Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Despite the growth and adoption of project management expertise and techniques, the increase in organisational project-maturity and the emergence of the Web, project success remains a challenge. A key factor leading to the continued failure in IT projects is the lack of identification and appreciation for the key factors that influence the success of project management success. Therefore the researcher embarked on this study to determine the top five critical success factors of project management in the South African ICT environment. The researcher also determined during which phases of the project life cycle these critical success factors occur. In order to determine these objectives, qualitative research was conducted that included a study of literature, available material, views from experts as well as a content analysis from sample interviews. South African ICT companies do not directly focus on any critical success factors, but indirectly they do focus on certain areas that will increase the probability of project management success. The research identified the top five critical success factors as a comprehensive project management plan, well defined scope, skilled and experienced project managers, user / customer involvement and top management support. The research also identified that the focusing on the project planning and project execution and monitoring phases of the project life cycle are the most crucial for project management success. In addition the research identified that project managers who have a strong technical background understand the complexities of the product better and do tend to manage the deferent component of the projects more effectively. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ten spyte van die groei en toename in projekbestuurkundigheid en -tegnieke, die toename in organisatoriese projek volwassenheid en die uitbreiding van die Web, bly projeksukses ‘n uitdaging. Om die rede het die navorser die studie onderneem om die vyf top kritiese suksesfaktore van projekbestuur in die Suid-Afrikaanse ICT omgewing te bepaal. Om hierdie doelwit te bepaal is kwalitatiewe navorsing onderneem wat ‘n literatuurstudie, beskikbare materiaal, opinies van kundiges sowel as inhoudsanalise van onderhoude gevoer insluit. Suid-Afrikaanse ICT maatskappye fokus nie direk op enige kritiese suksesfaktore nie, maar indirek fokus hulle wel op sekere areas wat die waarskynlikheid van projekbestuur sukses sal laat toeneem. Die navorsing identifiseer die vyf kritiese suksesfaktore as ‘n samevattende projekbestuursplan, goed gedefinieerde omvang, kundige en ervare projekbestuurders, gebruiker/kliënt betrokkenheid en topbestuur ondersteuning. Die navorsing het ook identifiseer dat die fokus op projekbestuursbeplanning, en projekuitvoering en monitering fases van die projeklewensiklus die mees kritiese is vir projeksukses. Die navorsing het ook identifiseer dat projekbestuurders wat ‘n sterk tegniese agtergrond het die ingewikkeldheid van die eindproduk beter verstaan asook die verskillende komponente van die projek meer effektief bestuur.

Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is an investigation and study into the impact of emotional intelligence (EQ) on the leadership qualities and competencies of the management team of the T-Systems South-Africa’s Systems Integration (SI) department. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) business arena is a volatile and unpredictable environment that brings about unique challenges for the leadership qualities and skills of the modern leader and team member. During his studies towards the degree of Master in Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Stellenbosch, the researcher was introduced to the concept of emotional intelligence and the impact that it could have on the management of people and the growth and success of an organisation as a whole. Organisations are investing more and more in ICT practices to direct their business initiatives towards financial success. These investments include the professional disciplines such as program and project management. This lead to the question whether the so-called “hard” sciences that are applied on a daily base to govern a project, team or a business will be enough to sustain growth and ensure financial sustainability for a company. The importance of the “softer” sciences such as EQ are often overlooked and the researcher wanted to investigate the impact that increased awareness and knowledge regarding EQ abilities could have on leadership within an ICT department towards achieving overall success. The value of EQ can only be understood if managers and teams understand the concept and potential impact of EQ on both a personal and professional level to guide them to eventual success, even in difficult and trying times. The aim of this study, whilst focusing on the impact of EQ on leadership, will be to provide information and create awareness of the EQ concept to the broader SI department’s employees. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie tesis is verkennende navorsing en verdere studie om die impak wat emosionele intelligensie (EQ) op die leierskap strukture binne die Stelsel Integrasie department (SI), van T-Systems, Suid-Afrika kan hê, verder te verken. Die korporatiewe omgewing van vandag is uiters mededingend, onvoorspelbaar en kompleks. Die omgewing bied unieke uitdagings aan die leierskapkwaliteite van die moderne leier en bestuurder binne die Informasie en Kommunikasie Tegnologie (IKT) veld. Gedurende sy studie aan die Universiteit Van Stellenbosch om die Meestergraad in Besigheidsadministrasie (MBA) te voltooi, was die navorser blootgestel aan die konsep van emosionele intelligensie en die onderlinge impak wat die wetenskaplike veld kan teweeg bring om volhoubare groei en ontwikkeling binne ‘n organisasie te stimuleer. Organisasies spandeer en investeer jaarliks miljoene rande aan Informasie en Tegnologie (IT) stelsels om hulle besigheidsprosesse te aktiveer en sodoende suksesvol te wees op alle strategiese gebiede insluitende volhoubare finansiële sukses. Die investerings sluit die konsepte van program- en projekbestuur in. Die vraag wat gereeld gevra word, is of die sogenaamde “harde” wetenskappe soos projekbestuur wat daagliks in ’n projekomgewing aangewend word, genoeg sal wees om te verseker dat ’n organisasie volhoubare groei en finansiële sukses op die langtermyn kan nastreef. Die belangrikheid van die “sagter” wetenskappe soos emosionele intelligensie word baie kere oorgesien en die navorser wil poog om die impak van emosionele intelligensie op die leierskapkwaliteit en standaarde binne die SI department te ondersoek en te bepaal of dit bydra tot die departement se sukses. Die waarde van emosionele intelligensie kan net verstaan word indien leiers en bestuurders die onderliggende konsepte en potensiële impak verstaan en die waarde besef wat die veld op beide hulle persoonlike maar ook professionele lewens mag hê om suksesvol te kan wees, selfs in moeilike tye. Die doel van die studie, alhoewel meer gerig op die impak wat emosionele intelligensie op leierskap mag hê, poog ook om bewustheid te skep en die nodige inligting rakende emosionele intelligensie konsepte uit te lig en van toepassing te maak op die werknemers binne die SI department.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Research into Business and IT alignment and the critical success factors is quite vast and diverse. Many studies have been carried out on specific industries and companies of a certain size. Other studies have dissected strategic IT alignment into different dimensions, intellectual and social. Yet other studies have taken different approaches, such as process-oriented, cognitive approaches, and resource-based approaches. All these were done in the quest to find the factors that influence the attainment of strategic alignment in organisations. There has, however, not been a study that sought to bring all these different factors together and provide one collective view on them, which this study seeks to do. There also have been some studies on how to measure alignment. Several different approaches were made in an effort to discern the way in which alignment can be measured and what criteria should be used. These efforts have been varied and no particular study has tried to bring them all together to assist practitioners in their attempts to determine the level of alignment in organisations. The purpose of this literature review is to collect all the different critical success factors as well as all the common success measures, and formulate a collated list for both. This research report seeks to give an integrated view of the factors required to bring about alignment as well as the measures practitioners–use to determine the level of alignment once these factors are in place. The findings show that there are commonalities among the factors that influence alignment. These have been tabulated into one list, bringing together all common factors from the pertinent literature to date. They were grouped into seven main categories based on similarity, which are shared knowledge, planning processes, executive commitment, communication, clarity of business goals, prior success of IT, and user involvement. These common factors are presented in Table 4.1. The measures for success are more varied and a separate list for the common success measures was also tabulated. The common measures of alignment had a total of 15 criteria, which are shown in Table 4.1.These lists can be used by the practitioner who needs guidance on which factors are important for the realisation of strategic alignment and which criteria to measure once the factors have been implemented.

Thesis (MEng)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis focuses on information systems for project management in the South African Government with special attention to the Consolidated Municipal Infrastructure Programme. Project data exchange standards and the suitability of these standards for project information management in the South African Government is reviewed. Information system technologies applicable to project management, with reference to computer programming languages, markup languages, communication technologies, Internet technologies, database technologies and document manipulation tools are discussed. Project information management forms are then discussed, followed by an overview of the flow of project information during the lifecycle of a project. The standards development organisation, ActionIt, and the project information management models developed by it are highlighted. A description of applications and a system that was implemented to illustrate the work covered in this thesis is provided with examples of the applications and the system. Hierna tesis fokus op inligting sisteme vir projekbestuur in die Suid Afrikaanse Regering met spesifieke verwysing na die Gekonsolideerde Munisipale Infrastruktuur Program. Standaarde vir die uitruil van projek inligting sowel as die toepaslikheid van hierdie standaarde vir die bestuur van projek inligting in die Suid Afrikaanse Regering word bespreek. Informasie sisteem tegnologiee wat van toepassing is op die bestuur van projek inligting word behandel en sluit in: rekenaar programerings tale, 'markup' tale, kommunikasie tegnologiee, Internet tegnologiee, databasis tegnologiee en gereedskap om dokumente te manipuleer. Verskillende projek vorms word behandel gevolg deur 'n beskrywing van die vloei van data gedurende 'n projek se leeftyd. "n Beskrywing van ActionIT, 'n organisasie vir die neerle van standaarde vir gebruik in die Suid Afrikaanse regering, sowel as die modelle wat deur ActionIT ontwikkel is vir die bestuur van projek inligting word gegee. Die toepassings en sisteem wat geimplimenteer is om die werk wat in hierdie tesis behandel is te demonstreer word gegee met voorbeelde van die toepassings en sisteem. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: geen opsomming

Executive Information Systems (EIS) grew out ofthe information needs of top executives. The recent literature reports that EIS usage has spread throughout organisations. Web-based technologies are causing a revisit of existing IT implementation models, including those for EIS. These technologies include: Intranet, Internet, Extranet, e-Commerce: Business-to-Business (B2B), e-Comrnerce: Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and other mobile technologies. The author conducts a field study of 31 well-established organisations in KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa, which have EIS experience. A validated survey instrument is administered to an EIS stakeholder in each organisation surveyed. This dissertation reports on (1) an investigation into previous research on IT adoption; (2) that there is little evidence to support that the theoretical usage aspects of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) are echoed in EIS implementations in KwaZulu/Natal; and (3) identifies and ranks Web-based technologies in order of their perceived impact on EIS currently and in the future. There is a positive impact level trend for all Web-based technologies on future EIS implementations. The results from this field study could be useful in formulating a set of management perspectives for organisations in South Africa wishing to embark on EIS implementation programs. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

M.Tech. / In this age of ever-increasing competition, organisations are facing unprecedented pressure to meet the combined obligations of showing returns to shareholders, and staying ahead of the competition. To meet these obligations, organisations have become increasingly dependent on technology, as an enabler. This dependency suggests that technology projects have become strategically more important than ever for organisations; yet the success of technology projects remains questionable. Furthermore, organisations do not have simple mechanisms to allow them to quickly and accurately trace the causes of IT project management failures. One of the causes of project management failures is the inability and/or unwillingness of project managers to adhere to project management best practices adopted by their organisations. This research proposes a simple and repeatable model to help organisations determine whether they are indeed following the project management best practices which they purport to follow. The research methods consisted firstly of a wide review of relevant literature on auditing, project management, and IT governance. Secondly, empirical data was collected and analysed. Thirdly, modelling was used to develop a conceptual model for auditing IT project management. The empirical study is based on a semi-structured interview, involving ten project managers in charge of IT projects. The findings from this research confirm that project managers do not adhere to project management best practices which they purport to follow. Consequently, this dissertation concludes that IT project managers must adhere to best practices adopted by their organisations, regardless of how impractical or inconvenient that may seem; the proposed model for auditing IT project management helps them achieve just that.

M.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

In this thesis, a framework for improving model-driven system design productivity with Requirements-Driven Design Automation (RDDA) is presented. The key to the proposed approach is to close the semantic gap between requirements, components and architecture by using compatible semantic models for describing product requirements and component capabilities, including constraints. An ontology-based representation language is designed that spans requirements for the application domain, the software design domain and the component domain. Design automation is supported for architecture development by machine-based mapping of desired product/subsystem features and capabilities to library components and by synthesis and maintenance of Systems Modeling Language (SysML) design structure diagrams. The RDDA framework uses standards-based semantic web technologies and can be integrated with exiting modeling tools. Requirements specification is a major component of the system development cycle. Mistakes and omissions in requirements documents lead to ambiguous or wrong interpretation by engineers, causing errors that trickle down in design and implementation with consequences on the overall development cost. We describe a methodology for requirements specification that aims to alleviate the above issues and that produces models for functional requirements that can be automatically validated for completeness and consistency. The RDDA framework uses an ontology-based language for semantic description of functional product requirements, SysML structure diagrams, component constraints, and Quality of Service. The front-end method for requirements specification is the SysML editor in Rhapsody. A requirements model in Web Ontology Language (OWL) is converted from SysML to Extensible Markup Language Metadata Interchange (XMI) representation. / The specification is validated for completeness and consistency with a ruled-based system implemented in Prolog. With our methodology, omission s and several types of consistency errors present in the requirements specification are detected early on, before the design stage. Component selection and design automation have the potential to play a major role in reducing the system development time and cost caused by the rapid change in technology advances and the large solution search space. In our work, we start from a structured representation of requirements and components using SysML, and based on specific set of rules written in Prolog, we partially automate the process of architecture design. / by Mihai Fonoage. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

A terceirização, ou o processo de transferência de suas atividades, por parte das organizações, para terceiros, é uma prática utilizada há muito tempo e que vem se tornando mais comum. O mesmo também ocorre especificamente em relação às atividades da área de Tecnologia da Informação, desde o início da utilização dos computadores nas organizações até os dias atuais. Diversos são os motivos que levam as organizações a terceirizar, parcial ou totalmente, suas diferentes atividades e serviços na área de Tecnologia da Informação, sendo muitos deles associados à redução de custos, melhoria de qualidade e foco nas atividades essenciais da organização. Algumas teorias econômicas embasam as decisões de terceirização por parte das organizações, particularmente a economia dos custos de transação, custos de produção e teoria de agência. Esta tese tem como objetivo realizar um estudo exploratório sobre as formas de contratação e gerenciamento da terceirização de Tecnologia da Informação, bem como de fatores que influenciam a adoção dessas formas. A tese propõe um modelo, elaborado com base na literatura existente sobre o assunto, segundo o qual, determinados fatores econômicos e objetivos estratégicos das organizações influenciam na escolha de um modelo de gestão da terceirização. Além disso, o modelo propõe uma taxonomia para as formas de gestão da terceirização de Tecnologia da Informação, divididas em dois grupos: os modos de contratação e os modos de gerenciamento, e também analisa os relacionamentos específicos entre eles. A pesquisa utilizou uma amostra composta por 228 empresas, em sua maior parte indústrias, usuárias de serviços de Tecnologia da Informação, que participaram de um survey, através de um website na internet. Sobre os dados provenientes da amostra foram aplicadas várias técnicas estatísticas, como análise de correlação, análise de clusters e análise de variância, para validar as hipóteses do modelo. Os resultados obtidos confirmam o modelo de pesquisa parcialmente, comprovando os relacionamentos entre as formas de contratação e gerenciamento, porém, não permitindo conclusões definitivas sobre a influência de fatores econômicos e objetivos estratégicos na definição e escolha dos modelos de gestão. Dos relacionamentos entre as formas de contratação e gerenciamento é possível identificar um conjunto de três arranjos distintos, para a gestão da terceirização de TI pelas organizações. Além disso, são apresentados resultados e conclusões adicionais a respeito dos responsáveis pelo processo de terceirização, pelo orçamento de terceirização, quantidade e diversidade de serviços terceirizados e, ainda, sobre a satisfação com os resultados obtidos com a terceirização de serviços de TI. Dos relacionamentos entre as formas de contratação e gerenciamento é possível identificar um conjunto de três arranjos distintos, para a gestão da terceirização de TI pelas organizações. / Outsourcing, or the process of transferring activities to third parties has being underused for a long time and it is becoming a common practice. This is also true in the Information Technology area, ever since computers have been introduced in organizations. There are many reasons associated to the partial or total outsourcing of activities and services in Information Technology, many of them regarding cutting costs, quality improvement and focus on the organization core activities. Some economic theories support the outsourcing decisions such as transaction costs economics, production costs and the agency theory. The objective of this Thesis is to present an exploratory study regarding contracting and management models in Information Technology outsourcing, as well as, the factors that have being taken into consideration in the decision for such models. This Thesis proposes a model, based on the existing literature on the subject, in which companies specific economic factors and strategic objectives influence the choice for an outsourcing management model. Furthermore, the model proposes a taxonomy for the outsourcing management in Information Technology, divided into two groups: contracting and management models. It also analyses the specific relationship between them. The survey has collected information from 228 companies, most of them industries which use Information Technology services and that have answered a questionnaire in a Internet website. Some statistical methods have been applied on the collected sample data; such as, correlation analysis, cluster analysis and variance analysis in order to support the model hypothesis. The results partially confirm the research model, validating the relationship between contracting and management models. However, it was not possible to draw final conclusions on the influence of economic factors and strategic objectives in defining and choosing management models. From de relationships between contracting and management models it is possible to identify a set of three distinct groups for the management of Information Technology outsourcing in the organizations. Moreover, additional results and conclusions are presented regarding the responsibility for the outsourcing process, budgets, amount and diversity of outsourcing services, and, satisfaction with the outsourcing services results in Information Technology.

Thesis (MTech (Business Information Systems))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / Many software organisations using iterative software development approach use practices that relate to quality management. However, the quality management process has been inadequate. Despite many research studies conducted on quality management in iterative software product development none have adequately addressed the challenges and mitigation techniques to have an adequate process that leads to a quality software product. The objective of this study was to determine factors that affect the quality management process in iterative software development. The research followed a qualitative approach, a case of software organisation SasTech in Cape Town, South Africa. 22 interviews were conducted on three roles actively involved in the software product development process. These are product management, quality assurance and software developers. Themes were drawn from results and were tabulated. The duality of technology theory was used as a theoretical lens to data analysis. Several factors were identified to influence the software quality management process. These include planning, documentation, process ownership, technologies, testing, timelines and management support. Through the general proposed framework, facilities (human resources and technologies), interpretive schemes (architecture) and norms (practices) of software quality management can be institutionalised leading to adequate and effective quality management in iterative development for SasTech as well as other organisations in the same industry.