Validation of Support Tools for Project Management: Case of COPPMAN

Abstract

Project managers have started to draw support from IT solutions to handle projects, which are more complex than before. Therefore, most of the companies have been generating solutions specific to their need in addition to available software for general use. Any designed product/software requires a testing process not only to check that it is correctly working (verification), but also to secure that it is successfully serving for the intended purpose (validation). To ensure validity, new trend in software development has become early interaction of the possible users of the software to the development process to improve product quality. Early evaluations of the users provide detailed probing of the need that supports structuring the design, whereas latter evaluations serve as behavioral analysis of the developed software. Thus, user interaction for validation of software can be integrated to design process life cycle at any level of the process with different purposes and detail of evaluation. This study exemplifies validation study of a construction project portfolio management tool (COPPMAN), which is developed to support construction companies in adopting project portfolio centered management perspectives. Within evaluation studies of COPPMAN, three professionals from a construction company were assigned as a focus group and their evaluations were obtained through discussions and interviews at three main levels of the development process as; needs analysis, model generation, and beta testing. The current study mainly handles the beta testing process, where actual utilization of COPPMAN was made with a sample of nine real construction projects of the company. Evaluations made during and at the end of the process appreciate the potential value of COPPMAN in decisionmaking at top management level with its expected benefits in “strategic planning”, “business development”, “organizational learning” and “knowledge management”. Suggestions for improvement of COPPMAN were also obtained as possible considerations for the forthcoming update. This validation process acts as a successful complementary to other validation testing processes undertaken in the development cycle (expert evaluation, pilot testing and usability testing) by providing a real environment(/in-house) evaluation as a trial of actual utilization of COPPMAN. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.