Globalization of Multi-disciplinary Project Managentent

Gurdeep Singh Hura SAS/CT, SAS, Singapore 2263

g. hura@ ieee.org

1. Introduction

Abstract- The business organizations are

deriving greatest gains from being able to get their

products to market faster than the competition

process. As such, there has been a tremendous s h i f ~

towards use of Information Technology techniques m

technical infra-structure, globalization of socio-

econonuc policies, and future vision of the

organizations. There are many factors which are

affecting the full scale deployment of Information

Technology in the organizations as it will not only

make a significant fundamental changes in the

technical infra-structure, but also the reliability,

quality of the products, customer's service and

satisfaction have to be dealt with. This is due to the

fact that as industry society moves from low-wage

economy to higher educated society, the expectations

also grow. In this paper, we examine some of the issues by considering few case studies. We hope, we

will be able to demonstrate that although Information

Technology is very important step in the

establishment technical infra structure for future

growth of the business organizations, but it q u i r e s

celtain guidelines to be formulated for d e f h g some

measuring tools, quantitative measures, etc. for

measuring the productivity and at the same time, it

must enhance the reliabiity, and more importantly

customer's satisfaction.

During the last decade, busines

organizations(smal1, big or even multi-national) have

undergone or are going through a fundamental

change in their technical infra-structure, future vision

for their growth and the project management(in

particular multidisciplinary based

development).These organizations are no longer

using the traditional way of business as it offers no

incentive for increasing the profit margin m this

competitive market. Due to big competition and push

for Information Technology(lT) transfer, the Far East

countries are realty dominating the world market.

This is evident from the fact that many countries

including Japan are selling their products at a lesser

price than manufacturing costs(what these would cost

in developed countries). As a result of this, we can

see a big decline in the inventories, personnels, etc. m

the workplace and at the same time more and more

emphasis is being given on the reliabiliry and quality

of the products, customer service and satisfaction. In

fact, the customer service and satisfaction has

become one of the major parameters of their

organizational policies as a part of IT m their future

vision and long-term planning[ 2,3 1

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Another aspect of this trend of technology

entering into husiness organizations which has ken

discussed widely is the role of various levels of

management hierarchy. In the management hierarchy,

each of the functional managers, divisional heads,

information officers, manufacturing divisional

incharge, and other managers have been considered

as an independent "object" modules. The interaction

unong these modules is one of the main step towards

globalization of multi-disciplinaty project

management. These objects interact with each other

using various tools CAD/CAM, CASE and other

Graphic User Interfaces(GU1) for defining the design

of the product which then is handed over to the

manufacturing division for its manufacturahility

before its release. At the same time, hoth customers

and suppliers are also coming closer to each other and as such, it is hoped that in future, there will not

be much distinction between them thus, removing the

monopoly of doing business by these

organizations( 3,4 I.

The introduction of these concepts in the

mawgemeiit process at various levels of new

dimensional information process management is

currently being defmd and standardized by few

organizations. This will lead towards a unifd global

environment for encompassing the purchasing,

manufacturing, distrihutions, etc. These various

issues and other aspects of IT implementation are

discussed in the paper with the help of few case

studies.

11. Project Management

Various issues of IT discussed in Business

Community are Functionality, costs, time to market.

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quality, itttegr:ttioii r~~uisition. use of eiiicrgirig new

technologies, Mc.Lwririg standards, lung-term arid

short-term ctrnmitments, responsibilities of

Functional iuid Teclinical Managers( or l'r

Managers), infrastructure shake-up, etc. It has been

observed that most of the time. these people are

spending lot ofiiioiiq aid time in the rlevelopnlent of

these issues arid as I I result. the business clients are

not ready to iiccep IKW technologies in their present

infra-structure alii1 ;*ision of their business due to

non-availability of stuidartls, productivity

measurement techniques, etc. In other words. the

society is not yet ready for taking any risk in

changing the technical infra-structure hurriedly in the

competitive world of technology. At the sanie time., it

is ckfuiite that the Ititonnation 'I'echnology is very

iitipwtatit a$ if we do not take the atlvluitage of this

technology, the survival in the next decade se" to

be uncertain and sliahy. The IT offers various tools to

describe, represent precisely and concisely the

information data, infomiation retrieval or access and

tiiiuiipulatioti of the data which can be used

effectively aid efficiently in many applicatiotis[.l,S~.

Mr. Crupi James( 1992).President of Strategic

lxadership Solutions lias rightly remarked :"Any

husiiless is not an intemationd in I O years, will not be

in business" [ 11. Ilie growth in business at local and

national ha.. already shifted towards regional and

global levels ml is totally based on everexpanding

information technology. This tremendous exponential

growth of business at regional and global levels has

created a serious problem in the areas of infra-

structure, roles of technical and functional managers,

skill levels of dierent countries, problems of

transferring applications across geographic linguistic,

poilical and consitutional incompatihilty, cultural

differences. etc. ln particular, the roles of IT

managers have hecome more complex, challenging

and time consurniiig in regional and globid economy

at appropriate marketplace. As such. the roI& of IT

managers have also evolved in the same way as other

technologies have evolved in the pnqt e.g. computers,

software development processes, hardware

engineering. design, computer networkd, multi-media

applications, prograniniing languages, etc.[ 2,6J.

IV. ICvoIving roles of I 1 Managers

In early days, IT Managers were basically

technical persons and were not directly involved in

business strategies, planning, etc. They were only

concemed with the technical activities and were

respomible for installation and management of

technical support within the orgmizations. As new

technologies were evolved, the roles of IT managers

also becatne a p& of business planning and strategies

in addition to their normal role in technical side.

Further, they were also required to keep a pace with

the current technologies. This cemitdy required more

tune for learning, adapting new techniques for their

work place mi provide some kind of future vision.

This was easy for them as they were also involved in

the business stritegies and planning committee.

'Ihe next generation of IT Manager's

role was towards maximization of business and

technical skills and integration into Organization's t

role in Techno-econotnic domain. In this domain, the

Manager is baqically a Chief of the Information

Technology Division and is directly responsible for

formulating the fum vision and its implementation.

Due to emerging technologies and ever-

lasting demands for various options within the

organizations, in the present and future(may be)

generations, the role of IT Managers has even

become more complex and challenging as the

managers have to deal with organizatibnal and

business management than truly technical aspects of

the business. This is true due to the fact that there are

large number of tools to manipulate the information

efficiently and effectively that they do not have to be

necessarily a technical expert.

v. Relationship Iwtween 1 1 and

I'roductivit)

With so much of investment in changing the

technical infra-structure, evolving of roles of IT

Managers, etc, one of the main concems with the

business community remains unanswered; Does IT

improve the performance parameters needed during

the growth of b u s k s s organizations like efficiency,

reliability, quality, productivity, etc.? Out of these

pu:uneters, it has been, in general, observed that the

business community looks at the productivity for

more profit margin. This is obvious that with the

increase of productivity(due to IT),there is a decrease

in inventory, manpower, personnel, and avoidance of

duplications of normal routines tasks being performed

in various divisions within the organizations[5,6].

There seems to be a relationship between the

IT and productivity and it has been observed that this

relationship has not been well understood due to the

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fact that there is a lack of good quantitative measures

to be used for the measurement of the output and

value created by IT. Looking at various articles and

f-gs. we do not f d encouraging and convincing

experiences as to how the computers alone can boost

the productivity and these articles and findings seem

to be irrelevant for exceptional cases. In fact, many of

the big projects like American Airlines SABRE

systentq. American Hospitals systems and few others

clearly show the increase m productivity with IT but

is not true in most of the s m d scale probcts.

Many researchers have tried to find a

relationship between productivity and IT and are still

trying to establish it and demonstrate to the buskss

community by experimenting on their ongoing

projects or other projects. But, it is clear that the

advantages offered by it are enormous, but due to

non-availability of standards for implementing these

have been restricted to only at managerial levels. It

has not gone beyond this as such the low level

workers are not benefited by this transition. Thus, m

order *to establish the relationship, the following

considerations have to be carefully analyzed and

based on that the new guidelines for their

implementation have to be standardiZedl61.

1)Quaiititalive Measures: ' h s e nieasures

for productivity are not well defmd and standardized

and also the standard approaches for the

measurement of inputs/outputs are not used properly.

2)'lerm pins: In most of applications of IT,

there may not be an immediate impact of the new

technology on the business. A survey shows that it

may take 5 to 6 years for IT investment.. to offer any

benefits.

3)Misnianagenient: Sonlethes the

investments are made due to poor decision making

bodies and as a result inefficient and obsolete

criteria for decision makers are accepted since these

people have no interests in the organhtional growth

or its future vision. The quantitative measures

help the mangers, But it has been observed in most of

the cases that the real benefit does not go the low

level of people and as a result the productivity does

not improve inspite of the investments in IT

appropriately and timely. An example of this may be

in the form of no incentive, poor management of

workforce, under utilization of manpower or even

output targets are not properly adjusted. The result

of this effect can clearly seen in the case of

manufacturing sector where the profits offered by IT

is going up due to intemational competition

compared to the service sectors. Further, this

sectoflmanufacturing) also tolerates less slack.

It will be easy task for any decision-

taking hody to make a quick observation about the

poor management, but, it is equally important that the

quantitative measures and errors in the measurement

dso play very important role and sometimes can

tnake the infrastructure collapsed if necessary action

is not taken in this direction.

In this paper, we will discuss some of

the issues with the help of suitable case studies. w e

will present these cases at the t h e of presentation of

our paper.

The following parameters must be

considered for formulating the guidelines to decide

whether IT should be used in a particular

organization: t

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*Mamgenient techniques from "Hardware"

to Software" !!

*Decentrali7ation(tlistributeil environment)

*Networking !!

*Integration of various business and technical

aspects for cross functions!!

*New technique for engineering-based design

of business process

*Management support systems

*Automate the normal routine work

*New performance measures

*Flexibility in decision making strategies

*Just do it!!

*Join hands with Enterprise system!!

*Reduce personnel and manpower!

*Business must manage IT!!!

VI. Conclusion

It looks clear from these case studies and

other findings ~ U H I ruticles that in the future for a

precision investinerit, any business community to

remain healthy, it is necessary to increase profitability

and satisfy the customers' needs to maintain and win

the market share. The community will have to make

significant changes and implementation in the way it

works with its customers to ensure the product it

produces is fa..test to nirarket at the customer's quality

and cost targets. It niust be achieved with the role of

reengineering approach with different degrees of

sophistication m different stages through well

engineered desipi process for IT.

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Synnott W. R. and Gruber W.H, "Infonnation

resource management", John Wiley arid Sons,

NY, 1981

Bumson P., "The Perils of going Gloh;d",

Inforworld. Aug., IYN

Alpar P., and Kim M.A., "Comparison of

approaches to the nieawrenlent of IT

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Clemons E.K., "Evaluation of strategic

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6.

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