Quality management practices to direct and control the accomplishment of project objectives in R&D units

Projects create value and capabilities for organizations and beneficiaries of their outcomes and must be managed by implementing quality processes to assure an execution compliant with plans, activities, and applicable standards, and to accomplish the defined requirements and objectives in an efficient and effective manner. This study analyzed the frequency of use of quality management practices by companies with R&D units and compared them with project management students expectations of implementing quality project management practices as a professional. The data was collected using an online survey, and twenty-six quality management practices have been analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, following standard procedures, and using the Independent-samples T-Test. For twelve out of the twenty-six practices, significant differences have been found between the two samples, five referring to quality planning practices and seven referring to quality control practices. For the twelve quality management practices, project management students had greater expectations of implementing them, in contrast to the actual frequency of use among the surveyed companies. The results can provide inputs to improve project management practices among companies, reinforcing the importance of training and recruiting project management professionals that have the required training, talent, and aligned expectations on how to successfully manage projects.- (undefined

Strategic action plans for school improvement: an exploratory study about quality indicators for school improvement plan evaluation

Strategic planning and strategic school plans are considered relevant tools for school improvement. This study aimed to identify quality indicators for school plans and test usage in the Portuguese context. A grid with quality indicators for schools' plans analysis was designed (e.g. preliminary content analysis of the plans of Portuguese schools, national guidelines, and educational literature). Nine quality indicators guided the content analyses of 663 strategic action plans of Portuguese schools. Results indicated that plans lack relevant quality dimensions being more a description or a list of actions than a document that supports the strategic action of a given school. These results can derive implications for policies, practice, and research related to school improvement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An agile portfolio management model for the insurance sector: the APMI model

Nowadays, the increasing uncertainty and instability make it crucial for traditional companies to become more agile and able to act fast on consumer needs and expectations. Therefore, many insurance companies are seeking to increasingly adopt Agile practices to become more effective, faster, and leaner in their critical processes. On the other hand, several companies are strengthening their planning methodologies by implementing Portfolio Management models. These models enable them to manage their initiatives in a more integrated and efficient manner that is strategically aligned, minimizes complexity, and provides higher flexibility when responding to uncertainty. Given the limited scientific knowledge in combining Agile and Portfolio Management (PfM), particularly in the insurance industry, a new Agile Portfolio Management (APfM) model, the APMI – Agile Portfolio Management for insurers was designed and tested, showing how Agile and PfM international practices can be conciliated with current insurance industry-specific practices. Results revealed a high satisfaction level with the model implementation, indicating that the proposed model can foster a greater strategic alignment, increase the organization’s strategic focus, promote transversal alignment and visibility, and support the organization’s capacity coordination

Toolbox Value Creation Handbook : Charting People, Planet and Profit in Value Chains

To create a sustainable society companies need new data and information regarding e.g. environmental and societal impacts of new products or processes are necessary, but these are often missing. Information systems can play an important role here and many tools are already developed. It became clear that one crucial tool was lacking: One that (a) integrates People, Planet, and Profit value (b) focuses on the whole production chains and (c) allows flexible data input. A new tool, QChain, was born. QChain is meant for anybody who works on sustainability issues, aiming to create a sustainable production chain. In practice this will often be policy makers, champions, consultants and network coordinators that work on a sustainability problem or valorisation issues. The tool is especially useful in organizations that feel the need or want to create the need to not only focus on profit, but also reckon with people and planet value – their licence to produce. QChain is a drawing tool that supports shared value creation for sustainable production chains

An agile portfolio management model for the insurance sector: the APMI model

Nowadays, the increasing uncertainty and instability make it crucial for traditional companies to become more agile and able to act fast on consumer needs and expectations. Therefore, many insurance companies are seeking to increasingly adopt Agile practices to become more effective, faster, and leaner in their critical processes. On the other hand, several companies are strengthening their planning methodologies by implementing Portfolio Management models. These models enable them to manage their initiatives in a more integrated and efficient manner that is strategically aligned, minimizes complexity, and provides higher flexibility when responding to uncertainty. Given the limited scientific knowledge in combining Agile and Portfolio Management (PfM), particularly in the insurance industry, a new Agile Portfolio Management (APfM) model, the APMI – Agile Portfolio Management for insurers was designed and tested, showing how Agile and PfM international practices can be conciliated with current insurance industry-specific practices. Results revealed a high satisfaction level with the model implementation, indicating that the proposed model can foster a greater strategic alignment, increase the organization’s strategic focus, promote transversal alignment and visibility, and support the organization’s capacity coordination

Impact of Leadership in Project Management

Today’s business environment demands effective project management for enterprises to meet their goals and continue to be innovative. Inherently, this also means that project managers must have strong leadership skills. Project management provides a framework of techniques that provides a symbiotic relationship between both the framework and the leader. The idea behind project management is to complete objectives efficiently within a certain time period given a restricted number of resources. This means project management is a process of principles, tools, and methodologies used to effectively manage a team through the System Development Life Cycle. The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is made up of six parts. These include identifying the problem, planning, and monitoring the project, discovering, and understanding the problem, designing system components to solve the problem, build/test/integrate system components, and implementing the solution. There are many methodologies such as XP, SCRUM, or Agile, but we must first understand the importance of project management principles

IT-business strategic alignment in the context of business process reengineering : case studies of large organisations in Lesotho.

Master of Commerce in Information Ssytems and Technology. University KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2018.The alignment of IT strategy and business strategy is an ongoing topic of interest for many researchers. In the same light is Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). The existing literature considers these two topics separately in the context of developed countries. This study taps into this gap by investigating how IT-business alignment at a strategic level can be achieved in BPR by considering the influential factors that drive this alignment in large organisations in Lesotho. The study empirically builds on centrally placing IT-business strategic alignment at the heart of BPR. Consequently, the findings show that IT-business alignment plays a pivotal role in the success or failure of a BPR project. New directions for future studies are suggested and discussed