Research On Cost Control For IT Service Management Project

Currently most of the IT company have already created the ITproject management structure based on the PMBOOK, but IT projectmanagement is not totally same as the normal project management. ITproject has very specific characteristic: creativeness and uncertainty. Dueto these characteristics which IT project have, IT project has the higherrequirement for the technique capability, on the other hand thecreativeness is very important as well. This is the reasons why the ITproject team must be composed by the higher technology humanresources, but higher technology human resources cause the higher laborcost and the uncertain factors cause the change happened in the projectfrequently. All these factors let us difficult to control the budget for ITproject, so how to control the cost for human resources and projectchange will become the most important point in IT project management.So far, Cost control is always the weakness in IT project management;Cost control is the hard point for IT project management as well.In order to solve the problem which is caused by higher labor costand requirement change in IT service&management project, this thesisanalyzes the characteristics of the IT service&management project, including the component of the IT project cost; investigates thecharacteristic of each part of the IT project life circle: selection、implement、maintenance. Based on the above work and the author’s manyyears of experiences for IT project budget control, the thesis proposed themodel for IT cost control in whole project life circle, including thecomposition of the cost in IT project life circle and the method for ITproject cost control in each phase. According to the model for IT costcontrol, we design the cost control method for each phase in IT projectlife circle: cost control method for selection、cost control method forimplement and cost control method for maintenance. The cost in thephase of selection is composed by IT project decision cost and tender cost;The cost in the phase of implement is composed by human salary cost、travel expenses cost and hardware&software cost; The cost in the phaseof maintenance is composed by on site support cost、communication costand travel expenses cost. In the phase of selection, we use EVA economicvalue-added to estimate the cost; In the phase of implement andmaintenance, we use bottom up method to estimate the cost, according tothe result of cost estimation, we summarize the cost base line for budget.Use EVM earned value management to control the cost, use report systemto monitor the cost.The article base on the real case: the IT service project happened incompany A, in the phase of selection, the method for cost control is base on the calculation of economic value-added, make decision for projectimplement cost; in the phase of implement and maintenance, the costestimation is base on the method of ‘bottom up’, output the cost base line.According to the cost base line, we use the EVM earned valuemanagement, control and analyze the net cost happened at: the ending ofproject consulting; the ending of project development and UAT; theending of project go life; the ending of project maintenance. Control thetotal cost of the IT service management project effectively.According to this kind of real example, we practice the model andthe method of IT service management project cost management for wholelift circle, get the Good results. Base on the IT service managementproject, Author proposed the model for project whole life circle costmanagement, the method have already been proved that have the goodpracticality and value of utility, can control the cost effectively. All thosesuccessful experience and applicable model which is obtained from ITservice management project in company A, will help us to complete theIT project cost management system, it is worth to popularize to the costcontrol for the other projects.