Question

What are the principal risk factors in an information system project and how can they be managed? Research or select an information system project in which you have been involved and discuss what you think the risk factors were? A good source is a search on Failed IT Projects.

Answer 1

For any project the five important parameters are
Cost, time, scope, quality and risk.

The parameters that can influence the risk associated with the project are as follows:
Cost of the project

• Planning and procedure of the project
• Expertise and experience available to accomplish the project successfully.
• Compatibility of the new information system project with the culture and values of the organisation.
• In order to ensure that the information system implemented is user friendly it is important to identify the needs of end user.
• Communication gap between the user and the information system developer needs to be reduced by identifying the priorities of user and addressing uses concerns regarding the project.
• Once the parameter that can influence the information system project is identified it becomes easier to control the associated risk.
• Measures that can be taken in order to control the risk are as follows:
• Reducing communication gap by frequent meeting among the team members and different departments of the organisation.
• Hiring expert talent with sufficient experience.
• Providing training to the existing employees to upgrade their skills and knowledge about the information system.
• In order to monitor the project gantt chart can be utilised.
• The developer of the information system should strive to improve the user interface.

The the risk factor in my project work majorly related to the quality of the product developed and the user interface.
It was important to do quality check before delivering the product to the customer to avoid returns from the customer and rework on the product. Rework of the product would involve more cost and additional time required of the engineers to troubleshoot the problem. It was also important to identify the need of the client as the product needs to be customised according to the requirement of client. The product was temperature control instrument. And the client would give the basic requirement in the form of number of inputs and output of the instrument. And if the input and output is in the form of current or voltage,etc.