Projects suitable for Doctoral Students
Dr George Allan will consider Directing the Studies or supervising research into the following areas:
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Investigating the theory and practical applications of current IS/IT/ICT Project Management paradigms
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Systems Configuration Management
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The theory and practice of Change Management for IS/IT/ICT systems within commercial or business organizations
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Enquiries at Doctoral level into Project or System Life Cycle Paradigms, especially their conceptual and theoretical basis, their strengths and weaknesses when applied to commercial projects and systems.
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The underpinning theory of Risk Management and a comparative study of business/industrial practices. How does the theory stand up to application? How do practitioners cope with risks in their world of project development and meeting milestones and deadlines.
In particular, the following ideas will be useful to postgraduate students. More information is available on request.
Project A: To investigate continuous improvement processes for the application of a Configuration Management framework applied to COTS components for ICT system sustainability.
Project B: A research project to evaluate the framework to extend Configuration Management developed in Allan,G., (2003), A Framework to Extend Configuration Management, available on loan from The Frewen Library, University of Portsmouth, Cambridge Road, Portsmouth, England, PO1 2DJ. This would need you to read and understand the text and construct a PhD initial proposal outlining how you would tackle this problem. Then investigate extending Configuration Management into the Business area and assess organizational learning practices.
Project C: To establish and strengthen the theoretical basis of the following Change Management model and establish IS/IT/ICT applications to the business and commercial world.
For Change Management model click here and read the fuller paper here
Project D: To investigate double-loop learning in the ICT departments of commercial organizations or government departments. Are these departments learning departments? If not why not? How do these ICT departments become more learning-orientated? What are the costs and the benefits? What is the underlying theory and can it be validated and improved?.
Project E: Risk Management (RM) has been around for a long time but still many businesses, companies and government departments resist the huge benefits from applying RM. An investigation into resistance factors is needed leading to better ways to control projects by recognizing and minimizing risks.
Groups