Task 1
This part of the report will discuss about the case Study and the methods adopted in the case study. The case study is about an Australia based organization that aims at providing power transport, telecommunication infrastructure and defence with an annual turnover of AUD$1.7 billion. There is a need to improve the information system and information technology strategy. In this paper, the chosen case study will discuss about a large multi-national construction organization. This organization is used to describe strategic implementation of a project management information system. This is basically used for construction of a mobile phone telecommunication network ( Pena-Mora et al.1999) . There is a need to implement a new innovative technology for developing a better strategy implementation plans. The organization ABC has established an IT/IS review comitrr that includes seven members, project manager, civil engineer electrical, planning manager, finance manager , IT manger ,structure engine. Recently it has been observed that implementation of IS/IT Strategy has given a great importance. According to Leslie there are five streams that are used to identify and differentiate the information needed for Architecture, Engineering and construction that are required to satisfy the needs, this includes project application, project resources, industry conventions, process reengineering and communications and computing.
According to Myllymaki there are three steps that are associated with successful implementation of new IS and this are known as cornerstones, this includes vision, commitment and re-engineering possibilities.
The methodologies implemented in the case study includes SWOT Analysis. This helps the organization to understand the strategies required to be evaluated and also analyses the challenges, beliefs and objectives. SWOT analysis will help in determining the factors that is the strength, weakness, opportunities and threats associated with the case study.
External environment analysis becomes important as with the increase in global competition and increase in the availability of communication tools opportunities has increased for organization. Apart from this, planning and designing phase are getting more importance in the market and also increases the productivity (Aouad et al. 1999). Thus, the aim is to develop and identify IS/IT strategy that will help in enabling alliancing opportunities and threats. However it is not possible for any organization to look at the external analysis minutely. Moreover external analysis can be used to capture the dynamic nature of the project participation on a large scale project.
Apart from the external factors, internal environmental analysis is also important. The organizational size, structure and the style of management everything has the capability of influencing the strategic IT/IS implementation planning. The main role of internal analysis is to identify the strength and weakness associated with the organization. Thus, it is essential to respond to the weakness and strength of an organization in case of strategic project management. Organization is capable of undertaking the SWOT analysis if the opportunities and threat from external analysis and the strength and weakness determined from internal analysis gets combined.
From the foundation of the SWOT analysis the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats are obtained. Swot analysis is a tool that is mainly used for the purpose of analysing and identifying the internal and external environment so that they can maintain systematic support towards the design and can approach the situation systematically(Ahmad, Russell and Abou-Zeid 2000). The factors of the SWOT analysis remains same for every organization. Strength is used to relate with the advantage and other highlighting features that will help the organization to achieve benefit. Weakness are revered to the limitations that Lies within the system of an organization. Opportunities includes the possible scope where the organization can made changes in order to bring positive feedback. Threat are revered to problems that are likely to be faced by any organization and that will hamper in the working of the organization.
External environmental analysis
The next task comes to the RC was to create a diffusion strategy that will include and elaborate the importance of SWOT factors. With the help of diffusion process one can describe the benefits that will be gained by the organization and how the assets of the organization will get affected with implementation of new PMIS (Jung and Gibson 1999). The common benefits obtained by the organization derived by PMIS was introduced against some predictors that are project environment and user utility, includes:
- The journey involved in gathering the requirements reduced by 120 sites.
- Efficient and effective document control system is offered
- With the use of traditional communication process the overheads of the projects can be lowered.
- Client satisfaction increases with better working and fast reporting.
After the diffusion strategy, the operational strategy is being implemented in o4der to analyse the functions, responsibilities and hierarchies. The main four elements associated with construction project implementation strategy includes project conception, planning, design and construction and commissioning.
The RC has developed a plan in a subsequent meeting that included function of each operation strategy. RC began to discuss about the strategy, described the objectives, cost, resources required and dimension of these functions (Irani and Love 2001). Apart from these RC has identified some risks that will impact the implementation of these project.
After implementation, RC decided to include performance monitoring plan so that they can continually keep an eye on the implementation and usage of PMIS. As this is first project developed with the help of PMIS so the report received after monitoring this plan will be treated as the benchmark for other projects. Monitoring plan will also be beneficial for determining actual result. This will help in delivering the project efficiently and effectively. Thus from the case study it can be said that IT/IS has a great importance in the world economy. With the explained strategies implemented in the case study it is accepted to accelerate the tasks taking place within the organizational structure.
The report is associated with discussing about the implementation of the Project Management Information System that has been proposed by the ABC organization for a project. The organization has been provided with an award of A$20 Million contract. This is a contract of building 1800 mobile phone networks which involved the acquisition of sites, designing, supplying and building of approximately 120 antennas ( Pena-Mora et al. 1999). This PMIS is proposed for the purpose of effective management of the information and addressing the various communication requirements. This is a proposed system which would also be helping instant sharing, visualization and communication of the different project information between different participants of the project.
Different strategic factors have been discussed in this report which are associated with the proposed Project Management Implementation System. This are the SWOT Factors which have been used for the purpose of identification of the internal strengths along with the weakness of the new system which are likely to hinder or enhance the effective and efficient implementation of this proposed PMIS. There exists total 28strategic strategies that are categorized into four different categories namely the strengths, weakness, opportunities and the weaknesses.
The usage of the SWOT or the AHP technique has been associated with helping in the process of analysing the different SWOT factors. Besides this the diffusion strategy is used so as to describe the SWOT factors which are significant along with indicating the ways by which the assets of the organization and the processes are likely to affect the new system and also provides details about the benefits that the organization is likely to gain after the implementation of the PMIS. Firstly, the report predicts the perceived benefits that are going to affect the organization followed by the prediction of the effects that are likely to be imposed by the OMIS upon the different organizational assets and the processes. Lastly this strategy is associated with highlighting the changes that are required in order to take full advantage of the new system.
Internal environmental analysis
The strengths that has been identified includes the involvement of skilled and experienced staffs, is the market field in terms of the operations and maintenance, working of top project managers having high commitment, the project value is high thereby increasing the budget assigned for the IS or IT, existence of development team which is strong and lastly the organization is as diversified company.
Some of the weaknesses includes the resistance imposed by the users to eh changes, turnover of the staffs, low capability of the external contractors in the IT or IS, retraining of the employees due to changing technologies, timeframe of the project is short and for this reason the retraining of the staffs gets prevented, existence of poor communication and lastly the lack of proper directions for corporate management.
Installation and networking of the new PMIS is only possible by creation of an effective action plan. The action plan is categorized into various sections which includes the action elements (This includes the things that are to be done), time dimension (this includes the time that is required for completing the project or different activities of the project), cost dimension (this includes the budgets that has been assigned for the project and how the budget is going to be distributed), human resources (this includes the manpower that would be working for the development of the PMIS) ad lastly the management and coordination of the Information technology and information strategy structure.
Various risks factors would also be put forward, so this factors are to be identified so as to tackle those factors and eliminated the likelihood of occurrence of this risks. For this reason once the rest factors gets identified they need to be analysed so as to detect the gaps in the process and outcomes. Once this gaps are identified the appropriate coping strategies would be provided so as to tackle the risks.
After completion of the risk analysis the project would be proceeding forward so as to achieve success. However, after completion of the project the work not completed as there is a need of monitoring the outcomes that are being delivered by the new system. Monitoring is also done for the purpose of identifying the different performance indicators and also for measuring the performance. Different monitoring tools are used for doing this and the results of the implementation of the monitoring plan can also be received so as to detect any kind of deficiencies in the new PMIS.
The strategies related to the IT or IS implementation is associated with suggesting the fact the servers which are to be implemented are likely to accelerate the rate at which the changes are taking place amongst the various peoples, organizational structure and the tasks. The communication amongst various participants is very important and for the purpose of ensuring good communication and easy flow of information the PMIS is being developed. All the strategies if adopted then the implementation of PMIS becomes very easy.
References
Pena-Mora, S. Vadhavkar, E. Perkins and T. Weber, (1999). Information technology planning framework for large scale projects, ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering 13(4) 226-237.
Aouad, R. Cooper, M. Kagioglou and M. Sexton, September 1999. The development of a process map for the construction sector, in: CIB W55 and W65 Joint Triennial Symposium, Customer Satisfaction: A Focus For Research and Practice, Cape Town, South Africa, 5-10.
I.U. Ahmad, J.S. Russell and A. Abou-Zeid, (2000). Information Technology (IT) and integration in the construction industry, Construction Management and Economics 13 (1995) 163-171.International Journal of Information Management 20 ,429-440.
Jung and G.E. Gibson, (1999). Planning for computer integrated construction, ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering 13(4) 217-225.
Irani and P.E.D. Love, (2001). The propagation of technology management taxonomies for evaluating investments in information systems, Journal of Management Information Systems 17(3) 161-177.
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