Human Elements in Projects and Organization

Assignment 1

Human Elements in Information Technology (IT) Strategy

This course is comprised of a series of Individual Project assignments that will contribute to a final project submission at the end of the course. Each week, you will complete a part of a Human Elements in IT Strategy document. You will select a real or fictitious organization and apply your research to the development of a strategy that would be appropriate for the organizations plan to address human elements in the organization and its IT projects.

You will be given a final project to develop a Human Elements in IT Strategy document for an organization with an established IT department that could benefit from the strategy. The goal of this assignment is to focus on outlining a strategy that an organization could adopt to improve productivity in the IT department and benefit the company.

Organization Selection

The first step will be to select an organization as the target for your Human Elements in IT Strategy document. This organization will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:

• Nontrivial: The organization should be large enough with an IT department that is evolved enough to allow the reasonable exercise of the human elements in IT strategy research and documentation process.
• Domain knowledge: You should be familiar with the organization so that you can focus on the project tasks without needing a significant amount of time for domain education.
• Accessibility: You should have good access to the people and other information related to the project. This will be an important part of the process.

Select an organization that meets these requirements, and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first several days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment

You will be developing a Human Elements in IT Strategy document that outlines the strategy that an organization will use to treat the human element issues of its IT department with the goal of establishing better productivity for the organization as a whole. Your first task in this process will be to select an organization to use as the basis of your research and analysis for each of the assignments in the course. You will also create the shell document for the final project deliverable that you will be working on during each unit. As you proceed through each project phase, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project delivery. Appropriate research should be conducted to support the development of your document, and assumptions may be made when necessary.

Assignment 2

The first project resulted in an overview of the enhancement and inhibitor factors for the organization in terms of productivity, quality of work, motivation, morale, communication, and coordination within the information technology (IT) department and its projects. The next step in the development of a Human Elements in IT Strategy document is to determine the specific characteristics and success factors that will make the IT department in your company more successful with its projects.

For this assignment, you will continue your work on the Human Elements in IT Strategy document by adding a section on the success factors for the IT organization. You will prepare a list of human element characteristics and success factors for the IT organization and its projects. The list should be comprised of characteristics that are common to successful IT organizations and surrounding factors that help contribute to IT organization and project success. Each of the characteristics and success factors should be accompanied by a summary of why it is important to success.

Assignment 3

The success factors for your organization's information technology (IT) were identified in the previous assignment. Now you can turn your attention to the people, processes, and technologies that contribute to these success factors. The people, processes, and technologies are the driving forces that will either contribute positively or negatively to the success of IT projects. It is in these areas that effective improvements can be made.

For this assignment, you will continue to work on the Human Elements in IT Strategy document by creating a summary of how people, processes, and technologies are related to the overall success of the IT organization. You will provide examples of each of the categories and the contributions that they make.

Assignment 4

One of the key aspects of developing a strategy for the human elements in information technology (IT) project is to identify the roles and responsibilities of those affected by and involved with the projects. These people are called the stakeholders, and they will be the ones who determine the success of the projects. The key aspects of a project's success include the identification of the stakeholders and planning and preparing for the strategies of communication between those stakeholders.

For this assignment, you will continue to work on the Human Elements in IT Strategy document by identifying the stakeholders and defining their roles and responsibilities within the IT projects. You will then establish a strategy for communication between these stakeholders, including the methods of communication and identification of the key artifacts of project information that must be communicated during project execution.

Assignment 5

Behavioral Layers

• Evaluate the issues and concerns regarding IT projects at all 5 behavioral layers of the organization.
• These layers include the individual, team, project, organizational, and business layers.
• For each layer, describe the issues and concerns that are important to the success of the business with regard to IT projects, and provide examples that demonstrate the importance of the issues and concerns.

Human Elements in IT Strategy document

• Review the entire document for any changes and improvements that you would like to make.
• All aspects of the document should present a cohesive strategy, and each weekly topic should coincide with the other weeks.
• Ensure that this final version of the document is sufficiently detailed to allow the organization to confidently move forward with the strategy for taking the human elements of the IT organization into account during projects.

Questions

1. Is it possible to evaluate risks in the project before starting the actual project? Why or why not? Provide 1 example to support your opinion.

2. Explain how project management helps to achieve success in the software project.

3. What, according to you, is the most important attribute of a successful project manager? Provide 1 example to support your opinion.

4. Describe the possible challenges a project manager faces during the execution of a project and how he or she can overcome those.

5. Is it possible to avoid conflicts amicably? Why or why not? Provide 1 example to support your opinion.

6. Explain different conflict management strategies, taking into consideration the 3 different types of conflicts discussed above.

7. In your opinion, is an agile or iterative approach the best approach when planning a project? Why or why not? Provide 1 example from this unit to support your opinion.

8. Use the Internet to find information about information technology (IT) project team key members, and respond to the following:

• From your research, select 3 types of project team key members in IT projects.
• What are the roles and responsibilities or interests that these project team key members have within IT projects?
• How can these project team key members contribute to an IT project to make it more successful?

9. In your opinion, is adding contingency a good idea in such scenarios? Why or why not? Provide 1 example from this unit to support your opinion.

10. What are the mechanisms for successful scheduling and resource allocation?