How to Proceed in IT Project Management
Although many IT project management standards and methodologies provide us guidelines by indicating key process areas, all of them do not tell us how to proceed to reach the goals. From my personal experience, I think that we should specially emphasize the following aspects during performing IT activities.
First and foremost, we should carefully choose the team members. The success of a project largely depends on the quality of the team members. Compared to the skills and experience, the capable of learning and the attitude are much more important. I would think the responsibility and dedication are particularly important.
The second aspect is to do a good plan. This plan not only clearly defines an objective, but also develops appropriate strategies. Each member should be aware of the significance of this goal and dedicate to this goal. In particular, we should emphasize the “information transparency” so that team members understand the objectives and strategies of the project, and in turn they can make use of resources more effectively.
The third aspect is to actively communicate with customers, understand the requirements, and even find out the problems. Generally, most IT staff thinks of IT department as second-class citizens who just service for the business units. On the contrary, IT should take the initiative to understand the requirements, develop new products and sell them like the marketing department.
The fourth aspect is to definitely understand the requirement as soon as possible. The customer’s need is the source of the project. Project planning is built entirely on the basis of the stable requirement. Vague requirement or frequently changing requirement is one of the top ten risks of software projects. Some good methods to recognize requirements include listening to the needs of the operators and their difficulties in business operations, understanding the needs of the management on business resource control and cost control, and mining the requirements from industry data and business innovations to optimize existing business solutions.
The last aspect is about breaking down