An evaluation of different project management methodologies that can be applied in IT environments and sectors of retail industry.

Abstract

This study will look into the project management methods of two different sectors of business. The I.T industry and the retail industry. By looking at these two industries the researcher hopes that they will be able to compare and contrast them and see if there is one way of working that would suit both industries. The researcher will be using a public-sector organisation and a private sector organisation as case studies via the means of a focus group and a survey. I will be conducting the focus group with a public-sector company and this will involve asking questions on real life scenarios of project management, such as what may happen if there are issues with releases, emergency fixes and how weather events may affect release schedules. For the private sector organisation, the researcher will be taking in surveys into the workplace to see if employees up to a management level have an idea of project management that is taking place in their store. The literature suggests that agile project management is increasingly being used within the I.T industry today. This is shown by not only reading articles, journals and magazines but by looking at recent job vacancies for these sectors. It is also mentioned on the retail side but it is much vaguer. This is shown in the literature review. There are many articles on agile project management by a range of different authors which means that it is quite hard to find names which keep appearing throughout. Both the focus group and survey are a mix of qualitative and quantitative research. Which will give me a good indication of the understanding of project management. There were some unexpected questions which came up in the focus group. The researcher did have a lot of individual points of view in regards to the agile way of working. Thematic and voluntary sampling was used to study these results to see if anything relatable could be bought around by looking at the focus group. The same analysis was done with the survey, with shop floor colleagues showing some understanding of the agile way of working, and others not so much. iii This research project will evaluate the project management methodologies of the I.T and Retail industry to see if it is possible to come up with one standard way of working across both of these sectors.