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Can Personal Development fire the silver bullet in IT Delivery Final-1.pdf (84.66 kB)

Can personal development fire the "Silver Bullet" in IT delivery

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conference contribution
posted on 2016-02-18, 10:44 authored by Michael Elliott, Ray DawsonRay Dawson
Do we really understand the true root cause to our IT project failures and why are we unable to replicate our project successes? Often the correction of project failings identifies processes, methodologies or procedures for the answers – the ubiquitous Silver Bullet, and it is on this basis that most University courses in Computer Science and Software Engineering are designed. However, an analysis of literature on software development reveals that in order to create the step change improvement in IT project management delivery, we need to significantly improve the inter-personal skills of the whole IT project management team. The revolution for improved productivity will stem from challenging the typical career paths of technology learning to provide a much greater focus on the softer skills. Project management can be articulated as getting things done through people, so skilful management of team dynamics and effective communications based on an appreciation and understanding of people’s behaviours will significantly improve working relationships to create an environment for success. A large group of over 90 companies represented by E-Skills UK have designed a university course in Information Technology Management for Business which requires a minimum of 20% of students’ time to be spent on personal and inter-personal skills. Graduates of this course at the 18 UK universities where the course has been offered have had a very high employment rate and are much appreciated by the businesses employing them. It is recommended, therefore, that all University Computer Science and Software Engineering courses put a greater focus on personal and inter-personal skills.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Computer Science

Published in

Software Quality Management XXIII (SQM 2015) Outlook on Quality : Procedings of Software Quality Management XXIII

Pages

13 - 23

Citation

ELLIOTT, M. and DAWSON, R., 2015. Can personal development fire the "Silver Bullet" in IT delivery. IN: Lock, R. et al (eds.) Outlook on Quality: Proceedings of Software Quality Management XXIII (SQM 2015), Loughborough, UK, pp. 13 - 23

Publisher

BCS / © The Authors

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This is a conference paper.

ISBN

9780992695866

Language

  • en

Location

Loughborough