Decision Management Process Improvement Project

A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in Project ManagementIt has become all too common that questions are raised during the execution of a project pertaining to the decisions that were made early on. Without having maintained a concise, accessible record of project decisions, the project manager and team members would find it difficult to provide hard evidence as to how they got to this point and what impacts specific decisions had on the project’s trajectory. This paper introduces the Decision Management Process Improvement Project (DMPIP), which focuses on improving decision management process throughout the lifecycle of a project with the aim of adding value to project performance and helping obtain project success. This new tool was inspired due to a lack of appropriate methods involving complex projects at a local consulting firm. The process along with the tool is being added to the toolset of a local Consulting Firm. This Firm plans to introduce the tools and techniques to clients that will benefit from an increased Project Management maturity level with improvements to its decision-tracking processes and demonstration of downstream effects of important decisions. The final product is a contribution to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) in the form of creating a Project Decision Management knowledge area in the PMBOK format. A decision log that follows a decision throughout the whole process from problem identification and analysis to the eventual outcome is at the core of the created knowledge area.Title Page / Table of Contents / List of Exhibits / Abstract / Keywords / Introduction / Project Purpose / Project Benefits / Research Methodology / Research Results Analysis / Project Management Approach / Final Products / Conclusion and Recommendations / Opportunities for Future Development / Reference

Information Technologies for Engineering Asset Management – Cultural and Technical Barriers

Engineering enterprises utilize a variety of technologies to manage the lifecycle of their critical assets. These technologies consist of operational as well as information technologies that aim to provide control of individual asset management processes as well as to create overall information enabled integrated view of the asset lifecycle management regime. However, implementation and adoption of these technologies is not a linear progression and raises many issues at both the macro and micro levels in the organization. It is for the same reason that utilization of same technologies produces variance in efficiency, results, and outputs among different organizations. In many instances, the consideration of organizational and cultural issues is more important than technological issues in determining a successful outcome for information technologies deployment. In fact, it has been stated that the primary cause for information technology’s failure to yield positive results has been organizational behavior problems. This paper reports the findings from a study conducted in Australian asset managing organizations, which highlights how these organizations have used information technologies for asset management. This paper highlights that value maximization from information technologies utilization has strong contextual and social underpinnings. Their optimal utilization, therefore, calls for understanding the context within which they are deployed, as well as the processes that influence and are influenced by their use

Assessing Market-Based Solutions: Lessons from Evaluating a Youth Employment Initiative

Over the last few years, The Rockefeller Foundation – working with other funders, industry associations, governments and networks – has supported a portfolio of grantees to test a range of models for training, employing, and supporting low-income youth to carry out digital work. The Foundation funded an evaluation for its work in digital employment and the experience from the initial phase - which focused on impact sourcingprovided instrumental lessons on how one might think about assessing youth digital employment programs that embed market-based approaches

A comparative Test of the Efficiency, focus and Learning Perspectives of Outsourcing

Despite the fact that vertical integration has been a key question of management studies for more than fifty years, we still do not have a unified, coherent view of outsourcing. In particular, multiple theoretical perspectives such as transaction cost economics, industrial organization, and strategy, could explain the outsourcing decision, but the implications of these different streams have neither been theoretically integrated, nor tested simultaneously. In an attempt to disentangle the various causes of outsourcing, we suggest three different rationales for outsourcing: cost reduction, focusing on core capabilities and importing knowledge into the firm. We develop several hypotheses, which we then test on secondary data on French small- and medium-sized enterprises. Results indicate that the learning rationale appears to be the strongest factor influencing the outsourcing decision. Some performance implications of this rationale are also suggested and tested.outsourcing; transaction cost economics; resource-based view; knowledge-based view

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

Knowledge Management for Public Administrations: Technical Realizations of an Enterprise Attention Management System

The improvement of governments’ efficiency has gained great importance and validity especially in the current times of economic downturn. E-Government constitutes the most contemporary techno-managerial proposition in the track of possible interventions. The paper addresses, more specifically, empowerments necessitated by Public Administration (PA) organizations. Anchored on the needs of three real-life cases, the paper describes the conception and the realization of an IT artefact together with its methodological appeals aiming at improving information access and delivery and thus PAs’ decision making capacity. Our proposition constitutes a novel approach for managing users’ attention in knowledge intensive organizations which goes beyond informing a user about changes in relevant information towards proactively supporting the user to react on changes. The approach is based on an expressive attention model, which is realized by combining ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules with ontologies. The technical realizations described in the paper constitute the underlying infrastructure of an Enterprise Attention Management System

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

A Blueprint for Knowledge Management in the Biopharmaceutical Sector

This research examined current industry Knowledge Management (KM) methodologies and capabilities in order to gain insights into the level of maturity and understanding of KM within the biopharmaceutical sector. In addition, the researcher has developed models, tools and processes that can assist the sector to gain greater clarity of the value and merits that KM can offer to organizations. The researcher proposes that a systematic KM program can be used to “unlock” the knowledge and organizational capabilities necessary to convey real competitive advantage, but more importantly for the patient, to enable organizations to successfully develop and deliver the next generation of advanced therapeutics. The research questions asked; What are the current levels of adoption of KM within the biopharmaceutical sector? How is ‘critical knowledge’ defined within organizations? What might represent the core elements of a Pharma KM Blueprint to better enable knowledge flow within organizations? The research approach adopted a pragmatic worldview which is most suited to a research topic that is both real world practice orientated and problemcentered and sought to examine the consequences of actions within the biopharmaceutical sector when knowledge is not managed effectively. There were three primary phases of inquiry employed in the thesis and a mixed methods approach was used to explore the problems addressed. The first phase involved quantitative and qualitative data analysis of relevant literature sources, including available international KM benchmarking data. The second phase involved a biopharmaceutical industry consultation phase comprising of focus groups, polls and philosophical dialogues with KM experts, sector KM practitioners and knowledge workers. The third and final phase of inquiry involved the adaptation and development of the Pharma KM Blueprint including practical KM tools, frameworks and models for use within the biopharmaceutical sector. This phase also included a detailed case study executed within one large biopharmaceutical organization of a KM diagnostic tool and process developed as part of this research. The research findings have established a core principle that knowledge must be valued and managed as a critical asset within an organization, in the same manner as physical assets. In addition, the research identified that in order to realize the ambitions of ICH Q10, stated as, ‘enhance the quality and availability of medicines around the world in the interest of public health’, (ICH Q10, 2008), there is a crucial need to enhance the effective and efficient flow of knowledge across the product lifecycle within organizations. The research finds that in order to extract value from this organizational knowledge there must be practical, integrated and systematic KM approaches implemented for the identification, capture, curation and visibility of the critical knowledge assets before the matter of enhancing the flow of knowledge can be addressed. The research indicates that while these concepts are important to any business within the traditional biopharmaceutical sector planning on remaining competitive, they represent a “game changer” (or “game over”) opportunity for any organization planning to develop, manufacture or market advanced therapeutic products, personalized medicines or next generation products. A key output of the research is the Pharma KM Blueprint that illustrates the holistic integration of core KM principles, models and tools to deliver the real benefits to the patients and the business