This master thesis in project management focuses on the use of knowledge management methods in project management environments, since these two fields of study are important factors for companies whose aim is to gain advantages by continuous learning and improvement. For this study, organizations, as well as projects were divided into categories where project management methods and knowledge management methods were highlighted. The main questions which are given attendance in this study were if any knowledge management activities were incorporated into the work in projects as well as what dimensions that affect the use of knowledge management in project environments. The dimensions assumed to affect knowledge management in project environments which were studied in this master thesis were the project category, the use of project management methodologies, the organization and the knowledge management methodologies. Belonging to the dimension of knowledge management, conditions concerning the organizations and the projects were also studied. This study shows that, among five case organizations, only two actively use knowledge management methodologies to capture what has been learned by the projects. The findings from the study further show that, even though no generally applicable model could be formulated, there is a tendency in organizations which has an active approach to information gathering and uses project management methodologies, to use more knowledge management methodologies in projects. As a theoretical contribution, this master thesis shows than there is a connection between the organizational mode and the use of knowledge management and project management methodologies. As a practical contribution, this study shows the importance of labelling and organizing knowledge before it is stored, since only when knowledge is reused the knowledge management activities brings a value to the organization. As another practical contribution this study presents a model for researching knowledge management in project environment, as well as showing that lessons learned and project auditing are the two most common knowledge management methods in the studied case organizations.

M.Ing. (Engineering Management) / Requirements engineering forms an integral part of software engineering. The purpose of requirements engineering is to provide high quality requirements for a system or solution. These requirements are then utilised by developers to produce a high quality system. They also assist project managers to better plan the schedule and costing of information technology projects, resultinq in cost savinqs. The problem is that although formal definitions and processes do exist for requirements engineering, projects are still failing due to the poor quality of requirements, This study investigates this phenomenon, in particular to understand why project teams cannot deliver high quality requirements. This is done against the background of the processes and standards available to organisations. The root cause of the problem is researched to determine whether the processes are the cause or whether other factors are contributing to poor quality requirements. This study makes use of two cases within one organisation to determine what the contributing factors are with regard to poor and good quality requirements. The cases provide information on why one project delivered good quality requirements and another project within same organisation, the same business unit, with the same support structure, delivered poor quality requirements. It is perceived that the case study method was a valid method in this particular research study as it provided the researcher with in-depth knowledge and observations on how organisations deal with the process of requirements engineering. It was found that the quality and clarity of communication or the lack thereof plays a significant role in the quality of requirements. This research provides an alternative view on the factors contributing towards poor quality requirements. This implies that organisations can train or educate requirements engineers in communication skills. The skill of communication allows a requirements engineer to create a trust relationship with customers, and this empowers him/her to elicit good quality requirements from the users.

M.Tech. (Information Technology) / Increasingly, more now than before, the corporate world has been paying more attention to the prominent topic of “governance”. The absence of governance in an organisation or ineffective governance has become synonymous with all that is wrong. It is regarded to be the root cause of all evils – not only in the corporate environment, but also in society. Following corporate scandals of recent years that have exposed corporate malpractices and mismanagement, corporate governance is increasingly being recognised worldwide as a best practice and an effective mechanism that not only promotes corporate efficiency, competitiveness and sustainability, but is also a tool for combating corporate corruption. The audit function is considered one of the main supporting pillars of corporate governance, as it plays an important role in helping management attain its business goals and strategic objectives. This is realised through a systematic and disciplined approach to evaluating and improving the effectiveness of the organisation’s system of internal control, risk management and governance processes. The failure of the audit function is said to have been one of the critical contributors to recent global corporate scandals. Robust auditing is believed to be the cornerstone of modern corporate governance. The use of auditing in project management processes increases the probability of project success. Using corporate governance as a best practice and audit as one of its sub-sets, this research study deals with the topical issue of failures in Information Technology (IT) projects. The study strives to address this problem by adopting a holistic approach to IT project management auditing that includes corporate governance principles over and above the traditional principles and processes for auditing IT projects. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the rate of failure of IT projects has changed little in continual surveys, showing that more than half of all IT projects overrun their schedules and budgets. This situation has continued in spite of new technologies, innovative methods, tools and different management methods. Although most organisations heavily rely on IT-enabled projects for competitive advantage, it is estimated that worldwide over $6.2 trillion is being wasted annually on IT project failures. One of the reasons for this situation has allegedly been the failure of project governance. Thus, the importance and added value of this research study lies in adopting a holistic approach to IT project management auditing. The study involves corporations and not government agencies or other institutions. The study adopts a qualitative research approach and uses semi-structured face-to-face interviews as the primary method for data collection. It is intended that this study fills a gap in the research literature on the topic.

M.Com. (Information Technology Management) / Information and communication technology (ICT) project success is considered the Holy Grail within many organisations. Over the past decade organisations have begun to realise the increasing importance and the potential of exploiting ICT to gain competitive advantage in their particular realm. Organisations have consequently pushed for the implementation of robust ICT solutions not only to facilitate and augment crucial decision-making processes, but to improve overall organisational efficiency and effectiveness as well. These ICT solutions are deployed via ICT projects. However, extensive research has revealed that ICT projects are continuing to fail at a disturbing rate nationally as well as internationally. ICT projects therefore have an infamous reputation within organisations and the project management domain. This research focused on determining what drives ICT project success by systematically investigating how ICT project success is perceived and measured as well as the factors which influence it. The quantitative research paradigm was implemented through the use of a survey in the form of a structured questionnaire. Although this research was cross-sectional in nature, it employed an element of longitudinal analysis as the results were scrutinised and compared with previous research conducted within the same research area. ICT project team members were randomly sampled to acquire an objective view of ICT project success. Moreover, this research revolved around the philosophy that if the significance of each influencing factor is understood, it should be possible to predict whether an ICT project will succeed or fail. A predictive modelling approach was adopted. This predictive model presented within this dissertation was constructed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The predictive model indicated that ICT project success is predicted by means of stakeholder management, communication and methodology. The model also indicated that these three factors are interrelated and are dependent on one another. It was established that overall project success is dependent on project management success and project product success. This research employed a technique which is rarely used within the project management or ICT project management domain, viz. SEM. Two key recommendations emerged from this research. Firstly, this research suggests that it may be time to re-evaluate how ICT projects are measured as well as the influencing factors, as traditional approaches are yet to accommodate ICT projects in particular. Secondly, this research suggests that researchers should start to explore the underlying constructs of communication as this could assist in addressing a fundamental flaw not only in ICT project management, but project management in general.

M.Ing. / Risk is an integral part of engineering projects, and it is necessary to manage the risks in order to ensure that the project achieves its objectives. A key part of the risk management effort is the risk identification aspect. This dissertation discusses risk identification and how it forms part of risk and project management. The dissertation builds from a macroscopic view of project management, which includes the phases in the project life cycle, the project structure and project control processes. This is followed by a focus on risk management within the project management framework, exploring how identifying, quantifying and controlling risks form part of the risk management structure. Next is an investigation into a risk identification framework, expanding on how aspects like hazard and peril identification, planning, staffing and resource allocation form part of the risk identification framework. A case study is then used to further explore risk identification and demonstrate it in practical engineering project management. Finally, recommendations to improve risk identification in project risk management are made.

M.Tech. / Many organisations rely on Information Technology (IT) projects to react to competitive pressure and innovation. IT projects are divers and they may include installing off-the-shelf hardware to developing software to basic technologies that provide information to support the operations, management, decisions-making functions within the organisation. In the past years, there had been an increasing number of Multinational Organisations (MNOs) working on IT projects together to create mergers and grow business in foreign countries. While IT projects are being undertaken, Multinational Project Teams are faced with challenges and among their challenges project reviews is one of them. Project reviews are an essential process of learning new things and capturing what had been learned in the current phase/project in order for future phases/projects to benefit. Moreover it is a stage where project teams assess if they had met their key deliverables and project performance. A related study was conducted on project reviews and the results revealed that 4 out of 5 organisations did not conduct post-project reviews. However, if they did conduct project reviews, there were no guidelines on how to do it. The aim of the study was to ascertain a set of guidelines that are used by MNOs to conduct project reviews and share lessons learned and experiences gathered during and after an IT projects for future usage. The significance of this study was to highlight the importance of guidelines for conducting project reviews in order for project teams to learn from the project. The findings can be utilised in building guidelines that MNOs can use to conduct project reviews and to integrate lessons learned back into the organisation. The scope of the research was limited to an MNO with headquarters in the Netherlands and subsidiaries in China and South Africa. The study was carried out using qualitative research approach through interviews, observation and gathering of documentation. Using Atlas.ti which is a ii CAQDAS, data was analysed to compare and contrast similarities by using categories. The categories constructed offered the integrative interpretation of what was learned. From the individual and focus group interviews 5 main categories were elicited: project review meetings, intervals of conducting project reviews, lessons learned, knowledge sharing, and information extracted from project reviews. Based on the results it was evident that the MNO in question requires a set of guidelines on how to conduct project reviews. Moreover, there was no formal mechanism used to integrate lessons learned back into the organisation. A Generic Model for when project reviews should be conducted was developed using various models and guidelines that are used by other organisations and this model could be utilised by MNOs. For each project phase as illustrated on the Generic Model, there are project review guidelines on what to measure during the phase review. This research contributes to the growing literature on the organisational processes and mechanisms for project reviews and lessons learned.

M.Ing. (Engineering Management) / Projects are often outsourced to an external project management office that has to adapt and operate in a matrix style organisational structure. This project management office is then forced to follow the project management framework enforced by their clients, especially if these clients operate on a global, multinational business level. In such cases it is common practice that the project management office also has to follow a strict procurement approval process to ensure controlled project capital governance, which often results in project baseline schedule delays. The source of these project schedule delays may even cause conflict between the project management office, the respective project manager and their common clients. As part of the current research, various procurement transactions within such a project environment were tracked as a case study to validate the approval efficiency of all approval authorities within the procurement process itself. The duration for transaction approvals were tracked in order to compare it with existing service level agreements between the relevant stakeholders. The results obtained from the above study indicate that the actual procurement approval duration is misaligned with the theoretical and expected procurement approval duration, confirming that existing service level agreements should be aligned with more realistic deliverable expectations. The current research confirms that the organisational structure of this particular matrix style project environment and the way in which the procurement process is governed for transaction approval, have a direct negative impact on project deliverables; especially on the baseline schedule. The current research also confirms that the client organisation should be sensitive in how they structure their project organisational environment as over-governance of the procurement process can often result in unexpected schedule delays. This over-governance of the procurement process exposes various inefficiencies in the overall process, without necessarily enhancing overall project governance. The current research shows that restructuring of the procurement approval process could reduce the procurement approval duration, and present a more realistic service level agreement between the project stakeholders. This will allow the project manager to more accurately define his baseline project schedule and align all stakeholders’ project schedule expectations.

The purpose of this research is to consider the importance of social relationships and networks within the structures of Information Systems projects. A grounded theory research was conducted making use of project documentation to identify core categories which were supplemented with a survey directed at all levels of project team members. Interpretive patterns from grounded theory enabled inferences to be drawn on the role of social relationships and networks within IS projects. The social and political nature of IS projects requires that social relationships and networks are considered when project teams are created and monitored throughout the project lifecycle since project management philosophies and methodologies are not enough to achieve project success. Social relationships and networks were found to have three impact types on IS projects being a) influence, b) friendships and c) advice. Social relationships and networks were found to impact IS projects in areas of leadership, project culture, social relationships within project teams, the use of external social networks and the managing of external influences. The choice of limiting the research to a single large corporate organisation requires that further research is needed to corroborate the findings in order to make generalisations. The research findings provide practical considerations and highlights potential problems areas in the project lifecycle that need to be taken cognisance of irrespective of the chosen project management methodology. Copyright / Dissertation (MComm (Informatics))--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Informatics / unrestricted

En dépit des efforts destinés à accroitre la maturité de la profession dans le domaine de la gestion de projet, le taux d’échec des projets d’affaires (par opposition aux projets techniques) reste élevé. On s’est aperçu que les standards actuels en matière de gestion de projet ne prenaient pas en compte les contraintes liées au contexte d’exécution des projets, et que de ce fait, la gestion de projets d’affaires n’avait pas été étudiée en profondeur. L’objectif de ce travail de recherche transdisciplinaire est donc d’abord d’obtenir une meilleure compréhension du sujet en essayant de comprendre pourquoi l’échec d’un projet d’affaires est considéré comme un échec du point de vue de l’organisation, puis de formaliser la connaissance acquise dans un format qui permette par la suite de l’enrichir et de l’appliquer. En nous appuyant sur le modèle des systèmes ouverts, trois études de cas ont été conduites, avec pour objectif d’étudier l’effet modérateur des différents types de structures des organisations et des systèmes d’information pour la gestion de projet sur la relation causale entre la compétence en gestion de projet et le succès des projets d’affaires. Il résulte de ce travail que le succès des projets d’affaires devrait être mesuré en termes de réalisation des objectifs du projet mais aussi de l’organisation. Ce travail a également permis d’identifier les composants essentiels de la gestion de projets d’affaires : (1) “Compétences de base pour la gestion de projet ”; (2) “Gestion intégrée de programme” et (3) “Système d’information intégré pour la gestion de projet”. Dans les trois études de cas, il apparait également de manière déterminante que les facteurs d’ordre organisationnel ont un impact significatif sur la réussite du projet. Une théorie est proposée, qui postule qu’un projet d’affaires a de grandes chances d’échouer s’il n’est pas géré comme une partie intégrante de l’entreprise, en le traitant comme une opération courante au sein de l’entreprise. Cela signifie que la manière dont les projets d’affaires sont gérés aujourd’hui devrait être revue. Le rôle de l’informatique dans l’assistance à la gestion de ces projets devrait également être revu. Et il faudrait sans doute aussi faire une plus grande différence entre les projets d’affaires et les projets « traditionnels » plus techniques. D’autre part, la formalisation de la connaissance acquise au cours de ces études de cas a été effectuée en développant un modèle de domaine à l’aide du langage de modélisation UML. Et l’approche de modélisation du domaine a été élaborée en modifiant l’étape de conceptualisation dans le processus traditionnel d’ingénierie d’ontologie. En prenant comme point de départ le cadre théorique qui prend en compte l’essentiel des composants de la gestion de projets d’affaires, le modèle a été construit en quatre étapes : (1) définition de la portée du travail en développant chaque composant à partir des normes en vigueur ; (2) intégration de ces développements en réutilisant les travaux réalisés et proposés par d’autres chercheurs ; (3) développement et (4) évaluation des spécifications UML décrivant aussi bien les aspects structurels que dynamiques du sujet traité. Le fait d’avoir réussi à développer un modèle du domaine et à montrer de quelle manière il pouvait être mis en œuvre directement pour développer un système d’information pour la gestion de projet ainsi que des ontologies portant sur les connaissances liées à la gestion de projet a montré que l’approche consistant à construire une base sémantique commune permettant de travailler à la modélisation de systèmes applicatifs et d’ontologies est à la fois réalisable et valide. De plus, le modèle de domaine proposé peut servir de socle permettant d’accumuler progressivement la connaissance du domaine, dans la mesure où l’approche de modélisation a pris en compte la possibilité d’intégrer des travaux et propositions antérieurs. Ce résultat ouvre de nouvelles perspectives de développement de logiciels s’appuyant sur un modèle de domaine qui est directement issu de travaux de recherch / Despite the efforts to improve the maturity of the project management profession, the failure rate of business projects remains high. It was realized that current project management standards do not take contextual requirements into consideration and business project management really has not been addressed in totality. The purpose of this interdisciplinary study therefore, is to obtain a better understanding of the subject matter by investigating why business project fails from the organization’s perspective; and to specify the acquired knowledge in a format that facilitates future expansion and application.Based upon the open systems model, 3 case studies were conducted to examine the moderating effect of the types of organization structure and Project Management Information System (PMIS) support on the causal relationship between project management competency and business project success. It was found that business project success should be measured in terms of meeting both project and organization objectives; and the essential components of business project management were identified to be (1) “Core business project management competencies”; (2) “Integrated programme management” and (3) “Integrated PMIS”. It was conclusive that organizational factors do pose a significant impact in attainment of business project success in all 3 cases; and a theory that business project is likely to fail if it is not managed as an integral part of business enterprise with equal emphasis as its business-as-usual operations has been proposed. This implies that the way business project management is executed today should be reviewed; the role of IT in support of project management work should be reassessed; and a clear distinction between business project management and traditional project management should perhaps be made.The specification of the acquired knowledge on the other hand, was achieved by developing a domain model using UML; based on a domain modelling approach which was devised by modifying the conceptualization step of conventional ontology engineering process. Using the theoretical framework that captures the essential business project management components as the starting point, the model was constructed in 4 steps namely (1) defining the scope of work by expanding each component in the framework using prevailing standards; (2) integrating the defined scope with reusable existing work; (3) developing & (4) testing the UML specifications which describe both structural and behavioural aspects of the subject matter. The successful creation of the domain model and the demonstration of how it can be used directly in the development of the desired PMIS and project knowledge ontologies showed that the approach of building a common semantic foundation to support both application system modelling and ontology modelling is workable and effective. Furthermore, since the modelling approach has built in the ability to reuse existing work, the domain model can be used as a foundation that accumulates domain knowledge progressively. This opens up a new horizon where software systems could be built based on domain model which is a direct reflection of basic research findings; and software systems in the future would compete primarily from the non-functional perspective as a result.

Please read the abstract (Dissertation Summary) in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MEng (Industrial Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / MEng / unrestricted