INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN MANAGEMENT V - SGGW

RISK MANAGEMENT AS A KEY ELEMENT
FOR THE SUCCESS OF IT PROJECTS
IN THE PRINCE2 METHODOLOGY
Mariusz Bolek
Philips Polska
Waldemar Karwowski
Department of Informatics
Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW)
Summary: Proper project planning and managing is a very important skill.
The project manager not only has to be experienced, but he has to know and
use the proper methodologies. One of them is PRINCE2. In the paper the
PRINCE2 methodology and the main benefits derived from it, utilized for IT
projects, are described. Special attention is given to the analysis of risk
management and its influence on the success of an IT project. A case study of
a project in which good risk management led to finishing the project in time
and within the budget is spite of that the project was endangered by a failure.
Key words: project management, risk management, PRINCE2.
1. INTRODUCTION
Traditional Designing, implementing and deploying software applications is a
complex task. It depends on time, financial resources, company's structure and
organization. Every year many software projects are delayed or terminated without
significant results and other projects are often finished with limited functionality.
Moreover, their costs are larger than planned. This phenomenon is known since the
late 60's of the twentieth century as the software crisis [1]. Additionally, due to the
permanent "brainstorming", IT projects are frequently delivered to the client with
additional functionalities that the developers have invented themselves, which
comes together with additional errors and unacceptable quality. Developers have
forgotten that projects have business goals. Some of the IT projects tended not to
end at all and scientists began to talk about the LOOP syndrome – the loop in
which many project managers were caught [3]. That syndrome was defined by four
problems encountered during the IT project:
L – Late - software is developed too late in relation to the agreements with the
client;
O – Over budget – exceeding the resources of budget as a result of adding unexpected
functionality;
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