Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004 95

E-commerce Project Management

Professor Ion IVAN PhD., Saha PRIYATOSH, assistant lecturer Cristian TOMA
Economy Informatics Department, Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest

In the first part of this paper is established the role of eCommerce project management in
company life. Also are highlighted the dependences and the differences between eBusiness
and eCommerce projects and implicit the management of those projects. There are presented
the major area of knowledge management where a eCommerce project manager should acti-
vate, eCommerce architectures and tools to achieve the best solution for such kind of projects.
Keywords: eCommerce models, project management, ePayment, eBusiness, dual signature,
SET payment scheme.

I ntroduction
The term eBusiness and eCommerce have
many definition in IT fields. One of them is
type of using for Online purchasing is de-
scribed in [Anne00] like “a metaphor used in
business-to-business eCommerce for provid-
that the eBusiness is the integration of a ing customers with an online method of plac-
company's business including products, pro- ing an order, submitting a purchase order, or
cedures, and services over the Internet requesting a quote”.
[ANIT00]. Usually and in practice a com-
pany turns its business into an eBusiness E-Commerce project management means
when it integrates the marketing, sales, ac- more than a simple project
counting, manufacturing, and operations with management because we are talking about
web site activities. An eBusiness uses the particular features or characteristics of
Internet as a resource for all business activi- eCommerce activity. The CEO – Chief Ex-
ties. ecutive Officer and staff are concerned not
This paper concern eCommerce. We can un- only about eCommerce activities but also
derstand eCommerce as a component, a part about the integration of eCommerce projects
of an eBusiness. and their management with all the important
The term of Electronic commerce or departments and activities from a company.
"eCommerce" is related with a wide variety
of on-line business activities for products and The role of eCommerce projects manage-
services, of different type business-to- ment in company life
business – B2B and business-to-consumer – The companies and corporations that are in-
B2B, through the Internet or even through volved in “normal” Businesses to Business –
IntraNets – private networks, including mo- B2B and Business to Client – B2C activities
bile ones. become eBusinesses when the organization
After the opinion of different specialist, succeed to integrate standard activities with
eCommerce is divided in two components: their electronic information system. This
• Online Shopping - the activities that pro- electronic information system could be an
vide to the customer or to the business part- outsourcing solution for web and mobile sites
ner the information about products or ser- or portals or an “in house” developed system.
vices traded. This information help them to For example, someone who work in sales de-
be informed and to take the proper decision partment could consider the web and wap –
regarding the buying process. wireless application protocol – site a sales
• Online Purchasing - “ePayment” - the ac- tool. When he or she speaks with a customer,
tivities through a customer or a company ac- shows to the customer the product and ser-
tually purchase a product or a service over vice presentations on company’s web or even
the Internet or private networks. Also another wap site, goes with the customer in virtual
96 Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004

tours of the newest products and services. to make the right choice when implement
The Marketing Department releases products them. The solution is designed to provide to
and services on the web and wap site first, the company the resources on how to con-
providing eLearning courses, online presen- front with the challenges – processes and
tations and brochures. Another department methodologies, tools – templates and soft-
like Customer Support host FAQ – Fre- ware/hardware, and an opportunity to learn
quently Asked Questions, support chat lines, from what others have done – articles, books
and moderate newsgroups on the web site. and discussions [PACK04].
Purchasing uses the web to obtain prices on Business Intelligence – means the procedures
necessary components and place orders, and and techniques used in order to achieve in-
Shipping uses the web to schedule deliveries formation about company’s customers, com-
and notify customers of product arrival. So if petitors and internal business processes. Now
a company “is making” in eBusiness way, many companies are in transition between
then for each department the web site, wap traditional business models towards eBusi-
site and electronic information distributed ness models, and they are forced to interact
open systems are important tools they can with customers and competitors in digital
use to be “number 1” in business. E- competitiveness. By using business intelli-
Commerce in the previous case have an im- gence, organizations can analyze client and
portant role in sales and accounting depart- customer trends, evaluates the effectiveness
ment but is bound with all departments con- of internal processes and study competitor
cerning the input/output information that can patterns. To enable effective business intelli-
provide. The customer or the company’s cli- gence practices, organizations need to use a
ent use eCommerce “channel” for achieve wide variety of tools and techniques and in-
services and products, faster, more secure tegrate those with existing business processes
and with less costs than before. [BUSI04].
Also, someone who is involved in eCom- Knowledge Management – is the ability of
merce Project Management have to take care company’s staff and employees to search and
of and to be connected with following fields- find out in their company's electronically
departments: package selection, business in- stored documents the information which they
telligence, knowledge management, customer need. Technologies used for Knowledge
relationship management, project portfolio Management include: Search engines – with
management, services-application-solutions artificial intelligence features, Databases –
development and research, process improve- relational or object oriented ones, Meta tags
ment, audit management and human re- like XML, Classifications – maybe using
sources management; especially if this tasks neuronal networks [KNOW04].
are in a big enterprise environment. Customer Relationship Management – this is
Package selection – some software compa- the interactive and knowledge based age,
nies have already focused on several real where success of the company, could depend
business problems. They created some re- on its ability to learn how to treat each cus-
markably solutions in markets like Supply tomer as an important individual.
Chain Management (SCM), Customer Rela- Project portfolio management – this one
tionship Management (CRM), Enterprise Re- have a great impact over the C-level –CEO,
source Planning (ERP), E-Procurement, e- CIO, CTO – decision maker. Important thing
Commerce and m-Commerce – mobile here is how managers can analyze projects
commerce. It is difficult to choose and select both on an individual and in an aggregate
the proper software/hardware solutions from manner, metrics and corporate strategy. Also
the given number of vendor and choices. The important is to know how to use tools and
challenge for a company is to select the ven- technologies to choose the best project for
dor and package solution from hundreds of improving company skills and competitive-
products, philosophies and solutions in order ness even if that project don’t make so much
Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004 97

profit for company. have eCommerce projects in company life

Services-application-solutions development and of course how important is to have the
and research – this is about how to provide best management for such kind of projects.
software and hardware solutions in time into
the market. It means the company have to The dimensions of management in eCom-
handle with Time to Market (TTM) problem. merce projects
Nevertheless, managers' answer to the prob- Even in our days many IT projects and of
lem is usually to shorten the development course many eCommerce projects are
schedule and place even more pressure on not successful. Also can be observed that the
developers. But this is not the proper ap- need for IT and eCommerce projects is in-
proach on TTM problem. This department creasing all the time. Any project is a tempo-
must explains strategies and technologies that rary effort undertaken in order to accomplish
will help department manager to optimize a unique purpose. The management goals is
TTM. The managers involved in this field to distributed resources during the time in or-
have to find out best practices that will help der to accomplish this task. Some specialists
them to meet challenging schedules, and consider that a project have to have following
technologies such as Web services and dis- attributes: have unique purpose, is temporary,
tributed systems that enable software on require resources often from different fields,
computers and mobile devices to connect and should have a primary sponsor and/or cus-
interoperate with each other across platforms, tomer, involve uncertainty.
programming languages and applications In real life every eCommerce project, even
[SOFT04]. every project, is restricted in different ways
Process improvement – stakeholders are con- by its:
cerned about the company rank in the market • Scope objectives
and about the amount of profit that can be • Time objectives
done by company. If is done correctly, it can • Cost objectives
align the organization's operations with its • Quality objectives – client satisfaction
strategic objectives. Process Improvement It is the project manager’s duty to balance
have the scope and the goal to improve prod- these three often competing goals. The idea
ucts and services all the time in order to of this constrains is depicted in figure 1:
achieve desired outcomes.
Audit and evaluation risk management – this
Scope, Time, Cost Distribution
kind of management is used to approximate Management
and establish the economic and social impli-
cations of the company decisions in the fu-
ture, based on observations done during the 40

examinations on business activities. 35

30
Human resource management – that means
25
people-management. The people that are in 20
this field have to take care how they hire the 15
Scope
Time
best human people for the company interests 10 Cost

in order to get commitment without any 5

problems from production teams, stake- 0

holders and upper management when is 1

2 Time
Cost

working in a project. An important thing is 3 Scope

to avoid conflict and project obstacles by dis-

covering and working with company's per-
Fig.1. The Triple Constraint of Project Man-
sonality.
agement.
So, even if the eCommerce is part of eBusi-
ness now we can see how many implications
Project management is “the application of
98 Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004

knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to Many new project managers have trouble
project activities in order to meet or exceed looking at the “big picture” and want to focus
stakeholder needs and expectations from a on too many details. In each knowledge area
project” [PMBK96]. So now we have the the Project Plan Development is important
idea what means at least conceptual a because it must taking the results of other
eCommerce Project Management. The planning processes and putting them into a
framework of eCommerce project manage- consistent, coherent document named the
ment contains briefly the following knowl- project plan. Project Plan Execution must
edge areas: Scope Management, Time Man- carrying out the project plan and Overall
agement, Cost Management, Quality Man- Change Control must coordinating changes
agement, Human Resources Management, across the entire project.
Communication Management, Risk Man- eCommerce Project Plan is a document used
agement, Procurement Management. Those to coordinate all project planning documents.
knowledge management areas are bound The main scope of this plan is to guide pro-
through Project Integration Management ject execution. eCommerce Project Man-
using appropriate tools and techniques. The agement Plan Manual assist the project
project managers of such projects have to use manager in leading the project team and as-
different tools like: Project Charter and Work sessing project status. Those activities – and
Breakdown Structure for Scope Manage- project plan – are parts of integration man-
ment; Gantt charts, PERT charts, critical path agement, the connection between all other
analysis for Time Management; Cost esti- knowledge area.
mates and Earned Value Analysis for Cost The content of Project Management Plan as a
Management. Another important thing in result of Integration Management – essential
eCommerce project management is that the part – coordinating manual in eCommerce
stakeholders – people involved in or affected Project Management is highlighted in picture
by project activities – to know all the time 2.
the state of project. Sometimes eCommerce This are the most important chapter from the
project manage could be tougher than every main paper of an eCommerce Project. If the
project management or general management. implications within knowledge areas are big
A project manager must have experience an can be created every project plan for every
knowledge in general project management, knowledge area. In this document and in
general management and in application area other documents is recommended to be used
of project, usually have to know very good different management procedures described
eCommerce models patterns and the tech- in this chapter. Also, we strongly recommend
nologies within can develop the model. Of to use a software application – Project Man-
course the last thing but not the least is that a agement Software that help the manager
project manager have to obey to project man- work. As annexes to this documents or at
agement code of ethics developed by Project Scope Management Document it is a com-
Management Institute. So any eCommerce mon use to attach Stakeholder Analysis
Project that is developed with adequate have Document that contains: A stakeholder
many benefits: improved communication analysis documents important (often sensi-
among participants, mechanisms for per- tive) information about stakeholders such as:
formance measurements, identification of stakeholders’ names and organizations, roles
problems areas, clarification of project goals, on the project, unique facts about stake-
clear understanding of project scope, quanti- holders, level of influence and interest in the
fication of project risk. project, suggestions for managing relation-
All knowledge area have to be passed ships and a resume of each participant. An-
through all phases: Concept, Development, other important thing is that if the eCom-
Implementation and Close-Out. Also this merce project is made in “outsourcing” or “in
phases are a common project’s life cycle. house”. If is developed by you for a special
Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004 99

company – even if is “developed in house” is Project Plan Execution involves managing

recommended – that in “Technical Chapter” and performing the work described in the
from Project Plan Management to exist links Project Plan Manual. The majority of time
to technical papers like: “User Specifica- and money is usually spent on development
tions”, “Design Manual”, “Development and deployment. The application area or the
Manual” – contains software libraries and project directly affects project execution be-
packages also class hierarchies description cause the services offered by the project are
used in eCommerce project, “Acceptance produced during execution.
Tests Manual” and “Maintenance Manual”.

Chapters Section Contains

Overview, evolution of project plan, ref-
1.Introduction
erence materials, definitions.
Process model, organizational structure,
2.Project Organization common and standard interfaces, project
responsibilities.
Management objectives and priorities, as-
sumptions, dependencies and constrains,
risk management, monitoring and control-
3.Managerial Process ling procedure. Also here is depict the
links between other management docu-
Project Manage- ments from different knowledge area:
ment Plan – Sec- Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, etc.
tions General technical framework, B2C and
B2B features, eCommerce model adopted
highlighted in 2 different position “online
shopping” and “online purchasing –
ePayment”, methods, tools and tech-
4.Technical Process
niques, documentation and project sup-
port functions and link to technical papers
that contains the software development
cycle described eventually in UML –
Unified Modeling Language.
Dependences and resource requirements,
5.Schedule and Budget budget and resource allocation and
schedule.
Fig.2. Content of project plan management.

Overall change control involves identifying, through financial analysis methods: NPV –
evaluating, and managing changes through Net Present Value Analysis, ROI – Return of
the project life cycle. Three main objectives Investments analysis and Payback analysis.
of change control: influence the factors that
create changes to ensure they are beneficial, eCommerce architectures and security
determine that a change has occurred and features
manage actual changes when they occur. Before taking in account eCommerce models
Of course, the management process depends and implicitly ePayments, models is better to
of technological constraints and by the ex- have a general view about eCommerce archi-
perience and knowledge of the project man- tectures on level of beginning of the year
ager. A project manager have to create as 2004:
many projects as it is possible and to pay in- • Conceptual Frameworks: REA Meta
terest at all knowledge area managements. model, UMM;
This help him or her to collect funds and • General Frameworks: Biztalk Frame-
support because have very solid financial ar- work, Building Blocks, ebXML Technical
guments highlighted in Scope Management Architecture, FIPA, eCo Framework Specifi-
100 Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004

cation, IMPRIMATUR Business Model, ing” – ePayment is more complicated. Usu-

STEP, Java EC Framework, J2EE Frame- ally if eCommerce solutions are forced to
work, MPEG-21, OMG eCommerce Domain work with banks they have to include credit
Specifications, Open-edi Reference Model card schemes of macro-payment models. So
(ISO 14662), SPIRIT, TOGAF; this are constrains so the manager is faced
• Trading Models: Ad Hoc Functional and with serious problems because he can not
Process Models, Global Commerce Initiative choose the proper technological solution for
& Protocol, cXL, Internet Open Trading Pro- his problem.
tocol (IOTP), Open Applications Group Inte- All eCommerce architectures have particular
gration Specification, Open Buying on the frameworks and provide different secure
Internet (OBI), OBI Express, RosettaNet, Se- technology to get a safe ePayment process.
cure Electronic Market Place for Europe The most important part regarding the secu-
(SEMPER); rity and reliability of an eCommerce solution.
• Payment models: That’s why a project manager involved in
o Macro-payment electronic schemes: eCommerce Project Management must have
ƒ 3D Secure – VISA last technology – credit solid knowledge about eCommerce architec-
card based solution; tures and technologies. That means he or she
ƒ SET – Secure Electronic Transaction – is connected with computer science field and
Mastercard/VISA credit card based solution; comprehence very well the facts from
ƒ iKP – IBM, credit based solution; eCommerce world. If he or she understands
ƒ CyberCash – CyberCash Inc., credit based eBusiness world in an adequate manner this
solution; is an advantage.
ƒ DigiCash – DigiCash Inc., eCash – cash so- For example if a constrains came in his
lution; eCommerce solution that is saying that for
ƒ NetBill – CMU, e-payment transfer over ePayment module have to use SET payment
Internet – direct fund transfer; scheme because the bank or card processor
ƒ FSTC E-check – Financial Services Tech- company accept only this scheme, during the
nology Consortium, eCheque – cheque solu- project management have to be recalculated
tion; all estimation regarding the time, cost, risk
ƒ Other – credit card, cash, cheque, direct and quality.
fund transfers schemes. The project management is responsible for
o Micro-payment electronic schemes: the choose solution and have to take in ac-
ƒ Millicent – DEC-Digital Equipment Corpo- count the characteristics of ePayment
ration, eCash; schemes:
ƒ PayWord – Rivest and Shamir, eCash; • System security – ability to protect
ƒ MicroMint – Rivest and Shamir, eCash; against various forms of fraud e.g., repudia-
ƒ NetCard – Anderson 1995, eCash; tion and authentication in payment process;
ƒ NetBill – CMU, e-payment transfer over • Transaction cost – the big expenses
Internet; needed to process the payment;
• Mobile commerce models: OMA – MeT. • Traceability of payment – ability to find
out who has involved in the payment;
There is no software product in our days • Acceptability – whether the payment can
which dominate the market. A thing common be accepted in different environment e.g., not
in practice is to analyze which model or only by the issuer;
framework will be choose. Any eCommerce • Transferability – the ability to transfer
project/solution have o provide at least to payment without the need of a third party
parts: “online shopping” and “online pur- e.g., a bank;
chasing”. So if for “online shopping” is • Divisibility – the ability to divide a value
enough to have a good organized web appli- V to an arbitrary number of smaller values -
cation or portal solution, for “online purchas- “banknotes” with a total value of V.
Economy Informatics, 1-4/2004 101

• PM provides a history or metrics base for

Now is obvious that a project manager have future planning as well as good documenta-
the responsibility to delegate the most quali- tion;
fied people to advice him about adopted solu- • Project members learn and grow by
tion and to realize that a better knowledge’s working in a cross-functional team environ-
in eCommerce and management fields ensure ment.
him or her the success or failure of an All the time we have to keep in mind that the
eCommerce project management. company staff, customers, and other stake-
holders do not like failed projects and the
Conclusions project management in generally is not a
A good project management of eCommerce simple task, and in particularly – eCommerce
solutions. All the time the team leader and field – requires special knowledge and skills.
project manager have to realize that is better
to use as much as is possible standard tech- Reference
nologies and solutions. There are special re- [ANIT00], Anita Rosen, “The E-Commerce
quirements about communications, knowl- Question and Answer Book: A Survival
edge background and flexibility of the pro- Guide for Business Managers”, AMAcom
ject manager in order to ensure a good devel- Publising House, 2000.
opment environment. In the paper was pre- [BUSI04],
sented only hints and general ideas, and a http://www.gantthead.com/departments/depa
person who is involved in management staff rtmentPage.cfm?ID=1
should discover the management practice in a [INTE03], Internet Payment Presentation,
special field like eCommerce solutions. Department of Computing, Hong Kong
It is recommended that in project manage- PolyU, 2003.
ment activities the project managers, team [IVAN02], Ion Ivan, Paul Pocatilu, Marius
leaders, general and department managers Popa, Cristian Toma, “The Digital Signature
and C-staff to use professional specialized and Data Security in e-commerce”, The Eco-
tools like: Microsoft Project Server 2003, nomic Informatics Review Nr. 3/2002, Bu-
Replicon Web Time Sheet, SmartDraw Man- charest 2002.
agement, Change Management System 2.0.1, [KNOW04],
ConceptDraw Project 1.1, Intellisys Project http://www.gantthead.com/departments/depa
Desktop 1.22; specialized techniques and rtmentPage.cfm?ID=3
technologies in order to make a complete [PACK04],
genuine management – containing the most http://www.gantthead.com/departments/depa
important knowledge management areas: rtmentPage.cfm?ID=4
scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, [PMBK96], Project Management Institute –
communication, risk, procurement and inte- www.pmi.org , “PMBOK Guide – Project
gration management. Management Body of Knowledge”, p. 6,
A proper project management of eCommerce 1996.
solution has many advantages and in this [SOFT04],
kind of project it is worth to do a high pro- http://www.gantthead.com/departments/depa
fessional project management than an “em- rtmentPage.cfm?ID=5
pirical” development and deployment of such
solutions. Some advantages of a proper pro-
ject management are:
• Good project management provides as-
surance and reduces risk;
• PM provides the tools and environment
to plan, monitor, track, and manage sched-
ules, resources, costs, and quality;