IT Project Management: Lessons Learned and Procurement Processes

This assignment delves into key aspects of IT project management, examining lessons learned from the project management process to enhance future project delivery and quality. It outlines the importance of project closeout and its role in evaluating stakeholder performance. The assignment further explores procurement processes, including competitive bidding, competitive proposals, requests for qualification, and direct purchase, highlighting how IT organizations ensure adherence to international standards. Additionally, it discusses various quality assessment methods like control charts, Pareto charts, and statistical sampling, which are crucial for monitoring and improving project performance throughout the project lifecycle. The content provides valuable insights into how these practices contribute to more efficient and successful IT projects.

Information system management
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Question one
Lessons learned from the project management process helps project stakeholders to
determine what has been done right and what might not have been done inappropriately. The
major concern is to emphasis on what has been learnt to improve future project delivery and
quality. It has five main steps; planning, sending ahead, getting required feedback, conducting
lessons learnt, and doing follow-ups. With these steps, project managers and stakeholders can
improve on project delivery and performance next phase or in other future IT projects (Havila,
Medlin, & Salmi, 013). Project closeout is aimed to assess project delivery, ensure smooth
completion and come up with lessons learnt as well as come up with best practices to be applied
in future projects. It is at the closeout stage the last stage where confirmation should be done to
make sure all stakeholder requirements are adequately met. In IT project management, both
lessons learnt and developing project closeout (PCR) involves evaluating overall stakeholder
performance during project delivery. Important to note is that information collected at project
closeout helps project managers and team members understand what should be done in the
preceding phase or future projects to enhance project efficiency and quality.
Question Two
Procurement involves different processes that IT organizations should follow to make
sure IT infrastructure adhere to required international standards. The main processes that IT
firms follow when outsourcing is; competitive bidding involves issuing of public bids to provide
an opportunity to companies to put forward the best proposal to compete for the project.
Competitive bidding is used by IT managers to promote openness and transparency in
procurement processes. The next processes are competitive proposals which are usually sent by
service providers willing to take up the project. Service providers and sellers outline their ability

to offer required IT services or supply quality IT equipment that aligns with international
standards. The third process requests for a qualification where outsourcing firm request some
firms to submit operational qualifications to be considered for a project. It is mainly applicable in
professional services where IT managers are not allowed to undergo through the competitive
procurement process (Ahn, Kwak, & Suk, 2016). The final process is a direct purchase which
involves the procurement of goods and services directly from the manufacturer or service
provider. It skips all other intermediary stages to make it easier for the IT manager of the
outsourcing firm to get the required service or equipment faster. It is mainly used by IT
managers in cases of emergency that cannot allow competitive bidding.
Quality assessment methods are quite important as they help project managers and
members to assess throughout the project lifecycle. The first quality control method is the control
chart which is the graphical representation used by project managers and members to study
changes over time. Control charts are used by IT project managers to determine whether project
management and performance parameters are under control or require some contingent measures
to normalize. The next method is Pareto charts, which has both bars and line graphs to represent
specific values in descending order through the use of bars, and specific cumulative values are
represented through the use of lines (Renz et al., 2016). The Pareto charts are used by IT
managers to measure the frequency of defects and project cumulative impacts, which project
managers should give the highest priority. Through prioritization, IT project managers can
observe and make the greatest project improvements within a short time. The last method is
statistical sampling, which involves choosing a small sample from a given population. Once the
sample is selected, data is collected from the selected group to help in understanding the project

population as a while. Sampling is mainly used by project managers to help understand the entire
project from a portion of the project.
References
Ahn, Y. H., Kwak, Y. H., & Suk, S. J. (2016). Contractors’ transformation strategies for
adopting building information modeling. Journal of management in engineering, 32(1),
05015005.
Havila, V., Medlin, C. J., & Salmi, A. (2013). Project-ending competence in premature project
closures. International Journal of Project Management, 31(1), 90-99.
Renz, A., Solas, M. Z., Almeida, P. R., Buhler, M., Gerbert, P., Castagnino, S., & Rothballer, C.
(2016). shaping the future of construction: A breakthrough in mindset and technology.
In World Economic Forum. Retrieved June (Vol. 7, p. 2017).