Project management (a report about a project called i-borrow) Essay

Project management (a report about a project called i-borrow) - Essay Example The project exemplifies project management principles throughout its planning and execution stage through thorough analysis of the target needs and available resources. Its continued success owes to excellence in design, which instituted a system of lean overhead and management costs, as well as a user-friendly feedback system that provided information not only on laptop use, but also fills the gap in empirical research data on how students are utilizing the learning space within the university. By filling a niche where previously only bulky systems existed that failed to adequately serve the stakeholders, the i-Borrow project provides an excellent framework for future academic and commercial implementations of internet technology solutions. As such, analysis of this project plays an important role contemporary project management analysis on multiple levels. ... t Context In response to a growing and increasingly diversified student body’s need for improved library services, the i-Borrow project was initiated with the goal of establishing a program for the ongoing service that would provide 200 educational laptop computers for use within the newly constructed library and student support center at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU). Unlike many projects, which concentrate on producing an end result such as a building or static piece of software, the end result of the i-Borrow project was to produce not only the concrete infrastructure needed to provide the service but also to implement a program for the management of the service that would eventually supersede the project itself. The challenge of contemporary IT project management is that many projects involve much more than just project planning and scheduling, and are primarily concerned with the control of an on-going project during its whole lifetime of use, as commonly fou nd in computer networking projects (Tatnall and Reyes 2005 p.153-155). In the case of i-Borrow, the project involved planning for not just distribution systems, and user interface and use, but also for the infrastructure of the wireless network, network support, and ongoing maintenance necessary to support the system. The projects official mission statement is documented in the project final report as: â€Å"iBorrow will allow users of a new Library and Learning Centre to borrow a laptop computer as easily as picking a book from a shelf. It will provide a large-scale demonstration of how thin-client laptops with location-aware technology can enable the University to not only provide no-fuss access to a full range of software and learning resources but also effectively manage the configuration of