Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to define, organize, oversee and control
the various project processes. Project managers for ebusiness project require general project management skills, understanding
of business processes and broad knowledge and experience of information technology. Implementation of e-business projects,
whether they're ERP, CRM, SCM or SFA, involves multimillion dollar investment and years of commitment.
E-Business software, ERP or CRM, counts about 50% cost of e-business projects.
Define Project Scope
The scope of e-business projects describes the major business processes the project will transform, the intended end users the project
will support, the relationship of the project with legacy information systems and ecommerce applications, the high level technical
architecture, funding availability, timeframe of application release and measures of the success of the project.
Develop Project Plan
Project planning is the process of detailing the project scope to look into the feasibility of the project from many aspects, and to
plan for the details of project execution.
Vendor Selection E-Business software, ERP or CRM, counts about 50% cost of e-business projects. The project plan should detail
the criteria of evualuating enterprise software, processes of selecting vendors, and candidate list of software vendors.
Implementation Paln Break the project into phases horizontally and sub-systems vertically. Pay attention to the custumization
of e-business software. Outline plans for custimization
Time & Cost Management Create a project schedule, resources and budget plan. Ebusiness projects may need purchase of
additional hardware and software, but the cost of software and implementation is most likely the major factor of overall cost.
Quality Management Develop a quality plan and carry out quality assurance and quality control activities.
Part of quality management at planning stage is the development of high level test plan. Implementation team can run the test plan against
high level requirements to validate scope of the project.
Resource Management Perform organizational planning, manage staff acquisitions and promote team development.
Risk Management Identify risks, develop contingency plans for possible risks.
User Training Plan Outline the steps, resources and time required for end user training.
Monitor and Control Project Progresses
Projects seldom proceed as planned. The progress of a project is impacted by many factors - change of project requirements, unexpected
technical challenges, and changes in resources availability. Project managers should closely monitor the progress of the project, identify
the critical successful factors and foresee the risks of project implementation, and adjust project plan and re-allocate resources.
The project plan is continuously updated to keep track of what's happening rather than what's planned.
Post Implementation Review
After the completion of the e-business project, project team can learn from experience, identify the things that went well and the things
that failed to work as planned.
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