IT `Best Practices`

p Running head : IT BEST PRACTICES

Should more companies adopt Arkansas Best Practices to improve IT project management ? Why or why not ? Table of Contents

TOC \o "1-3 " \h \z \u HYPERLINK \l "_Toc4 " Introduction PAGEREF _Toc4 \h 3

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc5 " Project Life Cycle PAGEREF _Toc5 \h 3

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc6 " Best Practices PAGEREF _Toc6 \h 4

HYPERLINK \l "_Toc7 " References PAGEREF _Toc7 \h 6 Introduction

Project management is applied to an organization 's approach to the management of projects in the organization itself . This basically is the

br management of a project life cycle during the course of doing a project According to the PMBOK (2004 , Project Management is the application of knowledge , skills , tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements

Project Life Cycle

There are a number of ways to manage a project one of them is the Software Development Life Cycle - SDLC (Kay , 2002 . The stages are explained as follows

Project planning , feasibility study . This gives an overall overview of the project and the goals involved

Systems analysis , requirements definition . This gives the definition of the system that is involved . It also gives the requirements definition of the proposed system

Systems design . This describes the features , details , user interface design , business logic , diagrams , coding and documentation of the proposed system

Implementation . The program code written

Integration and testing . Integrates all the programs written and tests it for errors , bugs and issues against test cases written

Acceptance , installation , deployment . This involves the final stage where the software developed is accepted by the client and installed for production

Maintenance . Once the deployment is done the entire application is maintained throughout its life time . Changes , updates , additions and management of all issues big and small during the usage of the software This is the maintenance stage

The above mentioned approaches are similar to what is followed by the State of Arkansas (2003 . The State follows the Project Management Requirements Matrix ' which gives best practices for managing small medium and large projects . The State follows all the procedures and methodologies that are approved by the Project Management Institute (PMI ) itself . PMI , Inc . lays down the guidelines and standards for project management on an international basis

Best Practices

Buehring (2005 ) gives some best practices that when applied will give a much better chance of delivering a successful project and hopefully meeting some of the expectations of the stakeholders involved . These practices are very common in the area of Project Management even the State of Arkansas (2003 ) uses it . Some of the practices mentioned in the Buehring (2005 ) are listed below

Define the deliverables . So that the client knows what stage of the application to expect and when . Milestones , here

Project planning . This gives an entire plan of the way the project is going to be done , the people involved in it and about how the stages will be planned so that the project is done in before the Communication . This involves the different stages and types of communication involved...