Scholarly Activity - week 8 - Principles of Management

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by Girish h. subramanian, Gary Klein, James J. JianG, and chien-lunG chan

T h e s u c c e s s o f s y s T e m d e v e l o p m e n T i s m o s T o f T e n

gauged by three primary indicators: the number of days of deviation from scheduled delivery date, the percentage of deviation from the proposed budget, and meeting the needs of the client users.4 Tools and techniques to help perform well along these dimensions abound in practice and research. However, the project view of systems development should be broader than any particular development tool or methodology.

Any given development philosophy or approach can be inserted into a systems development project to best fit the conditions, product, talent, and goals of the markets and organization. In order to best satisfy the three criteria, system development project managers must focus on the process of task completion and look to apply controls that ensure success, promote learning within the team and organization, and end up with a software product that not only meets the requirements of the client but operates efficiently and

is flexible enough to be modified to meet changing needs of the organization. In this fashion, the project view must ex- amine both process and product.

Often, tasks required for project completion seem contradictory to or- ganizational goals. Within the process, managerial controls are applied in or- der to retain alignment of the product to the initial, and changing, require- ments of the organization. However, freedom from tight controls promotes learning.9 The product also has con- tradictions among desired outcomes. Designers must consider tradeoffs be- tween product efficiency and flexibil- ity, with the trend in processing power leading us ever more toward the flex- ibility side. Still, we rage between con- flicting criteria, with the advocates of a waterfall system development lifecycle (SDLC) usually pushing more for con- trol aspects and efficient operations while agile proponents seek more of a learning process and flexible product.

Regardless of the development methodology followed, project manag- ers must strive to deliver the system on time, within budget, and to meet the re- quirements of the user. Thus, both prod- uct and process are crucial in the deter- mination of success. To compound the difficulties, those in control of choosing an appropriate methodology view suc- cess criteria from a different perspective than other stakeholders. Understand- ing how different stakeholders perceive these factors impacting eventual proj- ect success can be valuable in adjusting appropriate methodologies. Our study looks at these relationships using well established instruments in a survey of IS development professionals to better clarify the importance of these variables in system project success and any per- ceived differences among different play- ers in IS development (see the sidebar on “How the Study Was Conducted”).

Product efficiency and flexibility Two of the more global quality char- acteristics that characterize software systems from an organizational view are efficiency and flexibility. Efficiency

balancing four factors in system development Projects

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are effective in the learning process. Controls are coveted by manage-

ment as a means to ensure success. Controls detect deviations from the schedule, budget, and goals that war- rant corrective action. “In many orga- nizations, particularly large ones, a primary criterion for the usefulness of any procedure is its predictability and the degree to which it allows us to ap- ply control.”1 The capability maturity model (CMM) model is a common rep- resentation of control practices. The focus of the CMM model is to provide improvement in the control of systems development projects through use of metrics and software process improve- ment. CMM, with its emphasis on more detailed processes and procedures, fits best with an SDLC approach.

The development methods, such as agile development, argue for less

considers aspects associated with sys- tems that run according to a schedule and produces expected output accord- ing to the demands of the organization. Flexible systems are readily changed by the organization to meet changing en- vironmental conditions with minimal resources spent in conducting essen- tial maintenance.

One goal of the SDLC is to build software products based on stable and well-defined requirements in order to deliver an efficient product. However, flexibility to better respond to chang- ing customer needs is often lost in the quest to come up with an efficient prod- uct. Agile development approaches the world from a more flexible view, not only in the development process but in a product that is readily adjusted to the needs of an organization. Views toward one extreme or the other is a limiting, and wrong, characterization, but meth- ods and philosophies do tend to shape the product as well as the process.

Process learning and control Learning represents the ability of an organization to pick up best practices from external entities as well as dis- tribute knowledge and lessons learned throughout the company. Control re- fers to the more rigid practices in place that monitor progress and quality of an ongoing project and enforce social roles and relationships in the project. The two certainly do not conflict. Controls are developed out of knowledge and modified as learning occurs. Learning is best fostered in an environment with some controls, and control procedures to return knowledge through feedback

control and stress learning.2 Such ap- proaches are part and parcel to organi- zational learning concepts that involve feedback and iterative cycles. “Success is then measured by achievement of the goal of delivering value to the cus- tomer within the reasonable business constraints imposed on the business, not by mindless adherence to a plan.”1 These methodologies argue for project managers to give away their control function and act as facilitator and act to promote continuous learning.10 This may be difficult, as project managers and IS managers both view control as the most crucial of all four factors in success of IS projects.

the importance of all four factors Not surprisingly, the results of our study indicate clearly that all four con- siderations are important predictors of

figure 1. importance of factors to Project Performance

table 1: descriptive items

Learning knowledge acquired by the organization about: the use of key technologies development technologies business functionality

Control control over project costs control over project schedules adherence to audit and control standards

Efficiency reliable software efficient cost of operations quick response times

Flexibility efficient cost of adapting to changes in business rapid adaption to changes in business efficient cost of maintaining the system

Project Performance the ability to meet project goals the expected amount of work completed the quality of work completed adherence to schedule adherence to budget efficient task operations

How the Study was conducted We mailed survey instruments to 1,000 randomly selected Ieee computer Society members with an expressed interest in software engineering. these individuals are likely familiar with development activities in their organization and can provide knowledgeable responses. A total of 492 responded after an initial and follow up mailing. the items in table 1 summarize the four outcome variables plus project success. respondents subjectively evaluated each item on a scale of 1 to 5.

the respondents consisted of IS managers (31%), project leaders (48%), IS professionals serving on a project team (19%), and others (2%). About 25% were female and 75% were male. Some 37% worked in companies that had an average of eight or more persons on project teams. About 49% of the projects were completed within one year and 37% more completed within two years. Figure 1 graphs the regression coefficients to represent the declared importance of each factor to project performance for each subgroup.

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project success. All three of the major stakeholder groups viewed the same factors as significant, but managers clearly place a much higher magnitude of importance on controls. While de- velopment methodologies and project team members may lean toward one factor over the other, a good project manager must incorporate all four considerations into a single view to ensure project success. Whatever the success measures ultimately selected for any project, organizational expecta- tions and involved stakeholders define success. Meshing these expectations across the variety of stakeholders to achieve a consonance of goals and un- derstanding is fundamental.6 In the absence of consonance, success mea- sures would be applied and narrowly defined to satisfy a particular stake- holder rather than benefit the entire organization. Thus, success must come under a project umbrella that views the interests of more than the developers or particular set of developers in an organization. Figure 2 illustrates how overlapping interests should succumb to a more global view for projects that considers the entire set of tradeoffs in process and product.

What to do? Looking at it strictly from a project manager’s perspective, control cannot be abandoned. Yet, clearly, an orga- nization excels in the long run when learning occurs during the develop- ment process. Just as clearly, the prod-

uct needs to be amenable to changes as the business environment changes, but inefficiencies creating tardy access to information could prove devastat- ing. This requires that each approach specifically place features promoting all four aspects into the development processes. Though there will always be tradeoffs, the four considerations need not be contradictory and can be enhanced in several fashions:

Use control but promote learning. As many projects are large and operate within large organizations, control is vital. Control is needed by the project manager to maintain roles and respon- sibilities, and avoid scope deviations, schedule slippages, and cost overruns. This may explain why the managers in the sample strongly emphasized controls. Still, even in the traditional development environment, learning is important to bring in best practices learned by the organization from simi- lar projects. Post-project reviews are an essential practice of control, designed to mitigate future risks, yet are not ef- fective unless the organization fosters an environment of learning. The CMM considers learning by promoting con- tinuous process improvements. In that sense, learning is linked to achieving better control of system projects and processes.

Set standards of quality to promote both flexibility and efficiency. Most quality standards within the CMM and traditional SDLC methods focus on standardizing and optimizing the prod-

uct to a pre-specified set of customer requirements. It is quite possible that these quality standards will result in a rigid but efficient product which may or may not satisfy customer needs over time. Project managers need to adopt quality measures and standards that promote both product efficiency and flexibility. Measures for product effi- ciency are already commonly applied and need to be supplemented with measures on flexibility. A metric to measure requirements volatility and the response to change would be an ef- fective measure for flexibility.

In primarily agile developments. Ag- ile development methods argue for a feedback cycle approach to learn more about the user needs. Controls need to be goal-oriented,1 not task-oriented. Control needs to be exercised on pro- cesses and people through effective communication and promoting team work. Informal controls that enforce organizational practices and team roles should also be particularly effective.5 Feedback cycles can provide control points just as phases of a life cycle do. In particular, reviews can be used to moni- tor continued quality and progress. Ap- plication of software quality standards can be accomplished through rigorous testing of the product after each cycle, with lessons learned about the quality fed into the next cycle.

In primarily traditional environ- ments. Learning can be established at various points in a traditional project environment through checkpoints, re- views, and experiential learning. Learn- ing can also be promoted by a knowl- edge management system that codifies some of the knowledge learned by the team that would be valuable to the or- ganization.8 It becomes crucial that organizations examine their process and controls to be certain that learning capabilities are built into the project management framework. Post-project reviews are effective only when the knowledge gained is absorbed by fu- ture project teams.

Keep the entire project in view. Keep- ing a project level view does not stray to one side or the other of the process and product debates. A combined view of the two approaches, shown in Figure 2, should be to adopt the methodology to fit the system project on hand based on their strengths and limitations, then

figure 2. a Global Project View

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adjust the methods as suggested in the preceding discussion and summarized in Table 2. According to Boehm,3 orga- nizations must evolve toward the best balance of plan-driven and agile meth- ods to arrive at a blend that best meets their needs. In that case, organizations need to apply control and learning while looking to develop a system that is efficient and flexible. Striking a bal- ance among these four considerations is necessitated by the system develop- ment project. It is not any particular methodology that drives project risk but how well it fits a given project.11 Per- ceived differences among stakeholders on the importance of these four indica- tors should be reconciled prior to the beginning of any development proj- ect to arrive at a consonance of ideas.6 Project techniques that promote com- munication and collaboration should be considered as processes to arrive at mutual goals and agreement on mea- suring achievement of the goals.7

References 1. Armour, P. G. The business of software: To plan, two

plans. Comm. ACM 48, 9 (Sept. 2005), 15-19. 2. Augustine, S., Payne, B., Sencindiver, F., and Woodcock,

S. Agile project management: steering from the edges. Comm. ACM 48, 12 (Dec. 2005), 85-89.

3. Boehm, B. Get ready for agile methods, with care. Computer (Jan. 2002), 64-69.

4. Hardgrave, B. C. and Armstrong, D. J. Software process improvement: it’s a journey, not a destination. Comm. ACM 48, 11 (Nov. 2005), 93-96

5. Kirsch, L. Deploying common systems globally: The dynamics of control. Information Systems Research 48, 4 (2004), 484-498.

6. Klein, G., Jiang, J., and Sobol, M. Consonance in information systems, in Strategies and Organizations in Transition, C. S. Galbraith, ed., Elsevier Science, Ltd., (2001), 191-210.

7. Larson, E. Partnering on construction projects: a study of the relationship between partnering activities and project success. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 44, (1997), 188–195.

8. Nerur, S, Mahapatra, R and Mangalaraj, G. Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies. Comm. ACM 48, 5 (May 2005), 72-78.

9. Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford University Press, NY, 1995.

10. Procaccino, D. Verner, J. and Lorenzer, S. J. Defining and contributing to software development success. Comm. ACM 49, 8, (Aug. 2006), 79-83.

11. Tiwana, A. and Keil, M. The one-minute risk assessment tool. Comm. ACM 47, 11, (Nov. 2004), 73-77.

Girish H. Subramanian ([email protected]) is Professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA.

Gary Klein ([email protected]) is the Couger Professor of Information Systems in the College of Business and Administration at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA.

James J. Jiang ([email protected]) is Professor of Information Systems in the College of Business at the University of Central Florida, USA and National Taiwan University, Taiwan.

Chien-Lung Chan ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Information Systems and chair of the Department of Information Management at Yuan Ze University, Taiwan.

© 2009 ACM 0001-0782/09/1000 $10.00

table 2. Key improvements

approach typically incorporates should Work toward

Traditional Waterfall Methodologies

controls through formal checkpoints

learning by placing feedback cycles on reviews and foster continuous improvement methods

efficiency characteristics of the product

Including volatility and change response metrics as part of the quality system to promote flexibility

Interactive Agile Methodologies

learning through experience and interactions

Goal-oriented informal controls designed to support team roles, responsibilities, communication, and recording of lessons learned

Flexibility of system to meet user requirements

Incorporating rigorous testing of quality standards at multiple cycles