Project management and risk

Supervisor #2, who has experience of projects, suggested that I look at risk evaluation and analysis in project management.

Gray & Larson (2008) devote a whole chapter to managing risk [1]. They look at the process, breaking it into steps:

1. identification,
   
2. assessment and
   
3. risk response development.

I can see the relevance of managing risk to project management. Identifying risks is a senior management responsibility [2]. In the public sector people may evaluate strategic choices in a risk averse culture . Consequently, people may go for a project where there is a lower chance of success but a paper trail exists to show that it's not their fault, rather than a project with a high chance of success, but no paper trail. At least that’s my hypothesis and how do I check it?

Risk avoidance strategies make it harder to implement change. Risk averse contracts that put the onus on the supplier or the consultant do not improve the probabilities of success.

Beck & Mobs [3 ] discussed motivations of the various stakeholders when they proposed a longitudinal case study research of a large public private project in Germany. They thought that private managers tended to be more risk averse than politicians leading public agencies. Politicians can demonstrate groundbreaking investments in IT. Perhaps politicians hold a different attitude to risk from the public servants that must implement the IT projects.

Other researchers have used quantitative analysis to explore risk factors that may influence decisions [4], [5]. But I don’t think I want to go the quantitative route. I need to be aware of risk management but that it’s not the focus of my research question.

Smith et al (2006) analysed risk factors relevant to software projects and identified most important risks as lack of top management commitment to a project, and lack of client responsibility, ownership and buy-in of project and its delivered systems [4]. That's what interests me.

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[1]GRAY, C. F. & LARSON, E. W. (2008) Project management: the managerial process, NY, McGraw-Hill.
[2]INTELLECT (2000) Getting IT Right for Government A Review of Public Sector IT Projects.
[3] BECK, R. & MOBS, A. (2006) The Public Hand and IT Mega-Projects: Lessons from the German TollCollect Case. Inaugural Research Workshop for IT Project Management Milwaukee, WI, Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group on IT Project Management
[4] SMITH, D., EASTCROFT, M., MAHMOOD, N. & RODE, H. (2006) Risk factors affecting software projects in South Africa. South African Journal of Business Management, 37, 55-65.
[5]BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (2001) INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND ITS MANAGEMENT IN INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT. MIS Quarterly, 25, 195-228.
[6]AUBERT, B. A., BARKI, H., PATRY, M. & ROY, V. (2008) A multi-level, multi-theory perspective of information technology implementation. Information Systems Journal, 18, 45-72.

Intellectual Property Rights

Richard McCracken lead the latest doctoral training workshop, on a research student's guide to intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property covers:

• patents
• trademarks
• copyright
• know-how
  

and elabaorated on the distinctions, with an example of how they all combine in sometimes, e.g in CocaCola.

Patents - you can only patent something that has not been made public. There was the case of the LED, first presented at an academic conference, before the patent was applied for, and then couldn't be patented because it was already in the public arena.

Copyright rests with the author though there are circumstances in which you can relinquish it.

You need to be careful when signing journal contracts that you don't assign copyright to the journal because then you won't be able to use your own material without paying the journal. For instance, you couldn't photocopy your own article to distribute it to a class. So if you get a contract to be published in a journal, check and delete the clause that assigns copyright to the journal.

McCracken's advice on copyright came up again only a few hours later when I received an email explaining that I could not directly access some material from a web site because of copyright reasons.

There are restricted acts and permitted acts.

Photographs - you are permitted to take photos in public places, though it differs between countries. In France in the fifties Robert Doisneau took a photo called "Kiss" of two people kissing in the street. Every now and then, someone would turn up, saying that they are one of the couple and demanding money.