to tackle Conflicts in the IT Industry: A tactical approach to future IT contracts
FEATURED PAPER
By Neethu Anna Sam
SKEMA Business School
Paris, France and India
ABSTRACT
Information technology is one of the common industries which faces disputes often, and conflicts has been there from the beginning of time. Mostly conflicts arise due to disagreements and then contract breach which leads to fighting for the rights for years, causing huge loss and eventually closing down their business. In this era, there are many ways to deal with an issue. Finding the right source of impact and executing effective methods of dispute resolution can be the smarter move. This paper deals with analyzing several alternate dispute resolution methods using the multi-attribute decision making process. This paper gives evidence on the use of Prevention as the best method of alternate dispute resolution to be applied in early stages of a contract to scale down the issue from escalating to Litigation and the possible clauses to be included in written contract.
Keywords: Alternate Dispute Resolution, Conflicts, Information Technology (IT), Failure, Contract, Project Management, Tech Industry, Litigation,
INTRODUCTION
Information technology is a rapidly evolving field and has several technological aspects which change regularly and demands competence. They have a broad scope and seeks to integrate more of their information functions. It can be a challenge to cope with such a transforming environment. Our capacity to understand and learn about the developing IT initiatives can be a challenge because of its proliferating cost, complexity and the impacts on business processes. For years, IT projects continue to fail at an alarming rate, and there are numerous reasons why the sector continues to face failures often. The cloud portfolio management of Innotas by Planview conducted a survey in 2013 that revealed 50% had experienced a failure in IT projects in 2012. After three years, the Innotas annual project 2016 and portfolio management reported 55% failure which was polled by 126 IT professionals between January and march of 2015. So, we can conclude that the numbers had increased in the following years[1].
According to the study of 600 IT and business executive by a software development firm, Geneca, “75% confess that the lack of confidence in the success of the project causes failure in projects, 80% reveals that they waste their time on rework, 78% sense that the stakeholders have inconsistent involvement and project is less synced which eventually results in confusion. Only 55% understands the business case and the requirements for projects. Less than 20% only develops an appropriate requirement process by the business case. And at the end of a project, hardly 23% agrees to it”[2]. Similarly, a project management survey in 2017 by KPMG states that “leading change and effective communication are among the top skills lacking for most of the project management professionals.” “Only 29% of projects are delivering to budget, and only a fifth of projects are consistently delivering on their planned benefits. While most projects have active and engaged sponsors, only 10% are seen as providing extremely effective governance activities.
Finally, only one-third of projects are delivering the desired outcomes”[3]. From all these statistics, we can observe that failure of IT projects can be attributed more to poor project management than technological issues. Therefore, for root cause analysis, there are four main areas to be focused, they are project management, change in scope, different stakeholder interest and refuted change request. It is necessary to analyze how these factors affect a project and what resolutions can be determined for one of the most critical factors in a project, i.e., project management style.
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Editor’s note: This paper was prepared for the course “International Contract Management” facilitated by Dr Paul D. Giammalvo of PT Mitratata Citragraha, Jakarta, Indonesia as an Adjunct Professor under contract to SKEMA Business School for the program Master of Science in Project and Programme Management and Business Development. http://www.skema.edu/programmes/masters-of-science. For more information on this global program (Lille and Paris in France; Belo Horizonte in Brazil), contact Dr Paul Gardiner, Global Programme Director paul.gardiner@skema.edu.
How to cite this paper: Sam, N.A. (2019). Best Methods of Alternate Dispute Resolution to tackle Conflicts in the IT Industry: A tactical approach to future IT contracts, PM World Journal, Vol. VIII, Issue VII, August. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/pmwj84-Aug2019-Sam-alternate-dispute-resolution-in-IT-industry.pdf
About the Author
Neethu Anna Sam
SKEMA Business School
Paris, France and India
Neethu Anna Sam is an engineer who graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering in India. Born in Kerala, a southern state in India, she is currently settled in Paris to pursue her masters degree. She worked in Wipro, a multinational company in India as a Project Engineer for 2.5 years. In Wipro, she worked for Microsoft Account to test the compatibility of Apps on OS. She worked as a critical resource to test the OS at the time of WIN 10 release. She acquired knowledge on information technology through her experience and decided to take a level up through Masters. Currently, she is pursuing her master’s degree in Project, Programme Management and Business Development at Skema Business School. She is PRINCE2 and AgilePM certified. With her international and technical background and as an open-minded person, she is an efficient problem solver and loves taking new challenges.
Neethu lives in Paris and can be contacted at samneethuanna@gmail.com or www.linkedin.com/in/neethu-anna-sam-49904064
[1] Florentine, S. (2017, February 27). IT project success rates finally improving. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com/article/3174516/project-management/it-project-success-rates-finally-improving.html
[2] Geneca. (2017, January 25). Why up to 75% of Software Projects Will Fail ⋆ Geneca. Retrieved from https://www.geneca.com/why-up-to-75-of-software-projects-will-fail/
[3] Barlow, G., Tubb, A., & Riley, G. (2017). Driving Business Performance. Retrieved from https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/nz/pdf/July/projectmanagementsurvey-kpmg-nz.pdf
