Digital business practices have made Information Technology project management a mandatory tool for boosting organisational agility through innovation and operational efficiency. Organisations continuously search for technology-driven solutions that maintain continuous operations for better efficiency, seize new business opportunities, and fix existing system gaps (Eyieyien et al., 2024). Strategic value from IT projects depends on technical skillsets, well-structured planning, strong stakeholder engagement, and proactive risk management. The protection of innovative projects includes particular elements that should be present to defend against delays, budget issues, and user dissatisfaction. This research examines crucial conditions needed for successful IT project delivery in business settings to develop computing solutions for real-world problems. The research studies how organisations receive feedback after projects to learn, while highlighting methods for stakeholder communication alongside project tools integration and risk registry development. This research design implements existing best practices to achieve successful IT project outcomes.

2. Problem Identification and Project Scope

2.1 Identifying the Problem or Opportunity

The retail organisation faces major delays when responding to customer questions because its existing email-based manual ticketing system cannot keep up with customer inquiries. Competitors measured higher customer satisfaction and retention by implementing real-time automated systems that provided faster responses (Rane, 2023). It is clear in the present business ecosystem that implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software would link ticket automation and chatbots while gathering customer data into a single centralised system.

The SWOT analysis highlights internal weaknesses because of limited automation, disconnected customer data, and external opportunities because of the rise of digital usage combined with 24/7 service requirements. Organisations involved with this matter encompass internal personnel, such as customer support personnel, IT teams, and managers, whereas external parties include customers, software vendors, and business partners. Development of integration work for third-party external applications, such as legacy email and payment processing solutions, will be delayed until the following development phase (Bonifazi, 2025).

2.2 Defining Project Scope

The key goal focuses on achieving a minimum 30% decrease in average customer wait times after three months of CRM deployment. The implementation project will result in deploying cloud-based CRM applications alongside training materials, data migration assessment documents and support documentation for the post-implementation period.

The project faces three main restrictions, including the £25,000 budget and four-month deadline, while needing a strict handling of customer data under the GDPR. The current project omits external third-party application integration, but future phases will address this functionality.

To support project planning, a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) will be created to break the project into manageable components. The project workflow consists of requirement analysis, selecting vendors for system installation, and user training and evaluation stages. The project benefits from better resource allocation and stage-to-stage transparency because of the clear assignment of tasks.

3. Stakeholder Engagement and Management

3.1 Identifying Stakeholders

Successful IT project delivery hinges on identifying and managing all stakeholders affected by or involved in the project. In the context of implementing a CRM system for a retail organisation, stakeholders are categorised as follows:

Internal stakeholders: Senior management (project sponsors), customer service representatives (end-users), IT support teams, and project managers.
External stakeholders: CRM software vendors, customers (users of the support system), and data compliance regulators (e.g., GDPR bodies).

To prioritise engagement strategies, a Power/Interest Grid is employed (see Figure 1: Stakeholder Map). For example, senior management has high power and interest, requiring close monitoring and decision-making involvement. In contrast, customers have high interest but low power, making them key feedback providers through surveys and usability sessions.

3.2 Stakeholder Engagement Channels

Selecting the right communication channels is essential for gaining stakeholder support and maintaining trust. Suitable engagement methods for each stakeholder group include:

Executive briefings: Ideal for senior managers to receive concise, strategic updates.
Team meetings and training workshops: Appropriate for internal users such as customer service staff and IT teams.
Email updates and newsletters: For periodic project progress updates to broader internal teams.
Surveys and feedback forms: Designed for customer input during beta testing and post-implementation.
Collaboration platforms (e.g., Microsoft Teams or Slack): For ongoing dialogue among project team members.

3.3 Justification of Channels

The selected communication channels match the needs of target stakeholders and their preferred communication approaches. The effectiveness of messages arises when noise reaches minimal levels while the content matches the requirements of the receivers according to the Shannon-Weaver communication model. Executive briefings supply essential information as briefs to leaders, whereas workshops create essential two-way dialogue, which enhances user engagement (Rikkinen, 2023). When stakeholder involvement remains weak in requirements development, stakeholders may experience missing requirements, scope modifications, and implementation difficulties.

3.4 Evaluation of Stakeholder Management

The UK’s NHS e-health project failed because it wasted funds on developing systems that users could not use effectively. A lack of end-user consultation caused failure in the UK NHS e-health project because it produced systems that could not work and wasted funding (Mauco et al., 2020). Furthermore, another example of stakeholder management can be found at Spotify, where user success continues through the Agile squad structure, which maintains direct stakeholder engagement and sustained user perception acquisition. Operational tools that handle projects alongside time restrictions and team resource delegation determine the success of projects.

4. Project Management Tools

4.1 Project Planning Software

Stakeholders access shared platforms to monitor progress and edit plans in real time. The most common tools utilised in IT project management include Microsoft Project alongside Trello and Asana (Kamila and Marzuq, 2024). Team members can work together via these tools to track their progress rates while allowing instant adaptations to their work.

The distinctive cards from Trello called Kanban help teams monitor progress while connecting through visual task boards. Complex projects that need complete task dependency management would benefit best from this tool. Users can track their tasks through Trello using Kanban-style cards, providing a simple platform with visual boards for maximised collaboration effectiveness (Moiseienko et al., 2025). Asana’s Task assignment, workflow visualisation, and milestone tracking functions seamlessly integrate with email and calendar tools to help hybrid and Agile team structures.

Common features across these tools include:

Task management: Assigning, prioritising, and tracking task completion.
Gantt charts: Visual timelines showing task durations and dependencies (see Figure 2).
Resource allocation: Managing workload distribution and availability.
Dashboards and reporting: Real-time performance updates for stakeholders.

4.2 Integration and Impact

These tools are directly put to project success as they improve planning accuracy, raise visibility and help respond quickly to the emerging problems regarding a project. It helps in real-time coordination between remote, dispersed team members and automatic reminders to stop tasks from slipping away.

Lastly, the project planning tool is tightly interwoven with the stakeholder engagement strategy. Dashboards provide stakeholders with timely and accurate information, and updates are automated. Risk registers can also be embedded and high-risk tasks flagged on tools such as Asana or Microsoft Project for proactive risk management.

The operational backbone contributing to every project stage, be it planning, communication, or reporting functions, is based on the IT project management software that integrates these functions (Alsulaimi and Abdullah, 2020).

5. Risk Register and Risk Mitigation

5.1 Create a Risk Register

It is challenging to control risks of the scheduling process, such as missed deadlines caused by task dependency or unexpected delays that will also affect the project progress and devalue customers’ confidence. Project teams can systematically record, evaluate, and deal with threats to the project performance with a risk register. Below is Table 1: This provides a Risk Register of key risks in the CRM implementation project.

Table 1: Risk Register

ID	Description	Likelihood	Impact	Risk Rating	Mitigation Strategy	Owner	Status
R1	Staff resistance to the new system	Medium	High	High	Conduct change management workshops and early demos	HR Manager	Open
R2	Scope creep from added requirements	High	High	Very High	Use a formal change control process with approvals	Project Manager	In Progress
R3	Data migration errors	Medium	Medium	Medium	Pre-migration data audit and testing	IT Lead	Open
R4	Missed deadlines	Medium	High	High	Implement milestone-based tracking with buffers	Project Scheduler	Open
R5	Regulatory non-compliance (GDPR)	Low	High	Medium	Consult the legal team and conduct a DPIA	Compliance Officer	Open

5.2 Identify and Explain Key Risks

One of the most common risks in IT projects is scope creep, which refers to adding time and dollars to a project by making unapproved changes. This usually comes from fuzzy project boundaries or uncontrolled stakeholder requirements. This is why data issues present serious risks in CRM projects that rely on a clean and structured dataset. Inaccurate reporting and faulty automation can result from poor data quality (Williams and Tang, 2020). Scheduling risk might also refer to project schedules being blown out because dependency between tasks means they cannot proceed unless the preceding task has been completed in time, or they were delayed unexpectedly and slow project progress against stakeholder confidence.

5.3 Recommend Mitigations

Formalisation of the change control process becomes necessary to mitigate the effect of scoping creep, where all the changes are documented, checked for impacts and approved by senior-level stakeholders. Moreover, this approach aligns with PRINCE2 methodology because it poses a change with controlled stages of approval (UK Government, 2018). According to Kerzner (2017), Gantt Gantt-based tracking tool aids visibility of delays and resource overlaps.

Lastly, staff resistance can be reduced through proactively done change management workshops, displaying early benefits, and providing user-friendly training. This model was used in the NHS’s improved digital health initiatives (Xue et al., 2024). Kerzner (2017) claims that Gantt-based tracking tools are useful since threats like delays and resource overlaps can be visualised. Furthermore, the staff resistance could be minimised by utilising proactive change management workshops to demonstrate early benefits, and by offering non-complicated training, as was carried out flawlessly in the NHS improved digital health initiatives (Schwalbe, 2015).

6. Post-Project Review Planning

6.1 Plan the Review

A structured post-project review (PPR) should be conducted 2 to 6 weeks after the CRM system handover, once users have interacted with the system and measurable impacts emerge. The process will use a triangulated approach comprising:

Surveys to collect quantitative feedback from users on system functionality and satisfaction.
One-to-one interviews with project team members and sponsors to gather in-depth insights.
Workshops for collaborative reflection on what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved.

The results will be documented in a formal review report and shared with stakeholders.

6.2 Who Should Be Included

A comprehensive review should include:

Project Manager: Offers an overview of scope, timeline, and resource adherence.
Project Sponsor: Evaluates strategic alignment and return on investment.
Project Team Members: Provide insights into execution challenges and lessons learned.
End-users: Offer real-world usability feedback and adoption challenges.
Quality Assurance (QA) personnel: Share defect reports and testing gaps.
Vendors: Comment on product delivery, integration, and support limitations.

Each participant contributes unique insights that help paint a full picture of project performance.

6.3 Why Reviews Are Conducted

The post implement reviews of projects can be used to compare the planned goals and post-project results, missed milestones, costings structures and communication gaps. Schwalbe (2015) notes that reviews serve as a learning opportunity to organisations that increases their maturity, decreases the possibility of duplicate errors, and strengthens the trust of stakeholders in upcoming projects.

6.4 Stakeholder Involvement and Commitment

Stakeholder engagement (lack thereof) can significantly impact the outcome, especially from end users and sponsors. For instance, when users are denied access to the testing or feedback stages, usability and relevance of the system may be lacking, which eventually means low adoption and delayed operations. Unsatisfied sponsors may lower resources dedicated to the project or miss project objectives. As Kerzner (2017) asserts, stakeholder commitment is not a choice but a necessity for any project’s delivery.

7. Conclusion

This report shows that for an organisation to implement a system successfully, it needs good IT project planning and effective management of its stakeholders. To begin, the study started with defining a real business problem: inefficiencies in the operation of manual customer support, and how a computing solution (a CRM system or tools) could help address large gaps in strategy. Development of a formal risk register and post-project reviews reinforced the importance of reflective learning and iterative improvement.

It also importantly defines that stakeholder participation is critical to the system’s success, its adoption by the user, and its ultimate value to business, from the beginning to the end and its review. The methods discussed in this article are not merely theoretical; they are directly applicable in real life, so that aspiring IT professionals will be capable of applying tools and knowledge while entering future roles on projects in both the public and private sectors.

The methods discussed here have solid academic grounding and are readily applicable to actual situations; as such, these can provide a useful toolkit and source for insights to aspiring IT professionals who may wish to have the necessary tools to equip themselves for future project roles in both private and public sector environments.

References

Alsulaimi, A., and Abdullah, T. (2020, March). Management of stakeholder communications in IT projects. In 2020 3rd International Conference on Computer Applications & Information Security (ICCAIS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Bonifazi, F. (2025). Project Management for the Compliance with DORA Regulation: A Case Study of a Leading Institution in the Payment Sector (Doctoral dissertation, Politecnico di Torino).

Eyieyien, O. G., Idemudia, P. O. P. C., and Ijomah, T. I. (2024). Strategic approaches for successful digital transformation in project management across industries. International Journal of Frontiers in Engineering and Technology Research, 7(1), 1-11.

Kamila, J. S., and Marzuq, M. F. (2024). Asana and Trello: a comparative assessment of project management capabilities. JOIV: International Journal on Informatics Visualisation, 8(1), 207-212.

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project Management Metrics, KPIs, and Dashboards: A Guide to Measuring and Monitoring Project Performance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
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Mauco, K. L., Scott, R. E., and Mars, M. (2020). Validation of an e-health readiness assessment framework for developing countries. BMC health services research, 20, 1-10.

Moiseienko, N., Moiseienko, M., and Lubentsova, D. (2025). A web-based Kanban application for enhancing agile project management practices. In CEUR Workshop Proceedings (pp. 131-138).

Rane, N. (2023). Enhancing customer loyalty through Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data technologies: improving customer satisfaction, engagement, relationship, and experience. Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data Technologies: Improving Customer Satisfaction, Engagement, Relationship, and Experience (October 13, 2023).

Rikkinen, R. (2023). Engaging users successfully in a group-level programme (Master’s thesis, R. Rikkinen).

Schwalbe, K. (2015). An Introduction to Project Management, Fifth Edition. Available at: https://intropm2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/5e-ch-1.pdf.

UK Government (2018). GUIDE TO DEVELOPING THE PROJECT BUSINESS CASE BETTER BUSINESS CASES: for Better Outcomes. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66449468ae748c43d3793bb8/Project_Business_Case_2018.pdf.

Williams, D., and Tang, H. (2020). Data quality management for industry 4.0: A survey. Software Quality Professional, 22(2), 26-35.

Xue, Z., Nasir, N. S. M., Cheng, Y., Wu, W., and Cao, Y. (2024). OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO INNOVATION: STRATEGIES AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT. Journal of Business Innovation, 9(1), 32.

THIS WORK IS PROPERTY OF THE ACADEMIC PAPERS UK,

https://www.theacademicpapers.co.uk/

LEE SIMPSON IS NOT THE FIRST OWNER

1. Introduction