Project Proposal: Outsourcing Project Management Services in IT Projects

The aim of this assignment is to identify a research topic from an organization which is currently managing project(s) or develop a research question based on project management related data available in online databases and create a research proposal covering the research project to answer the research question. The research questions will be graded on their relevance, creativity and the depth of data analysis required. The Proposal will be graded on its completeness, the quality of the information provided, the appropriateness of the supporting literature and methods of analysis.

Outsourcing Project Management Services: Making It Work for IT or Digitally Outsourced Projects

Explain what you hope your research will find or show. State your question orseries of questions before you begin your research. State the research problem, which is often referred to as the purpose of the study.

Provide the context and set the stage for your research question in such a way as to show its necessity and importance. If you collect your data from an organization, provide brief description of the organization, including geographic location, organizational structure, financial information, their customers, suppliers, etc.

Explain why this topic is worth considering, or this question or series of questions is worth answering. Answer the following questions:

• Why should your instructor let you select thistopic?
• What do you hope to learn fromit?
• What will this new knowledge add to the field of knowledge that already exists on thistopic?
• What new perspective will you bring to thetopic?
• Whatuse might your final research paper have for others in this field or in the general public?
• Who might you decide to share your findings with once the project iscomplete?

The research you will conduct to complete this project will primarily involve library research and internet research. You will be using these resources to source your data and to find foundational research studies that support the value and structure of your research project. In this section, explain why this is an appropriate research design.

The literature review serves several important functions:

• Ensures that you are not "reinventing thewheel".
• Gives credits to those who have laid the groundwork for your
• Demonstrates your knowledge of the research
• Demonstratesyour understanding of the theoretical and research issues related to your research question.
• Shows your ability to critically evaluate relevant literature
• Indicates your ability to integrate and synthesize the existing
• Providesnew theoretical insights or develops a new model as the conceptual framework for your research.
• Convinces your reader that your proposed research will make a significant andsubstantial contribution to the literature (i.e., resolving an important theoretical issue or filling a major gap in the literature).

For the purposes of the proposal, you should have started your literature review and have several important articles that you can discuss that address the issues listed above. This is NOT to be the complete literature review: that will be a separate submission. The purpose of the preliminary literature review is to support the claims you are making in the proposal that this is worthwhile and useful research that will contribute some new knowledge. Preliminary literature reviews provide a summary of previous related research on the research problem and their strength and weakness and a justification of your research - What is known/what have been done by others? And, why your research is still necessary?

Normally, this part of a research proposal would cover the theoretical approach and data collection methods. Students may conduct quantitative research by using secondary data and statistical analysis or a case study by collecting data/information from an organization(s). This section should explain the specific process that the student will use to analyze the data set that has been selected. Explain the source of the data set, why that data set was chosen and what variables from the data set were selected as being relevant to the research question (support this selection). Additionally: what specific statistics do you plan to collect: descriptive/univariate statistics (frequency, central tendency, etc.), Inferential statistics (Pearson’s r, ANOVA, etc.) Bivariate, multivariate statistics, and how do you plan to do your analysis?