Information Technology Project Management to Achieve Efficiency in Brazilian Companies

Abstract

This chapter focuses on applying the best practices in Information Technology (IT) project management in Brazil. The theoretical models adopted to discuss this issue are the Capability Maturity Model - CMM (Humphrey, 1989; Paulk et al., 1995), Project Management Maturity Model – PMMM (Kerzner, 2000 and 2001); the Project Management Body of Knowledge - PMBoK (PMI, 2000), and Quality Systems for software - ISO9000-3 (2001) and ISO 12207 (1995). Several problems have been discussed regarding the efficiency of IT projects. Evaluation of efficiency is a controversial issue, and meeting project efficiency goals involves balancing scope expectations and the available resources. This chapter presents IT project cases in Brazilian companies and a comparative analysis of their IT projects management models. The study is based on multiple cases: financial services, telecommunications and building materials companies. Interviews with the main actors from different levels of the organisational hierarchy have been done.