The Theory and History of management

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY – HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS  
AT ST. PETERSBURG 
COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT 
DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT 

 

 

  IT-SPHERE IN BUSINESS AND MANAGMENT

 

GUDADZE SERGO

 

 

A Paper

Submitted for

The Theory and History of management

 

 

 

 

Supervisor:

Sarakhanova Natalia Sergeevna

PhD, ass.prof

Management Department HSE

 

 

 

 

St. Petersburg

2014

Content:

1. Introduction
2. Literacy review
3. Discussion
4. Conclusion
5. References

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

In our modern world all process in business includes management. But there are a lot of spheres in contemporary world of business which haven`t got structured system of rules. And sphere of IT is not an exсeption. This sphere is very modern. Amount of books and articles which are connected with IT is very law. So in this essay I try to look around all important advices and rules in IT-control. In the end I will try to give advises based on my own experience.

 

Literacy review

 

In my essay I want to show both sides of communication between IT and management. At first article we will see how IT technologies are used in organization and in the second and third we will find out how to manage IT-projects.

First article which was written by Ramanov V.A for the MSU journal tells us about is IT technologies in Russia. The main idea is to show characteristics of information technology typical for Russia. This article tells us that IT is one of the most important part of company which allows:

-For company management - to control employee`s work.

-For IT specialists – makes managing of projects easier. To reduce cost of servicing network of company. What is more it helps to convert routine work to automatic operation.

-For employees – to have access to any information in the world from the every place and have maximum security to corporate files.

Author suggested that russian market as well as IT sphere have a great dependence on changes of world priсe to petroleum. Russian IT sector is on initial step of his development that is why IT is not used as an advantage in competition between companies.

Speaking about effectiveness of using IT author said that software from the box like   «Microsoft Axapta» losing in a battle between box software and programs which are written by company for itself because in that case company can think over the most important graphs for itself, while box software gives them only programs which can suit for every company.

 

At the end of article author said that he notice that in Russia a big amount of IT projects fail.He said that the reason to this is human relations. Today employees can`t understand all the importance of IT projects and can`t control it without help of project-manager. There are interesting statistics at this article. It tells that a half of IT-projects fail if project-managers doesn`t take a part in this projects. Continuing this thought author underlines for us 5 factors which can ruin IT-project:

 

 

1. Lack of strategy
2. Mistakes in planning
3. Functional disbalance between aims of business and software from the box
4. Problems with fusion apps in a work process
5. Political and financial extraneous factor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second article from very famous IT resource - «Habrahabr» tells us about management in IT-projects. Author (Pereverzev A.N) in his 2 articles gave us the hole information about IT-control management. I divide this information into 6 topics:

1. What should be under control?

2. The main process of management

3. What about delegation?

4. Method of little groups

5. System analysis

6. «Two in one» method

1.Speaking about management author said that managing of process is a work on its parts. And then explaining picture is given:

2. Then article tells us about the main process of management. Author said that it consists from other process like

1. You should formalize data and aims.

2. Analysis is optional if project haven`t got enough money

3. At the time of planning you should choose methods of solving problems and decide how to reach aims 

4. You should make a checklist to have criterions of ending projects.

5. Executor should have free access to all the information  which are connected with the projects like source data, aims and demands from checklist

6. If you want to use this project one more time you should add results of preceding iteration to source data.

 

3. Next topic is delegation. And in IT-projects sphere, which is very close to startup sphere the main problem is lack of money. Usually IT team consists of 2 or 3 person and  «everyone do everything», because there is no money for outsourcing. That is why to providing effective management author advise to gives more attention to other methods like:

-system analysis

-interactive control

-risk management

 

4. Method of little groups. The main idea is that excess resources discourage. And the main aim is to work in a small groups consists from 3-7 person. Author said a lot about advantages of small groups.

1. In small groups communication process are shorter and more effective
2. It is easier to give to small group motivation
3. You can control process in a small group better
4. It is easier to secure corporate and commercial secrets

And then author gives an example that strong companies like «Google» use this technology and try to divide staff into a small groups.

5. System analysis allows small groups solve hard tasks. This method means that all the information which have influence on smth should be written down. 
It doesn`t mean that you must make a kilograms of useless papers  but using even some of this methods gives your project «life»

- division your tasks into subtasks

- highlighting of subprojects

- recording (logging) everything important

Aims of system analysis are:

- receiving obviously and quick-witted conception of all details in project

- finding potentially week points

- finding latent factors (outgoing)

 
6. Two in one. In this part of article author consider that preparatory actions of project and project in a work  are very distinction things. It likes you have two different projects in one. And that is why author gives advice to work with them separately. In great amount of IT startups teams do a lof of unnecessary work and outgoing but it is really easy to reduce them by asking yourself two questions.

1. What do we want to have?

And only after that

2. How we want to get it?

While your project doesn`t exist, all works before profit is delivered  to the first part. While project is in work it can be delivered to the second part. Obviously you  work with different components and aims at those times and specification of work is not the same. So you must work with this two stages   in different ways. Marketing and business-model should be delivered to the second part as well as commercial and technical outgoings. And as an example I made my own table with two parts of business project:

 

 

 

 

Preparatory work	The main process
Buying software and programming	Supporting of technical software
Design	Business-model, plan of outgoings and profits
Research and first planning of marketing and commercial	Marketing and realization of commercial plans

 

So after reviewing this three articles we can see the dynamics of changing in contemporary world. 10 years ago no one can think about managing in IT-project but today it is one of the high-paid and respectable job position in management. Startup – it is what about every teenager who connect with IT is dreaming about. History of success telling by young and perspective entrepreneurs inspire youth to start their own project. And if they will follow advices which were given by professional project-manager they can rich success and profit.

What is more, IT technologies inculcate in companies structure all over the world and help them a lot, but unfortunately in Russia this process takes place very slow and with big expenses. However even in our country (especially in international companies) business process are developed by IT technologies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discussion

In this part of essay I would like to review and to think over risks which will be connected with IT startup and problems which project-manager can face. To start with I want to write down the hole list of risks. After reading modern book and  a pair of articles I decide that the most dangerous point are:

 

• Incorrect choice of product or target audience
• Scanty activity of target audience
• Wrong business model
• Failure of lead time
• Projects with budget less than $1000

 

Incorrect choice of product or target audience.

Understanding of what people want to get is one of the most important thing that you should know before opening a startup. It is a philosophy of startups. If you want to have a success project first of all you must know your audience. As promptly as it possible. In fact it always one or some more groups of people with the same age, sex, geography of living and social status. You can easily said that you have wrong determination of audience if it includes the word «everybody».

To see right determination of audience is easy, too. Usually it consists from concrete information and has definite description of some groups.

 

Scanty activity of target audience

You have 3 million entrance to your web-site but only 300-500 active users, who pay money and use your product. It is very common problem. To solve it you have to work to increase loyalty of audience. It should be like separate project. The most effective way is to use outsourcing companies but if there is not so much money, resources like socialization and opening groups in social network will help you. The best way is to become a copyrighter or find him. Make contests between participants of groups in social networks. Meet with this people, make photos of events which you make. Try to be friends with the most activity person in groups and ask them, why did they choose your service and why did they pay money for it. All this methods can hardly increase loyalty of audience.

Wrong business model

 

It is the most famous mistake, even serious adults do it. To avoid this crucial fail you should understand how it can influence on your project. Business model is the way how you will earn money and only with the help of it you can comprehend whether your project will be profitable or not and how much time you will need to return your inputs. In our (IT) sphere business models usually call model of monetization. When you made your own business model information which will be bring from marketing research can be used to calculate future profits. After research you ought to have answers on questions:  «how?» and  «how much?». Plan of profits can be not very exact but it must be calendar.

 

Failure of lead time

 

First of all give priority to planning. Then  before working up ask an opinion  from outsourcers. Increase this two times and after it you will see real time constraints and real costs. It is better to work with float, than have seen problem after they happened. It will be great if you make calendar plan-graph with the periods is about month and will control parts of the project with the help of it.

 
Projects with budget less than $1000

 

It sounds very strange but it is a fact that 60% IT-projects which were made like startups have failed in a 6 month after opening if they have less than $1000. 
There is such a term like «Level of entrance to the market». Thousands of hundreds startups died because of this thing. There is an opinion that the level of entrance to the IT-startups is very law, and it is true if we speak about projects which will be closed in 3-6 month. So study on others failure.

 

 

 

Next part will be dedicated to my own experience in the sphere of  IT-startups and project-management. After working as a project-manager in my own studio of development mobile apps (for IOS, android and windows phone) I think that I can share this experience and give useful advise hot to control and rule your team after my mistakes and successes.

 

1. First thing that you should do, when you get a new team is to make connections between co-workers. And it is not as easy as you can think because usually IT teams consists of people which life in different places and haven`t got previous meetings with each other. It`s very important due to the fact that your designer must understand and be very polite to your programmer. They must understand each other than they have never finished one project. In fact relationships between co-workers should be like between two  professionals or like between friends and there is no third variant.

 

2. Second point is controlling. All staff should be motivate to fill in tables with control of process of project. One of the variant is to make correlation between filling in tables by your workers  and their salary.  What is more your should be very responsible and never get a chance to them to think that project isn`t important for you.

 

3. Third point is software. I am absolutely sure that only one possible variant is to make software only for your company and don`t buy controlling system and CRM-system which are made for every company. In Literacy review I already told about it. But speaking about controlling software what is more important is to write down all progress there everyday. I mean technical progress in project.  For example designer should write down that one more page with design is ready and put it into this program. It is very comfortable because I can check every stage of product in any time and give feedback to our clients if they need it

 

4. The last advice is connected with the most routine and hard part of project. I speak about making and signing contract. It is very important to explore carefully all points of contract, because in contemporary world in IT-sphere exist very strange trend. Clients always try to take better position and always want you to pay for all mistakes. So it will be better if in your small team you will invite a layer or just use services of outsourcing organization, which help you in this step.

Conclusion:

 

My aim was to tell you about all  spheres of  It. It can be IT-service in organization, which develop all business process and make them easier. It can be IT-projects as startups and risks which is always connected with this business. One of my editional tasks was to give advice for effective project-managers using my own experience and information which I take from articles. I suppose that I successfully rich all my aims and after this essay I understand how much perspectives IT-sphere has in our modern world.  Because even today IT is the main part of  profitable business process and technologies only increase the amount of  their opportunities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

1. Romanov V.A (2013)  «Development of IT in Russia», electronic journal of MSU, ISSN: 2224-9656
2. Pereverzev A.N (2013) «Managment in IT-project», electronic journal «habrahabr», ISSN: 0236-2008, №98 pp27-37
3. Rusanova E.I (2013) «Perspectives and risks of IT-startup», News of Siberian State university. Series: Strategic management., №18 pp 46-51
4. Brian D. Jaffe (2014) «IT Manager`s Handbook, Third Edition: Getting your new job done»
5. Baramba S.V (2012) «IT-services for industrial enterprises», journal «Systems of management», ISSN: 1813-5579