The study of diffusion, adoption, and IT project implementation in popular literature relies on theories which do not address the question of why VLITP projects continue to experience delays and go over budget simply due to problems with human resources. This chapter considers that such situation is only bound to continue unless specific research work are dedicated to investigating human resource management issues involved when implementing VLITPs. It details that VLITP are likely to miss the schedule date as a result of underestimating the length of time or the amount of resources required for various tasks, but omitting a task by an incompetent member of the VLITP team could lead to an incomplete or unaccomplished outcome. Avoiding mistakes in the sequencing of project tasks can ensure VLITP meet schedule. It suggests that VLITP managers build the project schedule by orderly listing major tasks and dedicating adequate human resources that considers several different kinds of eventualities.
TopIntroduction
The management team of a VLITP must effectively manage the resources assigned to the project. This includes the labor hours of the systems designers, the code builders, the testers and the inspectors on the various sub-projects. Human resource (HR) management also includes managing issues related to the performance of associated subcontractors. Managing VLITPs resources frequently involve more than people management. This chapter details what VLITP managers must concentrate on regarding the needs of people—project employees, vendor staff, subcontract labor—such as equipment, vehicles, communication equipment, development and testing tools, staging servers, CD burners, disks and tape, manuals, laptops, mobiles and ipods, etc. decks, mixers, microphones and speakers. Managing the people resources means having the right people, with the right skills and the proper tools, in the right quantity at the right time (Cleland, 1990).
It is widely believed that VLITP is condemned to authoritarian management, mindless work, and equally mindless waste of money (Martin et al, 2005). Critics claim that VLITPs rationality and the level of manpower are contending for the soul of businesses in the 21st century. This chapter challenges such clichés by re-conceptualizing the relation of VLITPs, rationality, and modernization. Its theme is the possibility of a truly radical reform of doing business in today’s environment.
It argues that the degradation of labor, education, and the business environment is rooted not in implementing VLITPs per se but in the anti-modernization values that govern project management. Reforms that ignore this fact usually fail, including such popular notions as a simple project for isolated functions in single unit of multi-national organizations. Desirable as these goals may be, no fundamental progress can occur in the 21st century that sacrifices millions of individuals to unrecognised/unappreciated contribution. The essence of human resource management in VLITP is to promote the value of individuals in a well-run project taking advantage of all the modern technologies available to them.
Human Resource Management
Providing satisfactory resources for VLITPs goes beyond a simplistic economic objective for the project. Considering VLITPs are managed by people with huge salaries the needs of many lower level staff that have interests in their own benefits as in benefits for the host organization must also be protected (Maslow, 1943). Consequently staff working on VLITPs frequently set objectives that fulfil their own interests as well as meeting objectives at the level that will be realistic to the all stakeholders (Forsberg, Mooz and Cotterman, 2000). As a result of these two separate interests, there are sometimes bargaining and internal politics in the formulation of project management objectives to reconcile the two objectives (Eisenhardt, 1996; Maslow, 1943). Managers of VLITPs consider the important fact that their personal objectives can only be achieved through employment when the host organization is happy that its objectives are being met to a reasonable level; though, it is not always possible to easily achieve both objectives. Such situations don’t only result to changes in objectives as the project gets on the way but also results to concerns and changes in technical environment or personal and professional aspirations.