Using agile project management in the design and implementation of activity-based costing systems

The success of a costing system is dependent on its appropriation and assimilation by the organization. The involvement of all stakeholders from the early stages of design and implementation plays a critical role in this process. In this paper, the use of agile project management is investigated to support the design and implementation of more effective costing systems. A Design Science Research approach was followed to apply an agile project management approach-the Scrum methodology-to the design and implementation of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system in a hospital imaging service. The proposed methodology identifies the roles, the events, and the most important artifacts in the design and implementation of costing systems. Research results show that applying agile project management principles contributes to a higher degree of acceptance of the costing system by the operating personnel, as well as by top management. It was also found that a simpler model (result of sprint 5), instead of a more detailed one (proposed for sprint 4), may better fit the interests of the decision makers and the organization's accounting and information systems. Thus, the best costing system is not necessarily the most complete or accurate, but the one that is most useful and adapted to the organization's needs. The definition of the product backlog, the several sprints, and the iterative process were critical in this process. The adoption of the Scrum methodology allowed the design and implementation of an ABC system more adapted to the organization's needs and allowed the early identification of problems that, traditionally, are only perceived at the end of the implementation process, therefore increasing the performance and economic sustainability of organizations.- This research is sponsored by FEDER funds through the program COMPETE-Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade-and by national funds through the FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia-under the project UIDB/00285/2020 and UIDB/00319/2020

Benefits Management in University-Industry R&D collaborative projects: a review on benefits and success factors

"Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / International Conference on Project MANagement / Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies, CENTERIS / ProjMAN / HCist 2016"Benefits Management is a field of growing interest in the universe of University-Industry collaborative partnerships. Therefore, this paper aims to present and discuss a review on benefits and success factors that were previously identified in the literature through two distinct methods of categorization in order to qualify and better understand how each benefit and success factor act and what are their intrinsic properties. Throughout these methods, the next goal is to perform a cause-effect analysis to understand which factors generate which benefits and make some theoretical assumptions based on these correlations. This study will display that there are important underlying conceptual issues in benefits categorization and will suggest, accordingly, an approach to surpass it in order to contribute to further research in benefits management.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Improving project management practices in architecture & design offices

"World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2017)"This paper describes a study on improving project management (PM) practices in architecture & design offices, conducted through semi-structured interviews and focus group with professionals from seven different offices. Taking into account the best PM practices described in literature and the most used practices and problems identified in this particular organizational context, a set of key PM practices are proposed. The results show that there are common practices already used by the architecture & design offices, such as: project charter, kickoff meeting, budgeting document and progress meetings. The problems found are mainly related to communication, collecting requirements, schedule control and portfolio management. The set of key PM practices proposed is composed by well-known practices: kick-off meeting, budgeting document, project charter, milestone planning, work packages and deadlines document, communication plan, change request, progress meeting, progress report, meeting minutes, client acceptance form and project closure documentation.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Conceptualization of project management offices structures

Project management is becoming an asset to a considerable amount of organizations in their everyday routine. When the importance of PM grows, the challenges that an organization has to face also raise, and the need of an effective answer becomes essential. The Project Management Office (PMO) is an entity which aims to facilitate project management, to solve its main challenges and to optimize its best practices within the organization. However, to decide which specific functions and in what context should an organization implement a PMO remains a major challenge for most organizations. Therefore, this paper suggests different PMOs typologies, designed to perceive PMOs like an evolutional structure. The PMOs are conceptualized as models through the roles they play, taking into account the level of integration within the organization

Improving and embedding project management practice: Generic or context dependent?

Taking into account the contingency theory, this paper explores the extent to which key project management improvement initiatives and key embedding factors, identified in a previously developed conceptual framework, are dependent on organizational context, namely sector of activity, organization size, geographic area and project types. Therefore, aiming to guide professionals on making use of such framework in their organizations. Statistically significant contextual correlations were looked for in a worldwide sample of 793 questionnaire responses from project management professionals, using Principal Component Analysis, ANOVA test and post-hoc Tukey test. Context related differences found were limited, suggesting that the framework for improving and embedding project management practice is substantially generic. Therefore, the paper shows the explanatory power of the framework, which can be used by any organization independent of its sector of activity, dimension, geographic area and project types, however indicating the existence of slight differences. For example, Information Technology companies might give more relevance to initiatives such as corporate standardization and tailoring of project management processes tools and techniques than Engineering and Construction companies.INCT-EN - Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia para Excitotoxicidade e Neuroproteção(SFRH/BPD/111033/2015

Project management system implementation in SMEs: a case study

This paper aims to describe the implementation of a Project Management System (PMS), supported by a Project Management Information System (PMIS) in a SME. The implemented PMS was designed to be flexible in order to support the different organization’s business areas that have different types of projects requiring different project management (PM) approaches. Therefore, a hybrid model was implemented, merging traditional with agile PM practices, and thus achieving the flexibility demanded by the organization, without unsettle projects planning. After implementing the PMIS, several difficulties were experienced with the embedding process. It was felt the system implemented was too complex for the organization’s PM maturity, and that it would be necessary to re-evaluate the scope of this implementation. So, difficulties, failures and successes experienced are presented, as well as improvement actions that may facilitate the embedment of the PMS in the organization. The conclusion was that the main problems were related to the complexity of some PMIS requirements, associated with more formal PM practices, and with the range of the initial dissemination of the system. Therefore, it was suggested a revision of the PMS to become less complex, and a new embedding approach, more realistic and measurable

Team resilience model: an empirical examination of information systems projects

Organizations need well-prepared teams to perform their projects with efficiency and effectiveness. In such socio-technical systems, project teams' capability to face and surpass difficulties play a critical role for the organizational reliability. Hence the relevance of studying project team resilience, defined here as the team's ability to deal with problems, overcome obstacles, and quickly recover from adverse and possibly harmful situations without collapsing. This paper presents an empirically-tested theoretical model for explaining team resilience. Results show that several factors such as Trust & Solidarity, Focus on results, Commitment, Management & Accountability, Embracing conflicts, Work conditions, and Skills & Behaviors are important contributors for team resilience. The findings discussed here contribute both to a better understanding of how project team resilience can be studied theoretically and improved in practice and to determine the triggers to ensure the proper adjustments to improve the overall organizational resilience and consequent reliability and performance.This work has been supported by FCT Fundacao para a Ciancia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Risks, issues and critical success factors in shared service center projects

ICOPEV2018 – 4th International Conference on Production Economics and Project Evaluation | 20 Set. - 21 Set. 2018This paper is based on a case study performed in a Shared Service Center from SEG Automotive group, a former automotive division from Bosch. Due to the Bosch decision of selling the business unit of Starter Motors and Generators, it was required to create a Shared Service Center which performed the processes, until then executed by central departments to all Bosch divisions. This paper will focus on the project of processes transfer from the Bosch departments to the Shared Service Center. Through semi-structured interviews to the leadership team, it was intended to identify the major risks and issues of those projects and its critical success factors, in order to allow the management to work on measures that can avoid the risks and issues and potentiate the project success. The results show the importance of the alignment and cooperation of all stakeholders during the whole project life. It turns also clear the need of a project manager that leads the project, guides the team and has authority for decisions making. Moreover, the influence of the project team within the project is clear, being crucial to have experience, flexibility and multilanguage knowledge.This research was supported by the SEG Automotive Portugal. I appreciate the support from all the colleagues which accepted to be part of the interviews phase. Without their support this work would not have been possible

Improving and embedding project management practice in organisations - A qualitative study

This paper describes the results of a qualitative study to develop a framework to help organisations to embed useful project management improvement initiatives (PMIIs), which specifically aimed to identify key PMIIs and key embedding factors, based upon the circumstances encountered in different organisations. While the literature on PM provides some advice about PMIIs, understanding how to facilitate their embedment appears to be limited. However, research reported in the innovation literature provides a useful preliminary set of salient factors. A first attempt at framework conceptualisation based on a literature review was used as a starting point for exploratory empirical research. A series of thirty semi-structured interviews with PM professionals sought to identify additional PMIIs and embedding factors and check its salience. Analysis of the interviews data led to a framework comprising key 15 PMIIs and 26 key embedding factors, grouped into four improving themes and six embedding themes.This research was sponsored by the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/65423/2009). The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the thirty interviewees who participated in the study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Improving communication through a social project management approach - a car industry case study

This paper describes the results of a qualitative study for improving communication in New Product Development (NPD) projects through a social project management approach. Through a case study research strategy, the main communication problems in a Car Industry section, dealing with NPD projects, were identified and four important initiatives were established to solve these communication problems: (i) standardize an integrated project management process focused on social interaction; (ii) select the most appropriate information tools for an 'open' and continuous communication environment; (iii) standardize the information disclosure for each information tool; and (iv) create/improve the visualization of the disclosed information