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Information systems development (ISD) project management involves planning, organizing resources, measuring and controlling progress against plans with an overall goal of achieving a set of project objectives, including schedule, cost, and quality. The purpose of project control is to provide an understanding of project¡¦s progress so that appropriate corrective actions can be taken when the project¡¦s performance deviates significantly from the plan. Because the management of ISD is nonroutine and difficult, it provides a classic example of the issues associated with structuring control mechanisms for complex tasks. For the rapid development of information technology and the quick change of environment, companies are increasingly outsourcing all or part of their IS activities, including IS development. Become a partnership of strategic alliance between the client and the vendor is the trend of IS outsourcing activities. The truly critical success factors associated with successful outsourcing are those associated with vendor governance. An important aspect of this governance is how the client exercise control over the vendor. Outsourced ISD projects pose unique problems that make the task of controlling them particularly challenging. This research views control broadly, in a behavioral sense. The behavioral view of control implies that the controller uses certain devices, or control mechanisms, to promote desired behavior by the controllee. These control mechanisms help implement control modes, which may broadly be divided into formal controls and informal controls. Two types of formal controls have been commonly considered in prior literature, including outcome control and behavior control. Informal controls are also of two types: clan control and self-control. This study employs control theory to establish the research model, and examines the factors influencing the choice of control modes, the dynamics of control, and evolution of portfolio of controls over the duration of outsourced ISD projects. The differences between the internal ISD and the outsourced IS projects are also examined. Drawing from the case study, it concludes that some findings from research on control of internal ISD projects apply to the outsourced context as well, but with some interesting differences¡G (1)At the choice of formal controls, there is no distinction between the internal ISD and the outsourced ISD projects. (2)At the choice of informal controls, there is obvious distinction between the internal ISD and the outsourced ISD projects. (3)In a strategic alliance context, it is expected that informal controls could be exercised in the outsourced ISD projects, as well as in the internal ISD projects. The degree of informal controls could be exercised is determined by the role expectations and the long-term cooperation between the client firms and the vendors.

This thesis deals with project management and methodologies for information systems implementation, particularly for IS of SAP AG. The first part of the work describes basic problems of project management and introduces certain project management methodologies. ASAP and ASAP Focus methodologies are described in more detail. The second part of this work uses these fundamentals to analyze frequent problems on projects of real company that implements pre-customized IS of SAP AG. Solutions for these problems are proposed and a brief methodology is created as a result of the work.

This paper is focused on the process of design and implementation of information systems in small businesses and factors that influence this process. The course of the process per-formed by selected company is first mapped and subsequently analysed by means of case studies of real projects implemented by the company. This analysis points to the frequent occurrence of variances of the projects with the mapped process, especially in the analytical part of the process, and major impact of different psychological and sociological char-acteristics of the client or its representatives on the progress of the project. Based on these findings innovative process changes are suggested. The first change is modification of the analytical process to include acquisition of information on the characteristics of the client and to be more adaptable to the nature and scope of the project. The second is categoriza-tion of the client based on the identified characteristics and assessment of these characteris-tics as potential risks of the project. The last change is the adoption of agile approach to the process, allowing greater process flexibility with respect to the needs of specific clients and higher quality outputs.