نقش مدیریت پروژه در بخش های منبع محاسباتی در دانشگاه

Today’s businesses have learned the value of incorporating formal project management practices and tools. However, the drivers that have pushed businesses to adopt them have not had as large an impact on institutions of higher education. This paper investigates the acceptance and usage of formal project management techniques by university information technology departments. Results of a mail survey determined that current university IT departments lag behind their business peers in the adoption and usage of project management practices and tools. Additionally, it was discovered that the most utilized project management function by the academic institutions was project planning.

Project management (PM) as a discipline is well established. Acknowledged to have conceptually begun with the World War II Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb [1], its evolution and acceptance has continued to expand. Structured around the ever-present concerns related to scheduling project tasks, Gantt charts have become its most commonly recognized communication tool. Manually constructed time-scaled bar charts were first developed by Henry Gantt in 1917 to solve the problem of scheduling troops during World War I. As military and industry projects became more complex, methods such as the critical path method (CPM) and program evaluation and review technique (PERT) were developed to include the precedence relationships between tasks [2]. As projects increased in size and complexity, computerization became necessary to efficiently and effectively manage them. Currently, there are many PC compatible project management applications available, such as Microsoft’s Project. The acceptance of PM by industry, specifically the construction and manufacturing sectors, is well documented by the many case studies and trade journal articles that discuss it. However, the facilitating power of PM tools and techniques has only recently begun to be applied to Information Technology (IT) projects. While business acceptance of PM for IT projects is growing, the same may not be said of academic institutions. Somewhat removed from mainstream business practices, academia has historically lagged behind in the adoption of new developments and this is especially true in the area of IT. This paper explores the current status of acceptance and utilization of PM tools and techniques within university IT departments.

The role of IT in the university environment has received much attention. Whether it is integrated into teaching, or course materials, or as part of the operational infrastructure, university IT departments are being called upon to do more with less. Industry IT departments which are facing the same demands are increasingly adopting project management tools and techniques to better plan, monitor and control their IT activities. Similarly, university IT departments are beginning to realize the value that PM provides. The purpose of this study was to identify the degree to which project management practices are being utilized in university IT departments, and if so, which ones. Several aspects of the utilization of project management techniques and tools by United States university IT departments were identified. The study results provide a glimpse of how US academic IT departments currently practice project management and suggest directions for meaningful additional research. While the following discussion must necessarily be recognized as being based on survey results within the United States, it would certainly be beneficial to generally extend the research to university IT departments around the world. In general, university IT departments are far removed from their industry counterparts. While they may utilize many of the same tools and technologies, their adoption of PM tools/techniques and justification for their use, are limited at this time. Academic IT departments are primarily driven by operational issues and not cost cutting efficiencies or strategic initiatives. Therefore, they have not been under the same competitive pressures to adopt improved PM practices as their business counterparts. Study results verified operational necessity as by far the most influential factor affecting project priority with strategic objective not too far behind. Regulatory requirement finishing in third place may indicate an increasingly important influence in the university environment. Ongoing research could certainly explore the relative importance of these factors and then track changes for trends and the emergence of new factors affecting project priority in university IT departments. The need for top management support has been consistently found to be a critical factor in IT project success. The results of this study indicated a wide variance of opinion as to its importance for university IT projects. This finding definitely warrants further investigation. Establishing the relationship between this factor and others, such as those determining the use of formal PM tools/techniques (Project Duration, Project Cost, Project Scope, Number of People Involved, Regulatory Requirement), could provide valuable insights into how to execute particular university IT projects successfully. The fact that most public (93%) and private (83%) universities designate a “project manager” for new IT projects begs for a clarification of what the title project manager means in terms of what they do in university IT departments, just as in the IT business sector. Further research to evaluate the level of sophistication of PM practices within university IT departments would help to put the results of this study in perspective. The importance of project planning is recognized by university IT departments. The use of a Project Plan was ranked first or second in importance approximately three times as often as use of a formal organization PM methodology, project monitoring, and review meetings with stakeholders. However, further research is necessary to establish the true nature of the relative importance of these factors in the university IT department environment. It would also be valuable to explore the consistency of the definition of a project plan among university IT departments. Additional issues worth future efforts were also mentioned in Section 7 with respect to project monitoring, risk monitoring/management and resource leveling. Not unexpectedly, project scope and project cost were cited most frequently as the first or second most important factors determining whether or not formal PM tools/techniques would be employed on a project. Determining the relationship between these factors and the important tools/techniques actually used (as identified above) would be very worthwhile as well. Noticeably absent from the identified important tools utilized by academic institutions for IT project management were many of the control tools. In essence, it appears that university IT departments currently utilize PM techniques primarily to justify and document the development of their projects. This is further supported by the fact that project scope was the principal project characteristic determining whether PM tools would be used or not. Project management practices in university IT departments do indeed appear to be generally limited at this time. The study also compared the responses between public and private universities. Private institutions, it could be argued, are more susceptible to market forces due to their lack of, or significantly decreased, governmental support. However, with the exception of the use of risk monitoring/management and resource leveling techniques, no statistical significance between them was identified. Being able to treat them the same in future research efforts is a valuable, simplifying result of this study.