Abstract:

Fast-changing environments in all kinds of industries lead to massive and quick needs for changes in Management Information Systems and especially in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Such change projects can be handled with different project management (PM) methods. In addition to classic, waterfall driven approaches that are most often used by external implementation partners, the usage of agile project methods is increasing [VanWaardenburg2013]. The, for most of companies challenging, projects of ERP implementation or changes are combined with the management of the budgeting situation regarding all necessary project. Budgeting is sometimes politically influenced, and some downsides are given by Neely [Neely2003]. Overall, the predominant theme in the literature is that planning and budgeting processes traditionally are leading to bad results. Very often these processes are hindering agility and only add limited value to the management [Neely2003].

Based on the methodology of literature research, the authors analyzed the current state of the discussion. They enriched their findings with a discussion during a workshop at the SE2020 conference held in February 2020. The main research question was formulated as How to teach the combination of Project Management and Budgeting during an ERP implementation project?

Historically, budgeting is an essential topic in companies based on the control aspects of [Otley1994]. However, [Gurton1999] claimed budgeting "a thing of the past". There exist several techniques which have a particular influence on budgeting constraints. Different surveys, especially in Europe, report an unsatisfactory budgeting situation in companies [Neely2003]. Based on the unsatisfied situation, Hope and Fraser [Hope2003a] developed the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT), which is a conglomerate of individuals and companies which trust in management without budgets. They are not interested in the improvement of existing budgeting methods - they believe in the total elimination of budgeting based on classical approaches.

The combination of these two aspects of PM and BBRT combined with the progress of attention handling of requirements in every sprint cycle; the authors developed the agile project budgeting framework to build a source for teaching. The framework exists of the three dimensions: (1) Time, (2) Amount of Requirements implemented, and (3) Certainty about the budget. Overtime during the project, the number of solved requirements will raise. After every sprint cycle, the certainty about the budget will be improved based on some Leadership Principles and Management Processes adapted from [Hope2003a].

The given agile project budgeting framework can support teaching the combination of PM and BBRT is a solution derived from literature and the discussion with different experts. This summer term, the framework would be used the first time in an integrative Master lesson to raise the knowledge and measure the cognitive load [Sweller1994] for the students to improve the framework.

Keywords:

Agile Project Budgeting, Cognitive Load Measurement, Project Management, Teaching Project Management, Teaching Budgeting.