Managing Diversity in Workforce: IT Projects
Acharya, Bhawna (2015)
Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu
2015
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2015111316404
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2015111316404
Tiivistelmä
Organizations are turning globally to remain competitive in today´s world. It is important to have in place a strategy that builds cultural and other diversity awareness to avoid confusion and conflict during project execution. Certain types of customer projects in the case company were having problems in delivery due to its diverse workforce. The aim of the thesis was to create a set of common practices which project managers could follow to manage diversity during project execution stage of the project to improve project delivery.
A qualitative research was used in this study. A current state analysis was done by interviewing leadership, project managers and key project team members. The results of the analysis revealed that there were no common conceptualized practices for managing diversity in these projects instead each project manager was dealing with diversity to their best understanding. The key problem areas were seen both in the cultural diversity as teams were in different countries and in the different level of experience in the team. A conceptual framework for addressing the problem areas was created and used to produce initial guidelines together with the strengths. The initial proposal was then reviewed and refined which resulted in the final version of the common conceptualized best practices.
The author recommends the common conceptualized best practices to be used when dealing with diverse teams in the different project execution stages of these projects. The proposed guideline provides a comprehensive list of task which needs to be done during the different stages. The proposed guidelines has element of cultural diversity awareness, building trust, clear guidelines and expectations, effective communication, having virtual presence to build high performance team. The outcome supports the company strategy on collaboration and provides help for project managers to improve delivery of projects.
A qualitative research was used in this study. A current state analysis was done by interviewing leadership, project managers and key project team members. The results of the analysis revealed that there were no common conceptualized practices for managing diversity in these projects instead each project manager was dealing with diversity to their best understanding. The key problem areas were seen both in the cultural diversity as teams were in different countries and in the different level of experience in the team. A conceptual framework for addressing the problem areas was created and used to produce initial guidelines together with the strengths. The initial proposal was then reviewed and refined which resulted in the final version of the common conceptualized best practices.
The author recommends the common conceptualized best practices to be used when dealing with diverse teams in the different project execution stages of these projects. The proposed guideline provides a comprehensive list of task which needs to be done during the different stages. The proposed guidelines has element of cultural diversity awareness, building trust, clear guidelines and expectations, effective communication, having virtual presence to build high performance team. The outcome supports the company strategy on collaboration and provides help for project managers to improve delivery of projects.