Dynamics of IT project management

Every project owner, every project manager and every IT project manager would like to see a project, or a set of interdependent projects, aimed at adapting the company's computerized systems, completed in the shortest possible time, without sacrificing quality. What's more, all the players in the various business lines, as well as management in general, want changes to the initial project to be taken into account on an almost continuous basis, right up to the extreme limit of what is possible, without of course disrupting the project or jeopardizing deliveries in progress.

It's this capacity that we call agility, or adaptability, to the socio-economic context, by analogy with what in production management we call flexible workshops. Over the last few decades, production has moved from a strategy based on supply to one based on end-customer demand: we need to meet demand as quickly as possible. Demand drives manufacturing.

In the world of IT, the manufacturing metaphor quickly finds its limits. An industrial assembly line is relatively stable, given the investment required to install it, whereas IT is subject to continuous modification. Much more is demanded of the programming part than of the hardware part of the manufacturing process, for it is here that the uniqueness - and greatness - of IT technology lies: processes can be programmed and changed without modifying the hardware; this is a decisive competitive advantage for those who know how to take advantage of it.