Redesign of Business Processes in Project TTULO TTULO TTULO Management

Subttulo Subttulo Subttulo Guidelines for implementation in a Portuguese IT SME

Nome completo Candidato Nome completo dodo Candidato Miguel Nome completo Augusto Martins do Candidato Pereira

Dissertao Proposal for /Project Trabalho Work de Projeto / Relatrio de Estgio Estgio apresentada(o) como requisito parcial para apresentada(o) como requisito parcial para obteno obteno do grau Mestre em Estatstica e Gesto do grau de Mestre emde Estatstica e Gesto de Informao

Dissertao / Trabalho de Projeto / Relatrio de

de Informao

Instituto Superior de Estatstica e Gesto de Informao Universidade Nova de Lisboa

REDESIGN OF BUSINESS PROCESSES IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

by Miguel Augusto Martins Pereira Final proposal of the Project Work. June 2012

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INDEX
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Problem Identification and Contextualization ..................................................... 1 1.2. Objectives Definition ........................................................................................... 2 1.3. The Importance of the Project ............................................................................. 3 2. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................... 4 2.1. Project Management Methodologies .................................................................. 4 2.2. Business Process Management ........................................................................... 5 2.3. Information System Implementation .................................................................. 6 3. Methodology Used ..................................................................................................... 7 3.1. Initiating ............................................................................................................... 7 3.2. Planning ............................................................................................................... 7 3.3. Execution ............................................................................................................. 7 3.4. Monitoring and controlling .................................................................................. 8 3.5. Closing ................................................................................................................. 8 4. Proposed Timeline ...................................................................................................... 9 5. Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 10

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1. INTRODUCTION
The primary focus of the project is the analysis of several issues that can be found in a Portuguese Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), from a managerial point of view. After the identification of these issues, the objective is to find, among the best practices of project management, which are best suited for the company in study. With these it is intended to develop an implementation guide to design business process workflows related with the area of project management. The creation of guidelines for a implementation of an Information System (IS) that will support these changes is also an objective. It is intended to write this project in a way that, while focusing on the issues of the company in study, it may serve as a guideline, after the necessary adjustments, for other SMEs.

1.1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND CONTEXTUALIZATION

This project will focus on issues, in term of project management procedures in the Portuguese company dri. This company is an open source1 software house that develops customized products and services for many types of customers. It was founded in 1999 and today it has over twenty employees and it has offices in Spain, Denmark and Norway, besides Portugal of course. It has done business with customers from nearly all the continents (Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia). Since this companys structure can be identified as a flat structure (Lim, Griffiths, & Sambrook, 2010) because there is a low formalization of the business processes, low level of centralization of decision making and there isnt a culture of documentation, like inserting the input on the status of a project, the time spent on each of the tasks of the project, this created some problems. In the beginning, when the company had few workers, this was a manageable situation, as the workers worked on the same project, all of the information was known by everyone. But since the company is growing in size, some adjustments in terms of business processes have to be made, as many of the processes are not modelled or even structured it is difficult to disseminate the information due to a lack of hierarchy on the distribution of information. In this way, many of the following issues can be identified:
Open source software is software in which its source code its made public and everyone can use it and adapt it.
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There is not a common methodology to manage the projects. Each project manager has its own method, taking different steps in each project;

There is not a standard procedure to store the information related with the project. Presently, there are many programs available to be used for that purpose, but in some situations none is used. There is not a central system to store all the pertinent information that can be required for external audits, thus preventing dri from obtaining an ISO certification on project management;

The financial and commercial departments do not have a clear view of the actual status of the projects being worked on, preventing the financial department to issue on time payment requests and the commercial area to manage the expectations of upcoming customers;

In the operational area, the developers also suffer with the lack of information about the project because since they do not have a clear picture, there is the necessity of a repository of data about the project to be efficient and thus they cannot be assertive and comply with deadlines;

Since there is not a real tracking of the time spent on the tasks performed each day against prior estimations, there is not a way to ascertain if the estimations are correct or to obtain some statistical information about it.

Although dri is a company with solid and increasing revenue, the issues identified above reflect on the companys performance and many of the time and effort estimations made for the projects are incorrect, making the development process less effective in terms of time and resources. Also, since one of the objectives stated in the companys strategic plan is producing projects for high end customers, the involvement of several teams is a clear concern to the management requiring a good communication between teams. The improvement of these procedures for a better accountability for the clients and for the company itself is a necessity of the highest order.

1.2. OBJECTIVES DEFINITION

The main objective of this project is to provide a series of guidelines to help dri in the task of reshaping its project management activities. These guidelines are intended for:

Analysis of project management methodologies. It is necessary to employ a thorough analysis to determine what methodology is best suited for dri. It is imperative to evaluate if a proven methodology is sufficient for the company or the development of a hybrid methodology is necessary;

Design of the business processes related with project management, using a proven implementation framework on the guidelines and using a common Business Process Management (BPM) notation to model them. This way a visual and formal document can be created to help dri to better manage its projects with rigor, permitting, for example, later auditing for certifications;

Analysis of best practices for the deployment of an IS that will support these changes, since it is necessary to store all of this information to be accessible to all the departments that require it. These best practices will allow the involvement of the managerial staff with the IS development, resulting in a better acceptance.

1.3. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PROJECT

As stated above, the company dri faces some issues in terms of project management that this project hopes to give guidance into solving. With the correct implementation of the guidelines the company can achieve: Insurance that the development of products can be made with accountable and documentable quality; Provide a clear picture of the initial estimations and the real cost in terms of time used on the project; The identification of the business processes can lead to a streamlined, more efficient way of working. Nevertheless, it is desirable that these guidelines are drafted in a way that can serve as reference for other IT companies. As these current times are made of many hardships for companies, especially since SME represents the bulk of the Portuguese companies spectrum (INE, 2010) they should try their best to be more efficient in delivering their products with greater quality and reduced costs, through the use of best practices.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
For this proposal there are three underlying theoretical subjects which are intended to be present on the project: Project Management Methodologies, Business Process Management Best Practices and Information System Implementation Critical Factors. For all of these subjects, some theoretical information was researched to support the choices presented on this proposal, depicted in the next sub-chapters.

2.1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES

For Project Management Methodologies, first it is necessary to define what a methodology is in the scope of project management. As stated by McHugh & Hogan (2010) which reference Turner (2000) a methodology is a structured approach for delivering a project, and consists of a set of processes, with each process having clearly defined resources and activities. Since there is not an adopted methodology within the company and there is the problem of the optimization of the project management processes, the companys management already identified five process groups in project management. These groups, which will be used on the project, are in accordance with the guidelines for standardization of project management presented on Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) book of the Project Management Institute (PMI) as it is also indicated by von Wangenheim et al (2010). These processes are: Initiating processes, that occurs when a new project (or a phase of existing project) is defined and starts; Planning processes for the definition of the objectives and how to obtain them; Execution processes necessary to complete the objectives presented on the previous group; Monitoring and controlling processes of the project to track and review in parallel with the previous group the state of the tasks to complete the objectives. If the project is facing a roadblock, the project manager must adapt the previous plan to overcome it; Closing processes to finalise the project and provide the deliverables. Other guidelines can and will be analysed, such as Prince2 (Lianying, Jing, & Xinxing, 2012). Nevertheless, as indicated again by Lianying, Jing, & Xinxing, (2012)

 these groups of processes tend to have equal points. By using a methodology, some of the problems identified above can be resolved. And as this company is relatively small, applying these changes can be somewhat easy (McHugh & Hogan, 2010), as opposed to larger companies. Since the company is having an increase of revenue and clients, it is expected that will grow in size. Because of this, now is the time of change.

2.2. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

The next subject to be discussed, after the analysis of the methodology of project management is Business Process Management and its Best Practices or Critical Factors for the successful implementation of the processes. As in the previous subject, it is important to define the base idea, in this case regarding the definition of a business process. As Trkman (2010) indicated by citing (Guha & Kettinger, 1993; Strnadl, 2006), a business process is a complete, dynamically coordinated set of activities or logically related tasks that must be performed to deliver value to customers or to fulfil other strategic goals. Taking point from this idea, Business Process Management (BPM) is the set of activities to continuously analyse and improve the business tasks. In this part of the project, it will be used the BPM Framework (Ariyachandra & Frolick, 2008), which will help in the modelling of the business processes identified in the previous point. This framework is composed of four core processes: Strategize the metrics that will measure the performance of the implementation; Plan a set of steps to implement the outlined strategy in order to fulfil the measures employed previously; Monitor and analyse the implementation of the plan comparing the obtained measurements against the objectives. These can be obtained using an IS, that will store all the relevant information; Taking corrective action, when it is detected on the monitoring that some of the processes are showing measures below of what is expected. At this time the implementation of some already thought out processes can be employed or new ones can be planned or implemented.

2.3. INFORMATION SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

In order to store the information requirements of project management process and the information necessary for the measurement of the processes detailed in the previous chapter, it is necessary to implement an Information System to provide support. An Information System (IS) is a combination of one or more types of information technology and the several activities that people and processes act upon it (Livari & Hirschheim, 1996). For this specific project, the IS to be implemented can be considered a Project Management Information System (PMIS), as described by Canils & Bakens (2012). For the implementation, the critical factors identified by Subramanian, Jiang, & Klein (2007), citing Alter (1979) can be used as guidelines. These are: Keep it simple. Develop what is really necessary and needed by the users of the IS; Executive or top management participation commitment. It is necessary for the top management to be involved with the development and support its implementation and its use throughout the company; Training. Continuous training can help refine the IS and at the same time involve the users in its development to achieve a better acceptance within the company among the project manager; Prototyping / evolutionary development. The development of the IS can and should start simple. But with each iteration, new features can be added if a new requirement / need arise.

3. METHODOLOGY USED
Since this proposal is for a project, it is fitting that the methodology described in chapter 2.1 for project management is used here. The methodology is composed by:

3.1. INITIATING
In this phase, the topics that will be discussed on the project are generally chosen and locked, in order not to deviate from the topics. This phase corresponds to the current status of the project, in which the proposal for the theme is being written, although some changes can occur between the end of the proposal and the start of the project.

3.2. PLANNING
At this point of the project, a thorough plan is constructed, taking into account that, to perform this task, it may be necessary to research some additional literature. Another task is to design the interview form that will serve to obtain the current status of the project management processes of the company.

3.3. EXECUTION
At this moment, the tasks that were planned are put in motion. All the theoretical information must be obtained after a complete review of the literature to better support the choices made on the project. Subsequently, it is necessary to obtain the current status of project management processes in the company. This data will be obtained through interviews to the management staff of the company, as stated above. Armed with the theoretical framework, it is possible to start the construction of the guidelines. First the definition of the project management methodology will be addressed. Afterwards this methodology will be broken down into processes and tasks to design and model them. Finally it will be aggregated to the project the IS implementation guidelines in order to comply with the goals. Parallel to this, all the documentation written will be constantly sent to the supervisor for reviewing. Also, as best practices dictate, the management staff of the company will be informed of the progress of the project, as their input is also very important.

3.4. MONITORING AND CONTROLLING

Like in all the projects, there is the need for a controlling figure(s) to ensure that the project is running within the expected parameters. That figure in this project is the project supervisor that will, with a regular communication, verify the status of the project and will ascertain possible need for changes of the project and can help detect some imperfections that might occur.

3.5. CLOSING
In the final step of the project, the documentation (an essential part of any kind of project) must be delivered in a draft form for reviewing. After all the necessary adjustments are made to the document, a final form of the document will be delivered.

4. PROPOSED TIMELINE

Figure 1 Proposed Timeline

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ariyachandra, T. R., & Frolick, M. N. (2008). Critical Success Factors in Business Performance ManagementStriving for Success. Information Systems Management, 25(2), 113-120. doi:10.1080/10580530801941504 Canils, M. C. J., & Bakens, R. J. J. M. (2012). The effects of Project Management Information Systems on decision making in a multi project environment. International Journal of Project Management, 30(2), 162-175. Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2011.05.005 INE. (2010). Estudos sobre Estatsticas Estruturais das Empresas Micro, Pequenas e Mdias Empresas em Portugal. Lianying, Z., Jing, H., & Xinxing, Z. (2012). The Project Management Maturity Model and Application Based on PRINCE2. Procedia Engineering, 29(Sei 1994), 3691- 3697. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2012.01.554 Lim, M., Griffiths, G., & Sambrook, S. (2010). Organizational Structure for the Twenty - first Century. INFORMS Annual Meeting. Livari, J., & Hirschheim, R. (1996). Analyzing Information Systems Development - A comparision and analysis of eight IS Development Approaches, 21(7), 551-575. McHugh, O., & Hogan, M. (2010). Investigating the rationale for adopting an internationally-recognised project management methodology in Ireland: The view of the project manager. International Journal of Project Management. Subramanian, G. H., Jiang, J. J., & Klein, G. (2007). Software quality and IS project performance improvements from software development process maturity and IS implementation strategies. Journal of Systems and Software, 80(4), 616-627. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2006.06.014 Trkman, P. (2010). The critical success factors of business process management. International Journal of Information Management, 30(2), 125-134. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2009.07.003 von Wangenheim, C. G., Silva, D. A. D., Buglione, L., Scheidt, R., & Prikladnicki, R. (2010). Best practice fusion of CMMI-DEV v1.2 (PP, PMC, SAM) and PMBOK 2008. Information and Software Technology, 52(7), 749-757. Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2010.03.008

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