IT project management: developing on-going skills in the management of software development projects

Many computing courses teach a little project management-often the concepts are cursorily introduced in Systems Analysis. What tends to be taught though, is just the 'planning' of projects. Gantt and PERT charts are drawn, rarely using project management software, to produce a list of the object tasks. A major aspect of project management is, however the on-going management of the project-keeping the project on time and within budget. The paper describes research conducted by the authors into some approaches to the teaching of these concepts. With the growing interest in project management in the IT community, we suggest that the designers of tertiary computing courses should give renewed consideration to the way in which the teaching of project management is undertaken. In particular, we advocate the construction of student assignments designed to make use of project management software to handle the ongoing management of projects.