, the cost of services or products has been identified as one of the significant issues in an organization. The information technology department frequently predicts and formulates the budget of service delivery. In this regard, outsourcing offers a less costly service delivery as the organizational only focuses on the external agent. The outsourcing of IT functions has enabled organizations to acquire or gain new skills that were not previously available in the organization’s market. This has enabled organizations to significantly improve their service delivery. Also, IT functions are crucial to organizations’ core functions. An organization can outsource their old technology system to the external agent to allow focus on innovating new and modern technology system. This significantly improves the quality production of customers needs and better service delivery (Lacity & Rottman, 2009). Also, the outsourcing of the old technology helps the organizations to prevent the demand fluctuations that might be experienced in the market.
Virtual teams are individuals who work across distance, time, and boundaries, and are linked by information technology systems. The development of information technology over the recent years has greatly impacted on the virtual teamwork performance (Ale Ebrahim, Ahmed, & Taha, 2009). IT has closely brought together virtual member of an organization such that competition has been experienced between the worker thereby improving skills. Besides, information technology has lowered the cost incurred to construct a large firm or offices where all workers can be accommodated to perform their duties. This has been effective as virtual team members work at their homes and submit their work progress in the process. Also, information technology has allowed flexibility to be experienced within the organization as every virtual team member does work at their own time not later than the deadline time of sharing the work progress. However, virtual team embraces a lot on the use of technology that influences individual’s critical thinking, hence less creative ideas are established. In virtual teams, frequent miscommunications are experienced as this hinders workflow process and negatively impacts information technology project management in the long run.
Several studies associate agile project management to IT success. In recent years, current changes and approaches have come up to help industries achieve their goals quickly by transferring the technological innovation to their production process (Hilt, Wagner, Osterlehner, & Kampker, 2016). Therefore, managers have been urged to employ agile project management for the effective industry’s performance. Agile project management allows implementation of the formulated agile software development principles. Several frameworks have been identified in the agile software development with scrum being the leading principle that has embraced completion and innovation of work processes in the industries. Enhanced innovation has, in turn, improved operations related to information technology project management.
In conclusion, project managers need to take suitable and effective approaches when working on various projects. The structure and culture of an organization have significant implications for project management, and managers must take these into account. Globalization, outsourcing, virtual teams, and agile project management trends all have impacts on information technology project management in organizations. Thus, managers should shift their focus to these items if they are to improve information technology project management in their organizations.
References
Ale Ebrahim, N., Ahmed, S., & Taha, Z. (2009). Virtual teams: A literature review. Retrieved from http://cogprints.org/7814/1/2653-2669.pdf
Ásólfsdóttir, Á. H. (2012). Leading a virtual team: globalization and IT project management (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/12963/1/Leading_a_Virtual_Team_%C3%81sta_Hildur.pdf
Hilt, M. J., Wagner, D., Osterlehner, V., & Kampker, A. (2016). Agile predevelopment of production technologies for electric energy storage systems–a case study in the automotive industry. Procedia CIRP, 50, 88-93. Retrieved from https://ac.els-cdn.com/S221282711630573X/1-s2.0-S221282711630573X-main.pdf?_tid=84397760-991a-4bcf-a010-f697c6e3772b&acdnat=1523101602_20d41cb8cd05518f7243902400a12ed1
Lacity, M. C., & Rottman, J. W. (2009). Effects of offshore outsourcing of information technology work on client project management. Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal, 2(1), 4-26. Retrieved from https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/17538290910935864
Thorpe, A., Edum-Fotwe, F. T., & Mead, S. (1998, June). Managing construction projects within emerging information-driven business environments. In Construction and the Environment, Proceedings of the CIB World Congress, Symposium D: Managing for Sustainability-Endurance Through Change (pp. 7-12). Retrieved from http://www.irbnet.de/daten/iconda/CIB8721.pdf