Integrating Sustainable Development in Managing IT Projects Essay

This essay report delves into the crucial topic of integrating sustainable development within the realm of IT project management. It underscores the growing significance of sustainability across all industries, highlighting how IT has embraced sustainable practices to foster social, cultural, and economic growth. The essay emphasizes that while sustainable development has gained recognition, practical integration remains a challenge for many businesses. It defines sustainable development as strategies that promote economic growth while protecting natural and human resources. The report covers critical success factors for implementing sustainable development in IT, including leadership commitment, stakeholder engagement, and effective execution. The essay discusses the environmental impact of IT, including electricity consumption and carbon emissions, while also highlighting the role of project managers and the importance of adopting green IT practices. The essay concludes by emphasizing the indispensable role of integrating sustainable development in IT practices, emphasizing collaboration and efficiency to foster sustainable growth.

Running Head: Essay
Integrating sustainability in
managing IT projects
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Running Head: Essay
Introduction: This essay report focuses on integrating sustainability development in managing
IT projects. Sustainability is an important theme for any industry to survive & grow at the global
level. Every industry including Information Technology work towards implementing
sustainability strategies which helps in social, cultural & economic growth of an organization.
Industries & corporate are putting more effort to integrate sustainability to their business
practices from the last decade irrespective of their geographic locations (Petrini, 2010). World
has seen phenomenal growth of IT Industry globally over the past few years and IT industry has
welcomed sustainability practices with open arms.
Sustainable development is not a new concept. Though it has received significant recognition
from many industries but still it remains just a theoretical idea for many business executives in
today’s world. Industries need to integrate sustainable development in strategy & planning of
their enterprises in order to achieve its real capability. Sustainable development means
implementing such business activities and strategies which will help industry & its stakeholders
to grow economically in parallel of protecting & enhancing natural & human resources for
future. This definition of sustainable development is based on the concept proposed by the World
Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 (IISD, 1992). Different business
communities & groups have different meanings to the term sustainability but to summarize all it
is a development that fulfills the needs of the current generation without compromising the
potential of future generations to fulfill their own needs. This idea & its strategies are changing
over the time responding to the evolving practices of our society & industries. Every industry or
enterprise can make its efforts to accomplish the concept of sustainability development but the
strategies, practices & methods varies by the sector & size of the industry (Walsh, 2007).
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Unfortunately, few organizations are more keen toward their economical growth only &
completely ignore any of their social responsibility whereas many industries give importance to
their sustainable development & maintain a perfect balance between self interest and their social
responsibilities (Mobbs, 2012). Considering broader perspective, it is important & in interest of
every organization to work in a healthy environment. It provides more opportunities to expand &
sustain in global market in long term.
In many developed & developing countries, information systems are an important part of most
people’s lives. Information Technology has created tremendous opportunities in education,
science, space, finance and many more areas. Today, most of our business sectors and society
has large dependency on information technology. It is impractical to imagine a long term growth
& survival of any business without Information system. There has been a revolution in IT
industry over last two decades but development of IT, communications & its equipment has
some price. Apart from the financial cost to setup & maintain this industry, it is affecting our
ecosystem in many other ways. Impact of IT on environment is not just measured by the
electricity consumed by IT system hardware but there are other factors like air transport system,
carbon emission, noise etc. As per the recent report published by a climate group in London,
machines, printers, computer, smart phones etc. are responsible 830m tonne of carbon dioxide
emission in 2007 globally which is 2% of the total emission by human activities (Schäfer, 2013).
About one fourth of this emission generates from manufacturing of the computer systems & the
remaining come from its use. The report also estimates that emission of carbon dioxide from
these computers & widgets is increasing by 6% every year (Economist, 2009).
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Nowadays major IT giants are working towards attaining a goal of sustainable development in
their organizations. Critical success factors for implementing sustainable development in IT are
as follows
 Leadership commitment
 External & employee engagement and collaboration
 Execution mechanism or Implementation
On a journey of sustainability, commitment from leadership or top management plays a
significant role. It gets easy to implement policies when the top bosses believe in it. It actually
allows employees to trust each other and to take essential risks (Eccles, 2012). It is important to
involve external stakeholders such as suppliers, NGOs, clients, investors & make them believe in
sustainability strategies. Employee engagement is indispensable practice to make any
organizational change & policy execution. Employees are valuable assets of any organization &
play a vital role in implementing sustainable development strategy. Employees & stakeholders of
an information technology organization must understand the importance of these strategies &
work collaboratively towards the goal (Atuluku, 2016). There is a dedicated goal in UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals & i.e. Partnerships and Collaboration. It is important to
maximize limited resources & increase knowledge base which can be achieved by collaboration.
Last but not the least the most important factor is implementing or executing the strategies. This
should be achieved in phases (Mindrup, 2016). For e.g. having more energy efficient data
centers, using virtual machines or cloud instead of multiple hardware kits, safe disposal of IT
assets etc.
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Running Head: Essay
In old & traditional concept, Time, Cost & Quality are the fundamental criteria in measuring the
success of any IT project. Sustainability is making its strong presence in measuring success of
any IT project or a company. Meeting safety standards, sustainable outcome & quality are one of
the major criteria of a successful project (Basu, 2017). There are many reasons/causes of an IT
project or an IT company like ineffective collaboration or coordination of employees with
stakeholders, social interaction, ineffective decision making etc. Some researchers argue that
sustainability can lead to tension between different stakeholders & it is a major challenge to
achieve it in large IT projects but by proper planning & execution it can be accomplished. The
main concerns of sustainability in IT industry are electricity consumption, carbon dioxide
emission, hardware disposal, global warming, noise pollution, compliance with current
legislation etc. A successful IT company with sustainable development manages & gives priority
to all the above mentioned concerns. They should have proper policy of disposing end of life
hardware or recycling it. They should prefer renewable power from lower carbon emitting
resource as an electricity source for their machines. Another way of improving efficiency is to
implement virtualization, in which multiple operating system & applications can run on same
hardware or a physical computer.
Green IT is a new jargon promoted by big computer manufacturers. According to a research, 5Ps
(Process, Presiding, Pragmatic, People and Performance) should be considered by an IT project
manager as proactive measures to achieve sustainable development in IT projects (Taherdoost,
2015). Project managers in IT companies shall play a role of social actors. They need to
understand fundamentals of sustainability with proper assessment. They should do a proper
research on corporate social responsibility, identify relevant key areas & implement it. Proper
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Running Head: Essay
data analysis, policies & technical knowhow leads to a smooth sustainability (Agarwal, 2015).
Project Management approach should be to identify areas & provision ideas on a project level,
unit level or at the organization level as applicable. For example, a manager handling a small
project can assess & decide if the physical machines can be replaced with virtual machines.
Conclusion: The integration of sustainable development is indispensable part of practices
followed by IT industry. In today’s world mostly all IT giants are working collaboratively &
efficiently in implementing sustainability practices. As rightly said by United Nations World
Commission on Environment that sustainable development meets the need of presence without
compromising the ability of future generation to meet their needs & requirement. These practices
not only help the organization to grow socially but also enhance their cultural & economic
growth.
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References
Agarwal, S., 2015. Sustainability in Project Management:, Available at: http://umu.diva-
portal.org/smash/get/diva2:899231/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Atuluku, A., 2016. Critical Success Factors for Business Sustainability, Available at:
http://sustyvibes.com/critical-success-factors-business-sustainability/
Basu, R., 2017. Project Success Criteria and Success Factors, Available at:
http://www.gpmfirst.com/books/managing-quality-projects
Eccles, R., 2012. Critical Success Factors of a Sustainable Company, Available at:
https://www.finchandbeak.com/849/critical-success-factors-sustainable.htm
Economist, 2009. Computing climate change, Available at:
http://www.economist.com/node/14297036
IISD, 1992. Business strategies for sustainable development, pp. 1-4, Available at:
https://www.iisd.org/business/pdf/business_strategy.pdf
Mindrup, J., 2016. Three Critical Success Factors for the Sustainability Journey, Available at:
http://www.questforum.org/sustainability-success-factors/
Mobbs, P., 2012. A practical guide to sustainable IT. pp. 3-6, Available at:
http://www.apc.org/sites/default/files/Section1.pdf
Petrini, M., 2010. Integrating sustainability into business practices: learning from Brazilian
firms, Available at: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1807-
76922010000400004
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Schäfer, T., 2013. Green IT: sustainable communications and information technology, Available
at: https://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/en/global-goals/sdg-09-infrastructure/green-it-
sustainable-information-technology/
Taherdoost, H., 2015. How to Lead to Sustainable and Successful IT. Propose 5Ps Guideline.
Volume 4, pp. 15-25, Available at:
http://elvedit.com/journals/IJACSIT/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/How-to-Lead-to-Sustainable-
and-Successful-IT-Project-Management-Propose-5Ps-Guideline.pdf
Walsh, K., 2007. Environmentally Sustainable IT topics covering definition, objectives, systems
and solutions, Available at:
https://www.cio.com/article/2437751/energy-efficiency/environmentally-sustainable-it-
definition-and-solutions.html
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