Operations Management

About Dr Robert Hughes

Dr Robert Hughes is currently a Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, authors, an active member of the British Computer Society (BCS) and is chair of the ISEB project management examination panel. Robert's areas of particular interests include software project management, software metrics and project risk. Over the years Robert has produced a number of books, articles and papers on these topics, including the classic text Software Project Management, published by McGraw-Hill, and for which a fifth edition is currently being prepared. A current developing area of interest is the interaction between IT and business need which is the subject of a book IT for business benefit to be published shortly by the BCS.

Introduction

Almost all software and IT projects have an overwhelming number of applications, processes and resources that come together to improve the performance capability of a software project or program. However, results have not yielded such promise. We know this to be true because for almost 30 years the industry has failed to break through the 60% performance capability level.

There are some inherent characteristics of a project that may make it more prone to failure, independently of the level of competence of the project management. Project size is one example. The objective of the Operations Module is to capture such factors. Organisations which unavoidably have to have large project teams, for example, would need to score more highly on project management competence in order to compensate for the higher inherent risk.