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Ways of balancing stakeholder interests on the customer side in IT - projects

Student: Shadaeva Nelli

Supervisor: Grigory L. Tsipes

Faculty: Faculty of Management

Educational Programme: Master

Year of Graduation: 2014

<p align="center"><strong>ABSTRACT OF THE MASTER&rsquo;S THESIS</strong></p><p align="center">Ways of balancing stakeholder interests on the customer side in IT - projects</p><p>by Shadaeva N.M.</p><p>Supervisor: Tsipes G.L.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The present paper describes a stakeholder management concept with emphasis on the role of the customer in the IT projects. The problem of the study area lays in multiplicity of Customer stakeholders (general customer, functional customer and operation service).</p><p>The general <strong>purpose</strong> of the study was to identificate the main priorities of various stakeholders on the customer side in IT projects.</p><p>Within this overall goal the following research <strong>tasks</strong> were addressed:</p><p>1. In theoretical part:</p><p>1.1. To conduct a literature review on the following topics:</p><p>1.1.1. Stakeholder theory;</p><p>1.1.2. Stakeholder relationship management in projects;</p><p>1.1.3. The role of the customer in IT-projects.</p><p>2. In practical part:</p><p>To conduct a survey among project managers and employees of IT-companies to find out what factors are the most important for the various customer stakeholders in IT-projects.</p><p><strong>Methodology of the research:</strong></p><p>1. In theoretical part:</p><p>A review of &nbsp;Russian and foreign articles in the field of project management. Articles in academic journals and books on project management were the main sources of information. Also materials from online sources were used.</p><p>2. In practical part:</p><p>The information was obtained from primary and secondary sources. Primary data was collected, firstly, as a result of the questionnaire survey, for which project managers and employees of IT-companies were selected as respondents. Secondly, the data was collected during the period of the research practice in company which implements IT-projects. The secondary sources of information included internal project documents of the company.</p><p>According to the research the following <strong>conclusions</strong> were drawn:</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">1.&nbsp; Research topic is relevant: the concept of stakeholders is particularly important in project management, where the environment is characterized by very high dynamism.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">2.&nbsp; Complexity of information technology itself is an important factor in the project implementing process, and therefore the typical difficulties encountered in the projects, in this case, are superimposed on the specific problems of domain.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">3.&nbsp; Today the Customer, its role and responsibilities in the project&nbsp; are neglected in research studies, despite the fact that the customer is a key stakeholder of the project and satisfaction of &nbsp;his/her needs should be the main task for the project manager of the Contractor.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">4.&nbsp; Different stakeholders on the Customer side have different expectations and priorities in project implementation. At the same time there are also some factors that are equally important for a number of stakeholders.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">5.&nbsp; Managing stakeholders&#39; expectations and maintaining a balance of interests is necessary for the successful project implementation. The sooner it is determined that the customer has the wrong expectations about the results of the project, the more the contractor has resources (time and money) to fix it.</p><p style="margin-left:21.25pt;">On the basis of the findings the following <strong>recommendations</strong> were developed:</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">1.&nbsp; To achieve the balance of interests a Technology for harmonization interests of various Customer stakeholders is proposed. The idea is in regular assessment of the project on the fundamentally important factors with the designation of the current problems and potential risks, which can lead to conflicts with the stakeholders of the Customer.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">2.&nbsp; A template developed in Excel format for stakeholder analysis can be used in practice as a tool to maintain the balance of stakeholders&rsquo; interests and to select the most appropriate communication channels.</p><p style="margin-left:21.3pt;">3.&nbsp; The technique of the stakeholder analysis can be automated to reduce the time spent on the stakeholder analysis and to development strategies of interaction with them.</p>

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