Web-based Project Management

Georgios Karatzas - 4560272

Msc Advanced Computing Science
School of Computing Sciences - Faculty of Science
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ - UK
[email protected]
April 2010

ABSTRACT
This paper sets out the revolutionary effects on project
management by Internet and new technologies. It defines
2.1 Definitions
the terms ’project’ and ’project management’ and then ad- Project is defined as a “a temporary endeavor undertaken
dresses the challenges which faces and the limitations of cur- to create a unique product or service” [PMI, 2004]. Projects
rent project management techniques. It then emphasizes on they have definitive start date and definitive end date and
the innovation of performing project management through they exist until they reach their goals and objectives [Held-
the web, introducing the web-based project management man et al., 2007]. A project usually splits into smaller
systems and how the internet and the new technologies in projects (sub-projects), it creates a unique product or ser-
information technology has affected the current project man- vice, it is purpose-oriented and involves the coordinated un-
agement techniques and methods. In addition, benefits and dertaking of interrelated activities [Brandon, 2005] [Frame,
advantages of web-enabling the project management will be 2005]. Managing a project, formerly named as project man-
addressed. On the other hand, limitations and drawbacks agement, is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and
of performing project management over the web will be set techniques to the project activities in order to meet or exceed
out. stakeholder needs and expectations from a project” [PMI,
2004]. It is responsible for planning, organizing, monitoring,
and control of all the parts of a project and it also respon-
1. INTRODUCTION sible for management, leadership and motivation of all the
Project management is the planning, scheduling, and aspects take part in order the project to achieve its goals and
controlling of project activities to meet project objectives. objectives [Brandon, 2005]. The major objectives of project
Project management is essentially about managing a project management that must be met are cost, performance, time
from the start to its completion meeting its goals and its ob- goals while in parallel it must controls or maintains the pur-
jectives. The projects’ complexity today has been increased pose of the project at the defined level [Lewis, 2001].
as never before. Projects today include “larger capital in-
vestments, several disciplines, widely spread project partic- 2.2 Challenges
ipants, tighter schedules, more strict quality standards etc.”
Even if the project management exists as term for some
[Alshawi and Ingirige, 2003]. These factors in addition with
decades there are still challenges. Below, the major chal-
high-speed developments in Information and Communica-
lenges on project management are addressed.
tion Technology and the popularity of outsourcing world-
wide have influenced project management practices to follow 1. Quality: Quality can be a problematic aspect on
new techniques and patterns introduced by new technology project management. Usually, quality control is set
using new software and tools in order to improve the effec- to be managed by a contractor or other third-party.
tiveness of current project management techniques. Also, As [Amalraj et al., 2007] refer quality control and as-
communication among companies and between clients and surance should be managed by the parent company. It
companies it is a critical factor in order to successfully be is also referred that the parent company must review
met the targets of a project. New technology and revolution- and approve specific contractor quality plans at the
ary innovations of information technology has created new early stage of the project plan. The project’s devel-
ways of communication. In this paper it will be set out the opment process and the quality contractor must take
evolution of project management, the challenges and prob- place together otherwise there would be inconsistency
lems facing the current project management practices. It between the prior plans and the actual result.
then will be focused on the impact of the latest advances
in technology on project management emphasizing on the 2. Cost: In many cases, projects are beginning with
innovative fact of performing project management over the a lack on cost information providing lower estimated
Web. Finally, benefits and advantages of web-enabling the costs. This happens because a project with lower cost
project management will be addressed pointing also critical is more attractive and more likely to be approved in
limitations and drawbacks of performing project manage- order to get started. Also, clients demand high-quality
ment over the web. products and services at the lower price. This af-
fects the project’s cost plan driving, in most cases, the
2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT project’s real cost out of the planned one and the most

1
 important fact is that this usually affects the quality level integration of purchasing with accounts software
of the final product or service [Alshawi and Ingirige, [Alshawi and Ingirige, 2003].
2003].
3. The introduction of automation into manage-
3. Environment and complexity: It is very important ment practices: Many companies use information
for project managers to take into account the place, technology in order to improve the management and
the time, the weather conditions and the ethics of the quality of products, services and processes. Although,
environment that the project will be constructed and as almost every company uses both traditional and
will be published. There are different cultures, dif- electronic practices, usually there are conflicts between
ferent difficulties and different challenges by place to them and makes it hard for the project managers to
place. The project’s complexity increases and causes process the right information as and when required.
communication problems to every party involve into This happens not only because of the lack of education
a project. Hence, the project must follow the stan- on using automatic systems but also because the dif-
dards and the codes of its environment and must there ference on the way the information provided between
are specialists who contribute to the decision-making human and machines.
process. [Amalraj et al., 2007] [Alshawi and Ingirige,
4. Lack of software integration: Most of the IT sys-
2003].
tems solutions focus on specific tasks such as project
4. Schedule: A lot of companies do not have the appro- planning and monitoring, estimating, design etc.. Al-
priate staff with project planners and schedulers and though, there is a lack of communication links between
this fact can create problems in project schedule and these applications, usually there is incompatibility be-
productivity plans. If there is a clear-defined schedule tween hardware and software and also there is a lack
on a project, it can avoid the project’s costs to run out of integration of current systems which provide smooth
of the budget [Amalraj et al., 2007]. flow of information between the levels of project’s de-
velopment and maintenance [Alshawi, 2000] [Faraj and
5. Unreal targets: Unreal or over-ambitious project’s Alshawi, 2000].
objectives without having the appropriate resources
and abilities can cause delays in the project’s com- 5. Lack of a standardized platform for informa-
pletion and pressure to the project team causing low tion exchange: Some of the problems caused by in-
productivity [Amalraj et al., 2007]. compatibility between hardware and software in a sys-
tem produce difficulties to project managers in order to
6. Globalization of the marketplace: Globalization access and manage project information. As [Alshawi
causes pressure to many industries as there is a disap- and Ingirige, 2003] mentioned that the reason for these
pearance of tariff barriers and this fact creates confu- problems are “the lack of standardization of project
sion due to different level in each state’s economy. This information that can facilitate the flow of information
can be a challenge due to the fact that some foreign between incompatible hardware and software”.
companies can be competitive with local companies
6. Lack of proper decision-making tools for
on price, quality and delivery [Alshawi and Ingirige,
project planning: Planning is always a significant
2003].
and difficult process that takes a long time. [Alshawi
2.3 Limitations and Ingirige, 2003] mentioned that this process can be
improved if the project managers use decision-making
Facing up the challenges which have been already ad- tools into their structure.
dressed, current project management practices have many
limitations in order to deal with these demands efficiently. 7. Lack of standard processes for project manage-
These limitations are being addressed below: ment: Each project manager follows his own stan-
dards and patterns and applies his or her own experi-
1. Lack of adequate communication: The most com- ence on project management. Hence, the management
mon problem that project managers have facing is lack of a project can be vary and these practices can create
of adequate communication among participants. Cur- an important impact on the “capability of coordinating
rent project management practices are often “isolated and controlling the project information”[Alshawi and
and concerned with managing problems related to in- Ingirige, 2003].
dividual stages of the projects” [Alshawi and Ingirige,
2003]. Communication problems usually occur extra
work or re-work increasing the cost of the project.
3. WEB-BASED PROJECT MANAGEMENT
These are caused by the conflicts created by conflicting
information and information delivered in different time
3.1 General
that the expected. The major reason for this is the in- Web based Project Management Systems (WBPMS) is a
consistency between in the flow of information between new concept that combines the web and its associated tech-
the parties which are involved within the project. nologies in order to improve the management of construction
projects. Although, this revolutionary concept can be ap-
2. Lack of integration within the supply chain: The plied for every type of project. WBPMS is an electronic
practices that the companies follow in order to execute project management system conducted through a private
ordering, purchasing and invoicing processes are facing network that uses Internet protocols to transmit information
delays in supplies being received, low-level collabora- as the WBPMS applications are collaborative web-based ap-
tion within the manufacturers and suppliers and low plications designed to store and manage project information.

2
WBPMS allow different groups related to a project to have a • Team Communication: real time discussion be-
controlled and automated access to information and focuses tween groups, project calendar and event planning,
on services and tools that make the manager to manage team communication.
their projects easier and more effective. Web-based project
management provides “an instant, on-demand, secure on- • Business Process Automation: browser compati-
line solution for every team member to communicate, share bility, plotting, server located in a secure data centre,
documents and collaborate using a standard web browser” system authentication, virus protection
[Matheu, 2005]. Also, WBPMS involves the project to be In figure 2 it is shown the schema of a web-enabled project
completed under the agreed budget and following the agreed management system.
schedule and also improves the communication between the
people related to the project development to become faster
and more efficient. In addition, promotes the idea of collab-
oration, enabling all the associated groups of the project to
work together. The goal of collaboration is to develop a pro-
cess in which there are electronic documents enabling them
to be located at a secure central place and can be accessed
by the people and groups that have access permission on
them during the maintenance of business processes, supply
chain relationships and organizational hierarchies. Effective
collaboration improves productivity and optimizes decision-
making process [Matheu, 2005].
In figure 1, there is a comparison between tradi-
tion project management and web-based project man-
agement systems. As it is shown, the most impor- Figure 2: Schema of a WBPMS
tant difference is the centralization of the information.

3.2 Benefits
• A WBPMS improve communication between the
teams and groups that participate into a project and
all team members are kept informed of issues instantly.
• Also, it reduces the amount of re-work needed and
the time needed for generating new projects by stor-
ing both the information and knowledge applied to a
project.
• It reduces the cost as the documents are electronic so
the printing and postage costs are reduced automati-
Figure 1: Communication mechanisms between en- cally and also it reduces the cost and the time needed
terprises to store, sort, find and protect the documents as they
are stored centrally in a server.
The goal of web-based project management system is to • It improves the overall control of project from the start
“translate an internal standard project management system to the beginning of the project. All the actions are
into an Internet-based system, which securely allows multi- monitored and can be recorded. That fact makes the
user access with dispersed locations, resulted with the con- access to data easier and faster and reduces the time
cept of Web-based and Web-enabled Project Management needed to request and receive information. Also, re-
and Collaboration System (PMCS). In other words, web- duces the possibility of errors that caused during the
enabled and web-based PMCS provides a centralized ’all- delivering of information from people to people. In ad-
in-one’ solution both to project management and collabora- dition, due to the fact that the project processes are
tion needs of dispersed team members” [Nitithamyong and monitored and recorded, it can be easier performed the
Skibniewski, 2004]. Although, a web-enabled application is process of maintenance.
different from a web-based application . As [Becerik, 2006]
refers, “unlike a web-based application, a web enabled ap- • It minimizes the project life cycle as the information
plication is not based on the HTML language, but instead is delivered instantly making faster the decision mak-
it is a special software application that is distributed across ing process. It avoids all the possible delays caused
the Internet much like standard network programs that can by written feedback as there is no time between the
be accessed over a Local Area Network (LAN)”. request and feedback actions. Also, minimizing the
Below there are the services that a WBPMS provides project life cycle brings benefits such as reduction of
[Matheu, 2005]: costs and expenditures.
• Document Management: Management of file for- • It reduces the risk and potentials errors as the infor-
mats, uploading/downloading tasks, search functions, mation is become available as soon as it are published,
backup facilities, tracking history of files’ actions. reducing the risk on working on old data.

3
 • Project schedules are executing faster and appropri- Also, [Hjelt and Bjork, 2007] research shows that the
ately. The system automatically delivers specific tasks participants who received limited or no training, put
to a team member’s contact box and then the member rate low the tasks both of how easy is to use and how
can start working on his/her tasks avoiding wasting easy is to learn the features of the system. Another im-
time. After, the completion of their tasks the team portant fact from this research was that self-learning of
member must be update the project task status wait- the system it does not require much time but this op-
ing for feedback. tion is only for people with good computer or software
skills or experience.
• It increases the flexibility of the project as web-based
software allows the teams or individuals of a project 4. Personal and cultural characteristics: People
to access, create, edit and update project’s tasks by that uses a WBPMS are required to learn how to use
any web browser, at any place of the world at any an innovation and change the way the usually work.
time. Also, due to increase of outsourcing worldwide, Users are usually not keen to adopt to changes related
it is even more important for companies to web-enable to their working habit. Also, there are important is-
their projects as a WBPMS provides this flexibility. sues as far as it concerns the user interfaces and how
More benefits can be added progressively as the tech- easily the users can adopt to them regarding cultural
nology and the software quality operations are improv- and social aspects.
ing day-by-day. Also, other benefits can be identified
or created by individuals of a project team adjusting 4. CONCLUSION
the system to their own needs.
Information and communication technology (ICT) offers
to companies and project managers a real revolutionary
3.3 Limitations chance to improve the project management practices, the
There are several limitations working on web-based quality of final projects and also, an opportunity to decrease
project management system. Below the major limitations the project time of implementation, providing software and
are being addressed [Matheu, 2005]: web tools. However, despite these benefits that ICT offers,
there are limitations associated with the adoption of these
1. Security: Security is a critical factor on every sys-
tools. Web-based management can minimize the distances,
tem that shares sensitive information. A WBPMS de-
improve and make easier the communication and collabo-
mands security measures in order keep the safety of
ration, reduce the time spent for re-works, etc., but these
its data. In, addition there is another significant issue
advantages can be gained only if all the participants of a
that affects the security level of a system; trust is very
project are ready to redesign the way they work. Besides the
important issue in every project. Some clients may be
fact that is very difficult for companies which are existed for
completely trustworthy and others may be needed to
years to change their business structure, they should take
be check all the time. This fact, in addition to a proba-
into consideration the potential changes and the benefits
ble threat, can increase both the time spent on project
that van gain from ICT. On the other hand, in order to use
and also the cost of it. [Matheu, 2005] mentions that
these tools, project participants must be trained and appro-
“there is definitely a need to ensure that people is en-
priate infrastructure must be provided taking into account
couraged to see this technology as a benefit rather than
security issues that might exist. In my opinion, ICT can im-
a threat”.
prove not only the project management practices but also
2. Infrastructure: Infrastructure is also a major limita- the most business tasks that take place into a company or
tion in a WBPMS. Companies need to have the neces- organization.
sary infrastructure (networks, hardware, internet, soft-
ware) in order to work smoothly. Most of companies
do not provide appropriate infrastructure due to vari- 5. REFERENCES
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