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Question: Discuss About The Integrating Sustainability In Managing IT Projects? Answer: Introduction: This essay report focuses on integrating sustainability development in managing IT projects. Sustainability is an important theme for any industry to survive grow at the global level. Every industry including Information Technology work towards implementing sustainabilitystrategies which helps in social, cultural economic growth of an organization. Industries corporate are putting more effort to integrate sustainability to their business practices from the last decade irrespective of their geographic locations (Petrini, 2010). World has seen phenomenal growth of IT Industry globally over the past few years and IT industry has welcomed sustainability practices with open arms. Sustainable development is not a new concept. Though it has received significant recognition from many industries but still it remains just a theoretical idea for many business executives in todays world. Industries need to integrate sustainable development in strategy planning of their enterprises in order to achieve its real capability. Sustainable development means implementing such business activities and strategies which will help industry its stakeholders to grow economically in parallel of protecting enhancing natural human resources for future. This definition of sustainable development is based on the concept proposed by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 (IISD, 1992). Different business communities groups have different meanings to the term sustainability but to summarize all it is a development that fulfills the needs of the current generation without compromising the potential of future generations to fulfill their own needs. This idea its s trategies are changing over the time responding to the evolving practices of our society industries. Every industry or enterprise can make its efforts to accomplish the concept of sustainability development but the strategies, practices methods varies by the sector size of the industry (Walsh, 2007). Unfortunately, few organizations are more keen toward their economical growth only completely ignore any of their social responsibility whereas many industries give importance to their sustainable development maintain a perfect balance between self interest and their social responsibilities (Mobbs, 2012). Considering broader perspective, it is important in interest of every organization to work in a healthy environment. It provides more opportunities to expand sustain in global market in long term. In many developed developing countries, information systems are an important part of most peoples lives. Information Technology has created tremendous opportunities in education, science, space, finance and many more areas. Today, most of our business sectors and society has large dependency on information technology. It is impractical to imagine a long term growth survival of any business without Information system. There has been a revolution in IT industry over last two decades but development of IT, communications its equipment has some price. Apart from the financial cost to setup maintain this industry, it is affecting our ecosystem in many other ways. Impact of IT on environment is not just measured by the electricity consumed by IT system hardware but there are other factors like air transport system, carbon emission, noise etc. As per the recent report published by a climate group in London, machines, printers, computer, smart phones etc. are responsible 830m tonne of ca rbon dioxide emission in 2007 globally which is 2% of the total emission by human activities (Schfer, 2013). About one fourth of this emission generates from manufacturing of the computer systems the remaining come from its use. The report also estimates that emission of carbon dioxide from these computers widgets is increasing by 6% every year (Economist, 2009). Nowadays major IT giants are working towards attaining a goal of sustainable development in their organizations. Critical success factors for implementing sustainable development in IT are as follows Execution mechanism or Implementation On a journey of sustainability, commitment from leadership or top management plays a significant role. It gets easy to implement policies when the top bosses believe in it. It actually allows employees to trust each other and to take essential risks (Eccles, 2012). It is important to involve external stakeholders such as suppliers, NGOs, clients, investors make them believe in sustainability strategies. Employee engagement is indispensable practice to make any organizational change policy execution. Employees are valuable assets of any organization play a vital role in implementing sustainable development strategy. Employees stakeholders of an information technology organization must understand the importance of these strategies work collaboratively towards the goal (Atuluku, 2016). There is a dedicated goal in UNs Sustainable Development Goals i.e. Partnerships and Collaboration. It is important to maximize limited resources increase knowledge base which can be achieved by co llaboration. Last but not the least the most important factor is implementing or executing the strategies. This should be achieved in phases (Mindrup, 2016). For e.g. having more energy efficient data centers, using virtual machines or cloud instead of multiple hardware kits, safe disposal of IT assets etc. In old traditional concept, Time, Cost Quality are the fundamental criteria in measuring the success of any IT project. Sustainability is making its strong presence in measuring success of any IT project or a company. Meeting safety standards, sustainable outcome quality are one of the major criteria of a successful project (Basu, 2017). There are many reasons/causes of an IT project or an IT company like ineffective collaboration or coordination of employees with stakeholders, social interaction, ineffective decision making etc. Some researchers argue that sustainability can lead to tension between different stakeholders it is a major challenge to achieve it in large IT projects but by proper planning execution it can be accomplished. The main concerns of sustainability in IT industry are electricity consumption, carbon dioxide emission, hardware disposal, global warming, noise pollution, compliance with current legislation etc. A successful IT company with sustainable developm ent manages gives priority to all the above mentioned concerns. They should have proper policy of disposing end of life hardware or recycling it. They should prefer renewable power from lower carbon emitting resource as an electricity source for their machines. Another way of improving efficiency is to implement virtualization, in which multiple operating system applications can run on same hardware or a physical computer. Green IT is a new jargon promoted by big computer manufacturers. According to a research, 5Ps (Process, Presiding, Pragmatic, People and Performance) should be considered by an IT project manager as proactive measures to achieve sustainable development in IT projects (Taherdoost, 2015). Project managers in IT companies shall play a role of social actors. They need to understand fundamentals of sustainability with proper assessment. They should do a proper research on corporate social responsibility, identify relevant key areas implement it. Proper data analysis, policies technical knowhow leads to a smooth sustainability (Agarwal, 2015). Project Management approach should be to identify areas provision ideas on a project level, unit level or at the organization level as applicable. For example, a manager handling a small project can assess decide if the physical machines can be replaced with virtual machines. Conclusion: The integration of sustainable development is indispensable part of practices followed by IT industry. In todays world mostly all IT giants are working collaboratively efficiently in implementing sustainability practices. As rightly said by United Nations World Commission on Environment that sustainable development meets the need of presence without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their needs requirement. These practices not only help the organization to grow socially but also enhance their cultural economic growth. References Agarwal, S., 2015. Sustainability in Project Management:, Available at: https://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:899231/FULLTEXT01.pdf Atuluku, A., 2016. Critical Success Factors for Business Sustainability, Available at: https://sustyvibes.com/critical-success-factors-business-sustainability/ Basu, R., 2017. Project Success Criteria and Success Factors, Available at: https://www.gpmfirst.com/books/managing-quality-projects Eccles, R., 2012. Critical Success Factors of a Sustainable Company, Available at: https://www.finchandbeak.com/849/critical-success-factors-sustainable.htm Economist, 2009. Computing climate change, Available at: https://www.economist.com/node/14297036 IISD, 1992. Business strategies for sustainable development, pp. 1-4, Available at: https://www.iisd.org/business/pdf/business_strategy.pdf Mindrup, J., 2016. Three Critical Success Factors for the Sustainability Journey, Available at: https://www.questforum.org/sustainability-success-factors/ Mobbs, P., 2012. A practical guide to sustainable IT. pp. 3-6, Available at: https://www.apc.org/sites/default/files/Section1.pdf Petrini, M., 2010. Integrating sustainability into business practices: learning from Brazilian firms, Available at: https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextpid=S1807-76922010000400004 Schfer, T., 2013. Green IT: sustainable communications and information technology, Available at: https://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/en/global-goals/sdg-09-infrastructure/green-it-sustainable-information-technology/ Taherdoost, H., 2015. How to Lead to Sustainable and Successful IT. Propose 5Ps Guideline. Volume 4, pp. 15-25, Available at: https://elvedit.com/journals/IJACSIT/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/How-to-Lead-to-Sustainable-and-Successful-IT-Project-Management-Propose-5Ps-Guideline.pdf Walsh, K., 2007. Environmentally Sustainable IT topics covering definition, objectives, systems and solutions, Available at: https://www.cio.com/article/2437751/energy-efficiency/environmentally-sustainable-it-definition-and-solutions.html