Technology Scorecards: Aligning IT Investments with Business Performance

Chapter 7. Human Factors

This chapter describes the most obscure but important reasons that can cause project failure or success. Perhaps everyone knows that you should have good project managers, but how many know and believe that every successful project must have a project champion who acts as a facilitator when the project runs into heavy headwinds? And while the prestart return on investment was found to be quite high the project was still not started. These are some of the situations for which human factors considerations are important, hence they are described in this chapter.

Project Management

Introduction

Although the literature is replete with books on project management, none deals with all the aspects of this complex subject. Each author has his or her own strong perspective to offer. It is hoped that this volume succeeds in providing a holistic and complete view of project management science. It is based on this author's 41 years in project management, which encompasses multiple products, development projects, off-the-shelf projects, novel initiatives, and global projects. They varied from small to global implementations, and most were successful. The experience covers a period when there were no tools, up to the present when we are inundated with project management tools and technologies.

This is not intended to be a primer on project management. Rather, it is an advanced treatise on the subject. It avoids elementary topics such as project planning and focuses on the ...