Challenges in project management pdf

More Filters. Contemporary challenges for project managers in Serbia. It is a known fact for every project management professional that most common challenges are the completion … Expand.

View 1 excerpt, cites background. The work readiness—career resilience linkage: implications for project talent management. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.

PurposeThere is a need for project management practitioners to adapt and thrive in today's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous VUCA project-based workplaces. In this paper, the linkage … Expand.

The study main objective was to find out the effects of project management practices on Community Development. The study specific objectives included; to evaluate how Risk management affects … Expand. View 2 excerpts, cites background and results.

Quite often over the last decade, heavy equipment manufacturers are trying to improve their project management performance with the use of effective project management methods. However, the … Expand. View 1 excerpt, references background. Project managers doubling as client account executives.

Executive Overview Project managers are increasing in popularity within such industry areas as information technology, aerospace, and management consulting.

Project management is typically discussed … Expand. Abstract Project management is a promising new managerial technique to improve advertising agency productivity and performance. To help alleviate issues of free-riding and conflicts in team projects, this study proposes the systematic incorporation of project management methods to introduce a process-oriented approach to and … Expand.

These requirements are based on the ever-increasing competitive global market which every business must survive. Although information systems IS have become one of the most precious assets in the ever increasingly competitive global market yet development of such system usually encounter many problems.

Among the most imperative are low productivity, a large number of failures, and an insufficient relevance of information system with business needs. Petersen submitted that low productivity occurs when the business operation functions and excels better in manual mode compare to the IS mode. In the same vein, Conboy reported that IS development ISD efforts resulted to failure sometimes due to economical mismatches, such as budget, schedule overruns, poor product quality and insufficient user satisfaction.

Correspondingly, from the business point of view, Goyal identified growing criticism of poor alignment of ISs and business needs. Hence, ISD is continually challenged by the dynamic nature of business together with the ways that business activities are organized and supported by ISs.

This establishment was gazette on 25 August and became operational on 30 August The main purpose of the establishment of PEH is to provide resettlement training for retiring personnel to inculcate knowledge, skills and work experiences to enable them to adjust to new life environments of civilian, and training for retired personnel for upgrading, value adding or diversification.

PEH is an agency under government body that has been assigned to develop, manage and conduct skill training for the retiring and retired army personnel. As most of them retire within ten to fifteen years of service, they usually require new skill to venture into civilian life.

The training will enable them to compete for job with other job seekers in open market. They are encouraged to apply for specific training or courses focusing on new skills that have been developed by PEH. In the past all information related to the courses, trainees, budgets, duration, location and other information are kept at central location. To keep track with all these activities, PEH need to have a systematic filling system, this in the past is hard to achieve due to large amount of data managed manually that is, using forms, letter, cards etc.

Almost all information is input by typing or hand written and kept in a convention filing system. The management was facing many errors, inefficient and low productivity as a result of manual and conventional filling system usage. The only part that are being computerized at early stage are the trainees information detail however, it only uses Microsoft Excel to store the data. In early , the management decided to have a database to handle trainee information.

System requirement and system development were done in house under the Information System Department led by the Head of IT department. In , the usage of computer was still new at PEH.

They did not see the need and the importance of having a database system. To develop a database, it requires fund and time to collect all the relevant information and data. Finally, the management agreed to give a chance to prove that computer system can improve her overall data management in PEH. With minimum support from the management, the head of IT department and her team took the challenge to develop the system.

They review the whole process of the registration, the need and requirement of the system and develop an in-house system.

They have to work with basic infrastructure due to low budget. In the system was finally ready for implementation. At this stage according to the head of the IT department, the issues of end users were still critical particularly where the end-users were afraid to use the system.

A special training on computer usage was conducted for the first stage in order to make them familiar with the new equipment. They also have to hire new staff computer skilled to speed up the implementation.

In , PEH developed a web page for the organization. The web consists of Bulletin of PEH, organization chart, course offer and most important is the registration form. They received a good feedback for the future retiree army personnel since most of them are youngster and technology driven. Therefore, toeing this line, this study utilized a case-study research design with a face-to-face interview and observation research approaches. Two key personnel of PEH were interviewed on the project management challenges and difficulties experienced during the implementation of IS in their organization.

There was no IT Department specifically at that point of time. For example, the system was stand-alone based on the requirement of each department. At this stage, all data collected been processed in and by the ready-market applications of database and spreadsheets such as Microsoft Access for database and Excel for spread-sheet were later on converted to Microsoft SQL Server to deal with number of data.

As time goes by, the requirements of information are getting more challenging and more complex from related departments for registration of trainees, payrolls, procurements, human resource activities and financial recordings and reports. The organization has developed in- house systems based on departmental processes. However, the in- house systems were not integrated with each other but stood alone and were developed to serve each department alone.

They named it as OBM System. Presently, the IT department has been established with three employees under the name of Unit Teknologi Maklumat. The functions of IT department are not only to monitor the systems and hardware but also the components of IS function that make the systems work. These include the people and the procedures needed for processing those data for the organization. Given the above background, the major objective of this study therefore, is to identify and reveal the project management IPBJ Vol.

The aim was to provide validation and more insight on the key challenges impacting on the system development in PEH. The key informant reported all the major challenges faced by PEH during their initial IS development. Challenges were categorized into five major themes namely: fund, infrastructure, upgrading previous system, skills, monitoring and inspection.

Fund Generally, fund has been identified as one of the major that hinders many projects particularly during early stage. As revealed by the key informants, fund was a major obstacle and challenge that organization faced during there IS development. This finding corroborates the ideas of Benjamin and Blunt and Lederer that sufficient funding and financial empowerment of new technologies is needed to survive in this age of technological ever increasing competitive business environment.

This has caused the department so many limitations to carry on smooth running of the department. There is an intention to move and upgrade to the latest technology but cannot achieve this objective because of lack of fund. The organization is constraint and could not move to the latest technology available in the then market. Due to the same financial constraints, the IT departments were unable to make purchases of latest technology in the market that would have enhance the performance of the organization in general.

Example of such purchases includes; hardware, software, cable, and other component relevant for upgrading. There is need for procurement of some hard ware facilities and migration from old to the new or conventional machines.

From our observations, we found that the state of the infrastructural facilities at the early stage of the IS development were old and outdated. This is in line with Hatling who affirmed that good and standard infrastructure is the backbone of techno-driven business in this present business environment. At the short run, may not be compatible with the IS.

This software caused the organization some fortune. For effective operation, they may be need for procurement of a new and compatible IS as stated by the interviewee. Then, it is a critical circumstance to stand up and explain to them that application currently in use should be replaced or up-graded with new vision because of compatible issues. Am sure cost implication should be the first question to be asked.

For example upgrading pervious systems to IS was a major challenge. Detail information about the retired and retiring army can be collected and a recommendation can be made to them to attend training. PEH always take a one step forward and be ready to give the best advice to personnel who retire in accordance with the current state.

They used more than one approach to give advice to the retired and retiring army personnel. The retired and retiring army personnel can have a look in the Portal at anytime and anywhere. The Portal consists of training provided, training date, training location etc.

They can easily send the e-mail to enquire regarding the training. The portal should always be up to date to ensure all the information can be delivered accordingly. There is lack of general computer skill amongst the employee of the organization. The employee of PEH need to be trained and those with little computer knowledge need to be retrained for proper handling of the IT department and IS.

This factor hinders the smooth running of the IT department. Most of the older employee displayed lack of interest and willingness to learning computer skills which have great negative impact on the operation of the organization.

Therefore, the organization requires qualified personnel to handle the IT unit if the IS system is to be implemented.

The qualified personnel are difficult to recruit since other organization pay higher for professional compared to public one like PEH. This finding is consistent with Watson, Boudreau, and Chen argument on the fact that skill is a key factor in technological sustainability in any organization.

This is because older staffs run away from computer job while only younger staffs are interested in such job. Management Commitment In addition to computer skill, the ability to convince the board on the need for IS development was one key factor that was found challenging and difficulty. Just like the issue of budget and fund, the ability to convince the top management on why such fund should be use to that particular project is more difficult.

Because IS development is very expensive and involves a lot of cost. It is always very difficult to convince the decision makers why such budget or fund should be invest in the project. From our observations, we discovered that it took the I. Monitoring and Inspection Apart from lack of fund, infrastructure, upgrading previous systems and lack of skills, monitoring and inspection was a critical factor as identified by the informant. PEH has a big problem when coming to the processing of an application to attend a new training by the applicant.

This is because all the information is kept manually and has to be retrieved manually. The information about the trainee and courses attended are not been kept accordingly.

This will then slow down the process of approving of the new application by the current trainee. With the use and structured information system, PERE can have a good way for tracking the trainees courses attended.

Retrieving information of the trainee, retrieving about the course attended, course offer and duration are easier, faster and more efficient.

Monitoring and inspection to ensure all the trainee have completed their courses and succeed in their life after retirement can be monitored. A list of report can be accessed to show courses that they have attended and the advanced courses offered if required by them. The study asserts that the installation of central database will straighten ICT infrastructure in any organization with integration of up-to-date technologies and application. Documentation process also will be better structured compare to the current methods of using a conventional filling system.

Beside that it will also enhance the usage of ICT as a training tool. ICT will enhance Employee Skill on using of new applications and new approaches. Having a central database will then give them an opportunity to upgrade their databases and Backup system used.

Since centralized database will deal with huge data and number of process involved. A new Backup strategy, a new Backup plan and a new backup system has to be introduced in order to deal with new enhancement.