Research Profile

Dr. Ernest Mnkandla's Research Area

Research Group: Project Management

My research focus is basically looking at two major areas of IT projects; solutions development, and service delivery and support. The idea is to develop a rich overview of management of IT in general such that ultimately, all technology investments and operational expenditures in an organization are guided to enable the business and hence add to the bottom line.

Solutions Development

The new approaches to the actual development of software and other IT systems are generally aimed at delivering a quality product within the allocated budget and stated time limit. There are several factors that contribute to what can be considered a successful IT project.

Issues of research interest in this regard are:

• Exploring the relationships between PMI and agile approaches to PM

• General agile methodology adoption issues

• Profiling of agile practices

• Software development teams and other human issues in IT projects

• Quality assurance in agile development

Service Delivery and Support

"IT managers need to be able to help align with the business, manage the financial portfolio and articulate the benefits in a language that the business can understand."

Issues of research interest in this regard are:

– Human issues in IT management

– IT Enterprise Architecture and Data Modeling

Other Research Interests and Activities

• At Masters degree level I am able to guide students in several areas due to my background:

– Software Engineering all areas

– Computer Organization an Architecture

– Computer Networks

– Wireless Technologies

– IT Enterprise Architecture and Data Modeling

• I author books and book chapters in the area of agile methodologies.

• I also provide training courses in the different areas of agile methodologies

For further information contact:

emnkandla@uj.ac.za
Or got to:

http://www.uj.ac.za/bit/