E-Business Project Management - Project Planning and Implementation

Electronic business, popularly known as e-business, has completely transformed the consumer market today with the impact of its dot com domain. With the current pace of IT development and establishment of new businesses online, internet has become a transaction hub for the business houses and customers across the globe. It has not only pooled the current livestock of broadways information online but also made the online market trading and transactions aggressive and more competitive. Of late, as businesses have started realizing its importance of understanding the current status of marketplace, they are strategizing their objectives accordingly. However, this is not so easy and calls for significant intervention by IT professionals and other professionals through the medium of project management. Like other conventionally engineered projects, an e-business projects also demands effective planning and implementation of fundamental project management practices.

Any project starts with gathering information on the project requirements and the identifying the pros and cons as well as a draft of the project management capsule. E-business system also requires this comprehensive approach, however, in a completely different manner, despite following the basic project management rules. Here the planning of projects starts with the vision of establishment of websites and then various other parameters are considered like financial resources, risk factors, human resources, time management and last but not the least – the embedded technology for successful execution of such projects. There is a unique method involved in accomplishing an e-business project and there is also the need of effective detailing at each stage of project execution since this system is more prone to technological disruptions. Other factors that play important role here are unstable economic environment, inadequate risk prioritization and the mishandling of business agreements since a major portion of operation is processed electronically. This not only demands careful supervision but it also increases the cost of various operations. Therefore planning and implementation of e-business project need special forecasting techniques with critical business objectives.

There is an analogy between e-business project management and conventional project management software development – both need exhaustive technical planning. However, there is lot more to an e-business project. While planning an e-business project, there are some important data management factors that need to be taken care of. These data management factors are often referred to as crucial e-business project management components required for setting a compatible as well as integrated trading platform. Among these components, there is Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) which allows exchange of data between the intending websites and business participants. Secondly there is a security channel which secures transaction of data between the website users, influencers and administrators. Other important component is HCI- Human Computer Interface. It makes the e-business website user-friendly. Other two supplements with this component are graphics and real time response which make website look attractive and effective for trading.