ISE Research Cluster: Strategy and Value through projects, programmes and portfolios

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Raymond Young
Posted in Governing programmes and projects, University of Canberra

This blog has been started to share developments  of our research group. It is organised into four sections:

  1. latest developments
  2. a description of our common research focus
  3. the names of the key researchers
  4. recent publications, work-in-progress and proposed research

Latest developments

  • Tue 25 May
    • Susan Woodcock to present her proposed PhD thesis on Project Governance: theory and application in the Australian Public Sector 
  • Tue 10 May

Research Theme: Strategy and Value through projects, programs and portfolios

Our research focuses on the ultimate goal of projects which is to implement strategy [1, 2] and create value by realising expected business benefits [3-5]. It builds on seminal research on IT project failure [6-11] and the broader definitions of success and failure [12-14].

We go beyond traditional approaches to project management because other factors such as top management support have been shown to be more important for success [15]. Our research focuses on exploring the most promising approaches to bridge the discourse between the top management and project management communities. The group is cross-disciplinary by nature and research topics include strategy, strategy implementation, project governance [16-19], programme and portfolio management. 

Alignment with UC strategic themes

This research aligns with the UC strategic research theme of governance. Project governance is an important emerging area and much of the research is informing publications by Chartered Secretaries Australia [21]. In addition to this the research grouping is interdisciplinary, collaborative with other universities and therefore aligned to UC’s 40 step strategy.

Key Researchers

UC Staff

HDR Students

Potential HDR Student

External Collaborators

Craig McDonald

Michael Young

Reza Alimohammadi

Catherine Killen

Raymond Young

Hamed Sarbazhosseini

Ahmed Ahmednafea

Simon Poon

Robert Cox

 

John Bullock

 

 

 

Abdullah Aleraifij

 

 

 

Julio Romero

 

Recent publications, work-in-progress and proposed research

Publications

  • A IJPM Is strategy implemented through projects? Disconfirming evidence (Young, Young, Jordan) – accepted subject to major revision
  • A IJPM The road to a portfolio manager standard (Young) – rejected, WIP
  • ? IJMBiP Whole of enterprise portfolio management: A case study of NSW Government and Sydney Water Corporation (Young, Owen, Conner) – Accepted

Conferences

  • A ECIS: Poon, Young, Irandoost (2011) Fuzzy set analysis of project CSFs – accepted
  • A ICIS: Sereyvuth, Poon, Young (2011)  Issues around firm level classification of IT investment. – submitted
  • B(?) IRNOP: Rise and fall of PM (Young, Young) – presented at UC research seminar, accepted as IRNOP student poster, WIP for another conference and IJPM
  • B IPMA World Congress: Young, Killen, Young) (2011) Eyes wide shut – expanding our views of portfolio management  – submitted
  • - AIPM: Young (2011) Development of an Australian Competency Standard for Project Portfolio Management – Accepted
  • - APRPM Young, Owen, Connor (2010) Whole of enterprise portfolio management: an integrated approach to managing projects as a social system
  • - APRPM Young, Poon, O’Connor (2010) xxx

Work in Progress

  • Paper doctoral consortium: Sarbazhosseini (2011) XXX– WIP PACIS
  • A PACIS: Sarbazhosseini (2011) PPM a critical review – submitted
  • Paper: Young, Irandoost, Poon (wip) Fuzzy set analysis of project CSFs 2 – presented at UC research seminar, WIP for ICIS
  • Paper: Young, Young, Romero (wip) Project, programme and portfolio maturity levels in the Australian federal government – a summary of P3M3 evaluations
  • Paper and software model: Robert Cox (wip) A computer model of projects and project management – chaos
  • Paper: Young, Young, Killen (wip) A project management based approach to strategy implementation: a literature review
  • PhD thesis: Hamed Sarbazhosseini, The next generation of Project Portfolio Management software – trends, gaps and recommendations
  • PhD thesis: Michael Young, A portfolio based approach to strategy implementation
  • PMI Research Grant: ($50k) Young & Asgharpour, A contingent theory of project management – PM tools by personality type

Proposed Research

A feature of the group is the mentoring we provide towards potential researchers in their exploration of potential research ideas. Currently these include:

  • Abdullah Aleraifij (Case studies of how good project decisions are made),
  • Ahmed Ahmednafea (Programme Management?),
  • John Bullock (Programme Management?),
  • Reza Alimohammadi (Developing a Contingency Model for Project Strategic Control).

References

1.            Pellegrinelli, S. and C. Bowman, Implementing strategy through projects. Long Range Planning, 1994. 27(4): p. 125 – 132.

2.            Jamieson, A. and P.W.G. Morris, Moving from corporate strategy to project strategy, in The Wiley Guide to Project, Program, and Portfolio Management. 2007, John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ. p. 34-62.

3.            Ward, J., P. Taylor, and P. Bond, Evaluation and realisation of IS/IT benefits: an empirical study of current practice. European Journal of Information Systems, 1996. 4: p. 214-225.

4.            Winter, M., et al., Directions for future research in project management: The main findings of a UK government-funded research network. International Journal of Project Management, 2006. 24(8): p. 638 – 649.

5.            Peppard, J., J. Ward, and E. Daniel, Managing the Realization of Business Benefits from IT Investments. MIS Quarterly Executive, 2007. 6(1 %U http://www.misqe.org/login.jsp?paperid=102&dbissue=98&lstate=).

6.            Caminer, D.T., And How to Avoid Them. The Computer Journal, 1958. 1(1): p. 11-14 %U http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/11.

7.            Lucas, H.C., Why Information Systems Fail. 1975, New York: Columbia University Press.

8.            Lyytinen, K. and R. Hirschheim, Information systems failures – a survey and classification of the empirical literature. Oxford Surveys in Information Technology, 1987. 4: p. 257-309.

9.            Sauer, C., Why Information Systems Fail: a case study approach. Information Systems Series, ed. D.E. Avison and G. Fitzgerald. 1993, Henley on Thames: Alfred Waller Ltd.

10.          Johnson, J., Chaos: the dollar drain of IT project failures. Application development trends, 1995. 2(1): p. 41-47.

11.          Sauer, C., Deciding the Future for IS Failures Not the Choice You Might Think, in Rethinking Management Information Systems, B. Galliers and W. Currie, Editors. 1999, Oxford University Press: New York.

12.          de Wit, Measurement of project success. International Journal of Project Management, 1985. 6(3): p. 164-170.

13.          Baccarini, D., The logical framework for defining project success. Project Management Journal, 1999. 30(4): p. 25-32.

14.          Cooke-Davies, T., The "real" success factors on projects. International Journal of Project Management, 2002. 20: p. 185-190.

15.          Young, R. and E. Jordan, Top management support: Mantra or necessity? International Journal of Project Management, 2008. 26(7): p. 713 – 725.

16.          Mähring, M., IT Project Governance, in The Economic Research Institute. 2002, Stockholm School of Economics: Stockholm.

17.          AS8016, Corporate Governance of Projects involving IT investments. 2010, Standards Association of Australia: Sydney.

18.          ITGI, Enterprise Value: Governance of IT Investments, The Val IT Framework. 2006, Rolling Meadows: IT Governance Institute %@ 1-933284-32-3.

19.          Young, R., What is the ROI for IT Project Governance? Establishing a benchmark, in 2006 IT Governance International Conference. 2006: Auckland, New Zealand.

20.          Young, R., Module 7: Project Governance, in Risk and Compliance. 2010, Chartered Secretaries Australia: Sydney.

 

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Musings on ‘Project Management for the rest of us’

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Raymond Young
Posted in Uncategorized

Most people become project managers by accident (Lewis 2001). The same could be said  for members of a project team. It is the most natural thing for most organisations to co-opt staff with technical skills and "a good reputation within the organisation" onto a project (Walker and Peterson 1999). Unfortunately the key project competencies needed are not the same competencies one would expect to gain through functional or operational experience (Peterson 1991,better reference required). 

  • Projects are temporary and focussed on the narrow goal of delivering outputs (what we will call a 'Blue' skill and explain later).
  • Projects are leadership-intensive requiring high levels of influencing skills (a 'Red' skill) because staff are temporary or part-time and their loyalty is naturally towards line managers who have more influence over their careers.
  • Projects are also composed mainly of people with specialist skills but they will tend to be unknown to each other and unused to working with each other (another 'Red' skill).

What is one to do? There is no shortage of project management guides, textbooks, or short courses to rapidly upskill. Unfortunately the material being offered tend to focus on learning things such as MS Project or standard approaches such as PRINCE2 or PMBOK. This approach must be fundamentally flawed because projects by definition are 'unique undertakings' (PMI defn) and it is very unlikely that a one-size-fits-all approach will be appropriate (Shenahar XXXX). Despite this, most training emphasises methodologies to standardise process and maximise control ('Green' skills). Methodology clearly has value but almost the entire industry has deceived itself to treat it as the most important success factor. Crawford (2001) and others have found that once a project manager has achieved an entry level of knowledge, more 'knowledge' does not make them more competent. However improving 'skills' and 'personal characteristics' does. 'Yellow/Blue' skills are needed to gain top management support and 'Red' skills to gain user involvement and these skills are far more important for project success (Young and Jordan 2006). 

An explanation of blue, red, yellow and green skills…

to be continued… feel free to comment on where these musings are taking me.

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The NBN – killer apps to justify the investment

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Raymond Young
Posted in emerging technologies, University of Canberra

Surely it isn't that hard to justify the National Broadband Network. Over the next semester I have set my project management students the challenge of coming up with some applications that might justify the investment. Let's see if over this time, the mouths of babes (knowing next to nothing about project management) will put the high paid government advisors to shame.

The presentations below are from each student group. If you monitor this blog over time, I believe you will be amazed at how much they learn in a short space of time. I am also hoping some of the groups will come up with million dollar ideas (or billion dollar ones because we're about to spend a lot right?)

Hardware related ideas





Team BAKH









 
Communication Ideas








MagicPlus



Medical Ideas










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Case study research

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Raymond Young
Posted in Education, Uncategorized

The follow slides were used to discuss case study research in an inter-university research workshop between ACU, ANU, UC and UNSW-ADFA on 3 Feb 2011. The content is based almost entirely on 'the Bible' for case study research Yin (2003) Case Study Research: Design and Methods 3rd Edition

Examples illustrating application of the principles have been drawn from my PhD thesis. My thesis can also be downloaded from the following URL http://ise.canberra.edu.au/raymond/wp-content/uploads/PhD thesis 1_4_2.PDF. Please contact me directly if you want the original document to borrow some of the words. I'm happy to make someone else's life easier and only need to hve some control over access. 




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Business 2.0 in Bhutan (2)

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Raymond Young
Posted in Business 2.0, Education, University of Canberra

In December 2010, the BUSINESS 2.0 lecture series was delivered by Dr Raymond Young from the University of Canberra to selected members of Bhutan's public service. The course was delivered in partnership with Bhutan's Royal Institute of Management. The objective was to explore how the public sector could better use IT to meet strategic goals.

The course was very well received and the lectures are posted below to give participants and others the opportunity to join or continue the discussion.

Please do not be shy in sharing further thoughts and ideas.













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Business 2.0 in Bhutan

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Raymond Young
Posted in Business 2.0, emerging technologies, Governing programmes and projects, University of Canberra

The University of Canberra has partnered with the Royal Institute of Management in Bhutan to deliver a new course 'Business 2.0 – Business and IT Fusion'. The first course was delivered in December 2010.

The course covered four major topics and a number of minor topics. The major topics were: (1) Strategy, (2) Enterprise Architecture, (3)  Finance, (4) Governance. This blog has been created for attendees of the course and others interested in contributing to further discussion to improve our society using IT.

This course explores how Business and IT need to work together to realize Bhutanese societal goals: (1) increasing happiness by (a) reducing poverty and (b) vitalizing industry through (i) national spatial planning (ii) developing rural & urban areas (iii) expanding strategic infrastructure (iv) developing human capital and (v) enhancing the enabling environment.

The first lecture on IT megatrends is included below to start the conversation. Please feel free to contribute.



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The NBN – a business case already!

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Raymond Young
Posted in Communicate / Collaborate, emerging technologies, University of Canberra

I push my students hard and for the most part they rise to the occasion and appreciate it. Today however, I wasn't quite satisfied with the discussion we had around the NBN. It seemed to revolve around techie details and not how to realise the benefits from the investment. One of them commented to me later that lots of highly paid people on six figures or more hadn't come up with a proper business case so maybe it was a bit much to expect them to do it …

Call me naive, but it just doesn't seem that hard to me. It's all about overcoming the tyranny of distance. We will always need face-to-face but so much communication can be done without travelling to other cities, countries, or into the CBD. My students would all save hours by collaborating on their group assignments on-line rather than travel to the Uni or each others houses if it was easier, ubiquitous and cheap. More people would work from home if their bosses could easily click a button and speak to them face-to-face as if they were down the hall.

David Braue from ZDNet explains it well:

“the value of the NBN is that it will raise the lowest common denominator and allow every business in the country to link with every other branch office, business partner or telecommuting employee at the same speed as they would use over their internal network”  David Braue, ZDNet.com.au on August 3rd, 2010 

It's a bit like a mobile phone. One is useless. Two are better. When most people have one, they are very useful. Most people are on Facebook these days so my mother has taught herself how to use it. When most people can click, see,  talk and work on the same document/process from different places then we will … won't we? [it has to be of acceptable quality]

If I am right, there's the benefit. If 10% people work from home on a particular day, it will be like driving on a Sunday, roads don't have to be built, trains don't have to be bought, pollution will be reduced, business will be able to reduce their office space (by say 10%) and productivity should go up with everyone gaining at least 1-2 hours of commuting time per week. Don't these benefits equate to roughly the same as the costs that are being bandied about?

One of my students argues, "countries which have broadband don't video conference or telecommute much". Hmmmmm …. if so, what is wrong with my simple argument? 

Is the key to the business case is to allocate a few dollars to work out how to make telecommuting work for around 10% of the population on any given day? Let's start by studying the ones that it works for, identify the behaviours/conditions lead to the positive variance, and implement strategies to support the key behaviours.

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WEB2.0/GOV2.0

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Raymond Young
Posted in emerging technologies, University of Canberra

My early impression of WEB2.0 was tweeting to announce Brittany Spears was taking a shower … who cares! Well, first impressions can be very wrong. 

Bill Gates probably comes the closest in capturing the potential of WEB2.0 when he talks about business @ the speed of thought.  I finally got turned onto this when UTS Professor Steve Burdon presented at an AICD professional development evening. He showed productivity statistics going back 200 years. As expected there was a significant jump in the rate of productivity improvement around the time of the industrial revolution. What blew everyone's mind were the only other significant jumps: one around 1994 and another very recently. It seems that the internet is as significant as the industrial revolution and the most recent one is too soon to say, but it is possible that WEB2.0 is also as big as the industrial revolution!

If this is true, a likely explanation is that:

  • the industrial revolution dramatically reduced the amount of effort it took to make clothes and goods,
  • the internet dramatically reduces the effort and transaction costs related to finding out who is selling what at what price,
  • WEB2.0 dramatically reduces the effort required to meet and collaborate with the innovators and leading thinkers across the world.

As others catch up on the other fronts, prosperity is being driven by the ability to collaborate and innovate. Mostly we cannot do it as individuals.  WEB2.0 is therefore for adults! The teens can live in their little world, but they can't have it to themselves. My suspicion is that having a WEB2.0 presence is going to be as important as having an education. It's all about helping people find out what you know, and working out if their ideas can build on your ideas in innovative ways (sometimes to improve our world). NB. There's a dark side too, but let's not go there …

So where does that leave us with GOV2.0? The government using WEB2.0 technologies to engage more effectively with the public and more efficiently deliver services. At this stage it seems it is mostly about being more transparent and sharing information. I don't think we have even started to tap into the potential for massive productivity gains. What do you think?

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Enterprise Architecture

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Raymond Young
Posted in emerging technologies, University of Canberra

I once aspired to be an architect. After completing a half-way degree in building science, I chose not to take the risk of having to design doorknobs and windows for the rest of my life just in case I wasn't talented enough. And the rest as they say is history.

Now the IT field is appropriating the term. An Enterprise Architect is now one of the pinnacles for an IT career. But what is it, and what do they do? It sounded like hype to me…

I'm going to ask some my students to give me permission to post their research below and to comment on what a business should be looking for if they implement an enterprise architecture. (MN, AT, JP)





My impression after listening to them is that having an enterprise architecture is the equivalent of having a set of building plans. When you make additions you make sure it doesn't conflict with the existing infrastructure (pipes, wiring, networks)  and you can coordinate incremental changes to make sure you don''t end up a series of bolt-ons that don't match and is difficult to modify to grow with your needs.

This sounds good, but what bothers me, is that the plans have to be prepared by HR (org chart?), business (processes), IT (technology and systems), finance and understood by all. It seems however, that the effort to create the enterprise architecture documents are driven by IT, and I question whether the other stakeholders will make the effort to learn the language 'to read/develop the plans'. There are an number of frameworks which specify how the enterprise plans should be developed, but personally I'm not convinced I should make the effort. It looks all too hard to me (and I used to be a CIO … maybe a bad one?).

Have a look below at another of my students summary of the frameworks that could be followed to start documenting your enterprise architecture (AS). I guess the idea is that we adopt one of the frameworks and slowly document parts of the business as we change it and progressively build up a master plan of 'as-is' and develop a common language to discuss 'to-be'. Should be done, but won't set the world on fire will it?



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Emerging technologies: getting past the hype

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Raymond Young
Posted in emerging technologies, University of Canberra

Though I prefer to post as an expert, there are times you have to step out of your comfort zone. BICS, a subject I teach at the University of Canberra features a weekly discussion of emerging areas of relevance to Informatics. It seemed a waste to have the discussion and then let it drop only to possibly have to rethink it all over again sometime in the future.

Our discussions have been to try to get past the technical hype and work out the business implications. We've also been discussing the topics in the context of success/failure. As many readers will know, a constant theme of this blog site is that no one undertakes a project just to come in on-time on-budget. To evaluate success, we need clarity on what the business benefits ought to be.

So we'll post the following topics to allow people to add to the discussion and monitor developments over time. Perhaps they'll grow to become the first source of business information about these emerging areas! Feel free to share your insights and valuable links you have found. You can also request new topics for the students to research.

  • Enterprise Architecture
  • WEB2.0/GOV2.0
  • Cloud Computing
  • The National Broadband Network (NBN)
  • What will an IT-enabled future look like?
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