This article (Gupta, 2007) describes the importance of e-business in an organization and relates the key role of a top level management to make an e-business project transition happens. Nowadays, companies are facing constant challenges of reducing costs, introducing innovative products and customer satisfaction. The market is increasing demands for lower prices, more products options, customizations, improved level of service and unique. Due to the demands top managers (including support of CEOs, CIOS and CFOs) examine their operations for new opportunities to meet all these challenges and therefore they realize that a big change is necessary to make the company competitive and profitable because if they do not handle the demands they may loose significant business in a short period of time. Organizations need to have a sustainable competitive advantage to survive and work to implement strategies that competitors cannot carry out efficiently. Organizations need to deliver a consistent difference in their product and service to be competitive and this advantage should be difficult to be copied and easily improved, maintained and developed.
A very important factor about helping project managers successfully lead projects is the level of commitment and support they receive from top management, a direct support makes things easier providing faster resolutions and better communication. Top management needs to assume responsibility for demonstrating leadership for quality and ensures that tasks are set with the right priority and are strongly supported by the entire organization, it is essential to involve as many leaders as possible at the beginning of a process and to choose the most motivated persons for the work. Some projects fail because of the lack of vision and leadership, so a proper level of executive sponsorship and top management support are necessary. No matter how well- run a project is, problems constantly arise, so it is important to have a direct person to contact that can solve the problem straight away. Some reasons that make top management commitment very important are:
- Adequate resources: project managers need adequate resources not to be distracted by events that do not affect their specific projects.
- Faster approval: direct support provides faster approval to lead with the unexpected needs.
- Cooperation: project managers need cooperation from people that work in different departments at the organization and top management may make this communication work faster and better.
- Support: the top management provides the necessary business support for the project manager
The article emphasizes the importance of developing a clear framework that establishes who can make which decision and how the project will be managed. A framework simplifies and facilitates IT managers to better access approaches, samples and tools, it also increases the level of competence and effort that managers bring to the project. A framework is a set of processes that manage the project through its lifecycle. Organizations have to perform a strategic assessment of the options available to them and a well planed strategy is necessary to identify the threats and opportunities. A good project does not depend only on management levels but the team has a huge role to play and it should have a good interaction, the team should be ready to delegate responsibilities as well as discuss problems to make changes happen and contribute to the project flow.
In an overall, any successful project requires a strong partnership between top management and project managers; top management has to assist project managers to what they need, their commitment is very important for a project to deliver what it is expected. They have to make people understand the importance of what they are doing and the activities they are charged.
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