ITPM

Session 1, 20 Sept 2022

 Evaluation
Percent of Marks

Group Project (Presentation and Report) 40

MCQ 10
Class Participation 10
End Term Exam 40
Total 100
 CoWin App
• CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) is an Indian government web portal for COVID-19
vaccination registration, owned and operated by India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• It displays booking slots of COVID-19 vaccine available in the nearby areas and can be booked
on the website.
• On 16 January 2021, CoWIN started offering COVID-19 vaccination for Frontline Workers in the
country.
• On 1 March 2021, the platform started offering vaccination to all residents over the age of 60,
residents between the ages of 45 and 60 with one or more qualifying comorbidities, and any
health care or frontline worker that did not receive a dose during phase 1.
• From 1 April 2021, eligibility was extended to all residents over the age of 45. Registration for
the next phase began on 28 April 2021 for 1 May 2021, extending eligibility to all residents over
the age of 18.
• The certificate after COVID-19 vaccination can also be obtained through the platform
Architecture of CoWin (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) App
CoWin (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network)
• Speaking to the media, RS Sharma, CoWIN chief, stated,
• “It’s expected that once the vaccination is opened for all adults, there
could be a lot of crowd at the vaccination centres.
• To avoid such a scenario registering on CoWin portal and making an
appointment to get a vaccine will be made mandatory for the new
beneficiaries.
• Walks-in will not be allowed in the beginning so that there is no
chaos.” 
 Issues in Cowin App
• Operational Issues: On day one of registration, the app crashed from
massive traffic. The ones who managed to get through a few registration
steps faced another challenge due to an indefinite delay in OTP
generation for further actions.
• Digital literacy: Mandatory registration on CoWIN has come under severe
criticism as India still suffers from a lack of digital literacy. A significant
number of people neither have the knowledge nor proper infrastructure
to use the app. Many termed this move exclusionary.
• The Union Home Ministry said that people living in rural areas and semi-
urban areas can make use of Common Service Centres (CSC) to register
on the CoWIN platform.
 Issues in Cowin App
• Loopholes: Media reports have shown that many have circumvented
the procedures to book slots for vaccination. Many individuals use
public APIs to book slots as soon as they are available; A few have gone
a step further and created scripts that automatically book vacant slots.
• Privacy policy: The app has no specific privacy policy in place and is
linked to the National Health Data Management Policy.
• The government has said that it cannot provide the privacy policy for
CoWIN as it is accessible only to the national, state, and district
administration and the public can only use it to register themselves and
book slots.
 June 15 2021
• In a big relief for everyone across the nation, online registration for
vaccination and prior booking for an appointment became no longer
mandatory for vaccination services, confirmed the Union Health
Ministry on Tuesday.
• Anyone, aged 18 years or more, could directly go to the nearest
vaccination Center where vaccinator performs the on-site registration
and provides vaccination in the same visit. This is also popularly
known as “walk-ins”,” said a statement issued by the Ministry of
Health and Family Welfare
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/incorrect-date-in-covid-vaccination-certificate-co-win-portal-introduces-feature-to-rectify-the-
error/videoshow/90719521.cms

• 8 April 2022
• The Co-WIN portal has introduced a feature to submit rectification
requests of vaccination date in the COVID vaccination certificates,
informed National Health Mission (NHM) Additional Secretary and
Mission Director Vikas Sheel on April 07. “We have received requests
from people that the exact place and date of vaccination are not
recorded on their CoWIN.
• To solve these problems, a new facility has been added on CoWIN, so
that citizens can make these changes after uploading the vaccination
certificate as proof,” he said.
 CoWin (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network)

• Jan 17,2021
• When the CoWIN app was unable to create a list or message beneficiaries, Ward Officials began to call
people on the list or send them messages. Some beneficiaries said that they received calls late on Friday,
some as late as on Saturday at 10am
• The technical glitches faced due to CoWin on Saturday during the vaccination drive has led the civic body to
resume the drive two days later, after Sunday and Monday, so that it has time to solve the technical issues.
(indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/cowin-software-suffers-glitches-bmc-says-drive-to-resume-after-
two-days-7149451/)
Jan 16 2021
• Around 3,00,000 frontline workers were expected to get vaccinated on the first day but only 1,65,714 people
got vaccinated, according to an interim health ministry report. This was because of the glitches on the
CoWIN app and more than usual time was taken to administer the vaccine at some of the districts centres,
officials said
(https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/some-states-report-hurdle-in-vaccination-as-cowin-app-
develops-glitches-101610810101231.html)
 Direct Tax Portal
• Infosys was awarded the contract in 2019 through a bidding process, with an outlay of Rs
4,241.97 crore. With this project, the I-T filing system was supposed to be managed
completely by Infosys. The project was to be completed in 18 months and launched after
three months of testing.
• Aim: to develop the new e-filing portal to replace the old one to reduce the processing time
from 63 days to one.
• The idea was to have a taxpayer-friendly portal that was simple to use and expedited refunds
but the portal has been more in news for being inaccessible than making the process smooth.
• Apart from filing the ITR, the portal can be used to seek refunds and raise complaints. The
Income Tax Department uses the portal to receive responses from taxpayers regarding any
queries. All communication regarding penalties, exemption, and appeals is done on the portal
as well.
• The portal was launched on June 7, 2021
 Position Sept 21
• Glitches
• Persistent glitches forced Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to call Infosys’
executives for meeting twice, in June and on August 23, 2021. Sitharaman gave the IT
major time till September 15, 2021 to get the portal in order.
• The company said that during September, on average, more than 15 lakh unique
taxpayers have logged into the portal daily, and over 1.5 crore returns have been filed
till date. It further added that over 85 percent of taxpayers who have filed their returns
have also completed their e-verification, largely through Aadhaar-OTP authentication.
• However, the company acknowledges the challenges the users faced and continue to
face when using the portal. “Even as it makes steady progress, Infosys recognizes the
ongoing challenges faced by some users and has engaged with more than 1200
taxpayers directly to better understand their concerns,” the company said.
 Pending Issues
• Multiple users on Twitter, too, have raised concerns. In a statement
on September 6, 21 the Tax Advocates Association of Bengal said
that problems with the portal were not the same for all the taxpayers.
• “The total tax paid in the online portal is showing less than what I
have paid as per Form 26AS. There is no response from the IT team
despite calling them 3 times,” Ashish, a Twitter user, said.
• Infosys said that the firm is focused on the challenges while working
closely with the Chartered Accountant community to ensure that a
comprehensive set of user scenarios are supported and thoroughly
tested before deployment.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/wealth/tax-planning/over-2-6-crore-i-t-returns-filed-
portal-issues-sorted-government/articleshow/87790865.cms

November 21
• According to the latest available data with CBDT, till Wednesday  over 2.6 crore returns had been filed with
over two crore already verified online
• Infosys, which faced a lot of criticism for setting up a glitch ridden portal had sorted out the issues.
June 2022,
• IT Department stated that: A majority of the issues have been fixed. Only a few matters still remain, and
they will be addressed soon,” a senior government official said.
• But a new issue surfaced: Income-Tax (I-T) Department got complaints about malfunctioning of search
functionality on the portal and also that it had been hacked and might pose risks to security.
• IT Department denied that there was any hacking of data

July 2, 2022 (Indian Express quoting PTI)

• Tax payers facing pressures in accessing the e-filing portal. Irregular traffic observed on portal
GST Portal
 Advantages of GST
• Simplifies the tax structure: The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is imposed on the supply of
products and/or services within the country. It subsumes multiple indirect taxes that are
imposed by the State Governments or the Central Government, such as Service Tax, Purchase
Tax, Central Excise Duty, Value Added Tax, Entry Tax, Luxury Tax, Local Body Taxes, etc.
• Removes barriers to trade: The objective of GST is to drive India towards becoming an
integrated economy by charging uniform tax rates and eliminating economic barriers, thereby
making the country a common national market
• Prevents cascading of taxes: The cascading of taxes will be prevented by GST as the whole
supply chain will get an all-inclusive input tax credit mechanism. Business operations can be
streamlined at each stage of supply thanks to the seamless accessibility to input tax credit across
products or services.
• Reduces compliance burden: Compliance will be simpler through the harmonisation of tax rates,
procedures, and laws. Synergies and efficiencies are expected across the board thanks to
common formats/forms, common definitions, and common interface via the GST portal.
 Input tax credit
• Input tax credit (ITC) is the tax paid by the buyer on purchase of
goods or services.
• Such tax which is paid at the purchase when reduced from liability
payable on outward supplies is known as input tax credit.
• In other words, input tax credit is tax reduced from output tax payable
on account of sales.
https://www.livemint.com/Companies/RZRas6WPQ1jevNg8C0YWdK/Infosys-
wins-Rs1320-crore-contract-to-build-GST-technology.html

• A contract worth ₹ 1,380 crore was awarded to Infosys Ltd in Sept.

2015 to build and maintain the technology network crucial for
implementing the proposed goods and services tax (GST) system
across the country for five years
• The government had hoped to rollout GST from 1 April 2016, but its
implementation was delayed with the Constitution Amendment Bill
necessary for its rollout still pending legislative passage in the Rajya
Sabha.
• The Goods and Service Tax Act was passed in the Parliament on 29th
March 2017 and came into effect on 1st July 2017.
 Goods and Services Tax Network(GSTN)
• The GSTN software is developed by Infosys Technologies and the Information Technology
network that provides the computing resources is maintained by the NIC. "Goods and
Services Tax Network" (GSTN) is a nonprofit organisation formed for creating a sophisticated
network, accessible to stakeholders, government and taxpayers to access information from
a single source (portal). The portal is accessible to the Tax authorities for tracking down
every transaction, while taxpayers have the ability to connect for their tax returns.
• The GSTN's authorised capital is ₹10 crore (US$1.3 million) in which initially the Central
Government held 24.5 percent of shares while the state government held 24.5 percent. The
remaining 51 percent were held by non-Government financial institutions, HDFC and HDFC
Bank hold 20%, ICICI Bank holds 10%, NSE Strategic Investment holds 10% and LIC Housing
Finance holds 11% .
• However, later it was made a wholly owned government company having equal shares of
state and central government.
 How GST works
• Suppose there is a seller Mr A and he sells his goods to Mr B. Here Mr B i.e
the buyer will be eligible to claim the credit on purchases based on the
invoices. Let’s understand how:
• Step 1: Mr A will upload the details of all tax invoices issued in GSTR 1.
• Step 2. The details with respect to sales to Mr B will auto-populate/ get
reflected in GSTR 2A or GSTR-2B, the same data will be pulled when Mr B
will file GSTR 2 (i.e details of inward supply).
• Step 3: Mr B will then accept the details that the purchase has been made
and reported by the seller correctly and subsequently the tax on purchases
will be credited to ‘Electronic Credit Ledger’ of Mr B and he can adjust it
against future output tax liability and get the refund.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/gst/widening-the-net-how-e-invoicing-is-boosting-
gst-compliance/articleshow/82000603.cms?from=mdr

Problems with GST in first 3 Years

• Revenue collections did not match expectations after introduction of GST/GSTN
• Wide spread non compliance and non-filing of returns
• Increasing cases of fraudulent invoices to avail input tax credit
• Solution: E-invoicing portal of GSTN set up. Business to generate the invoice on this portal
which with a QR code.
• The portal gives the trade invoice a unique identification number (invoice registration number or
IRN). This is encrypted in the QR code.
• Besides IRN the QR code contains the GST registration number of the supplier and recipient, the date
of invoice generation and the invoice number and invoice value
• This ensures that at the invoice generation stage itself the GSTN system captures all the details which
are used by the buyer to avail ITC.
• GSTN then auto-populates the GSTN 2 form
• Any B2B invoice that does not have IRN cannot be used to avail ITC
https://blog.saginfotech.com/gst-issues-india
• April 29, 2022
• A major headache is, however, the mismatch between initial and final
returns filed by taxpayers. There is an estimated mismatch of Rs
34,000 crore tax liabilities reported in GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B (GSTR-3B
is a self-declared summary GST return filed every month).
• Another problem is that the present GST structure has no mechanism
for checking discrepancies found between GST Returns for July-Dec
and Final Returns.
• About 84 % of the taxpayers were unable to correctly report revenue
statements.
 Issues for Small Traders
• GST implies additional operational costs for Small businesses. In India
not all SMEs will be able to afford the cost of computers and
accountants required to implement GST (make bills and file tax returns).
• 28% GST rate on some products like plywood, automobile parts, and
electronic items forces potential buyers to opt for unregistered dealers.
• Small businesses that have a small turnover and need not pay GST face
trust issues. Buyers demand bills from even those sellers who are
exempted from GST. Without proof of a certificate of GST exemption,
small shop owners find themselves stranded and immobile.
From Wikipedia
• The Standish Group International, Inc. or Standish Group is an
independent international IT research advisory firm founded in
1985, known from their reports about information
systems implementation projects in the public and private sector. 
• The firm focuses on mission-critical software applications, especially
focusing on failures and possible improvements in IT projects.
 Standish Group
• Our Mission
• Our mission is to change the world in the way software development
is managed. The new dawn in a software process will result in
healthier and more rapid software development.  We will accomplish
this through the promotion and advancement of software value
techniques and philosophies.  
• Our philosophy is based on:
• Group reflection
• Intensive primary research
• Constant feedback
 Standish Report 2021 (1/3)
Source:https://opendoor.bigroom.co/the-standish-group-report-83-9-of-it-projects-partially-
or-completely-fail/

• The original Standish report was published in 1994 and has been

updated a number of times. Standish and other groups have published
additional reports shedding more light on other factors with IT projects.
• According to Standish 2021 only 16.2% of projects were deemed
successful by being completed on time and budget, with all the
promised functionality.
• A majority of projects, or 52.7%, were over cost, over time, and/or
lacking promised functionality (challenged).
• This implies that 31.1% are classified as failed, which means they were
abandoned or cancelled.
 Top five factors - successful  projects -2021
https://www.opendoorerp.com/the-standish-group-report-83-9-of-it-projects-partially-or-completely-fail/

The top five factors found in successful projects are:

• User involvement
• Executive management support
• Clear Statement of Requirements
• Proper planning
• Realistic expectations
Top five factors for challenged projects -2021

• The top five indicators found in challenged projects are:

• Lack of user involvement
• Incomplete Requirements & Specifications
• Changing Requirements & Specifications
• Lack of executive support
• Technical incompetence
This list adds a few factors: changing requirements and specifications,
and technical incompetence 
 Factors responsible for failed projects -
2021
• All of the top factors found in failed projects include:
• Incomplete Requirements
• Lack of user involvement
• Lack of resources
• Unrealistic expectations
• Lack of executive support
• Changing Requirements & Specifications
• Lack of planning
• Did not need it any longer
• Lack of IT management
• Technical illiteracy
 Anatomy of Failures
Project Challenged Factors % of Responses
1. Lack of User Input 12.8%
2. Incomplete Requirements & Specifications 12.3%
3. Changing Requirements & Specifications 11.8%
4. Lack of Executive Support 7.5%
5. Technology Incompetence 7.0%
6. Lack of Resources 6.4%
7. Unrealistic Expectations 5.9%
8. Unclear Objectives 5.3%
9. Unrealistic Time Frames 4.3%
10. New Technology 3.7%
11.Other 23.0%
 Comparison of Success Factors over the
Years in Standish Reports
Success Factors 1995 Success Factors 2011
User Involvement User Involvement

Executive Management Support Executive Support

Clear Statement of Requirements Clear business objectives

Proper Planning Optimizing Scope

Realistic Expectations Emotional Maturity

Smaller Project Milestones Agile Processes

Competent Staff Project Management Expertise

What is a Project
 IT Project Attributes
• Project has a unique purpose (stated in its objectives):results in a unique
product or service
• Project is temporary (not ongoing – has beginning and end)
• A project is developed using “progressive elaboration” (projects are
defined broadly when they begin and become clearer as time passes)
• Projects require resources from various areas (hardware, software,
telecom, project management, domains)
• Projects should have primary customer or a sponsor (projects have many
stakeholders but someone has to take primary role as sponsor)
• Project involves uncertainty (Technological, Organizational)
 What is a project
• Before discussing project management it is important to discuss what constitutes
an IT project. At an abstract level IT project is no different from a general definition
of a project.
• A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique
product, service or a result
• Operations on the other hand is what is done to sustain the business.
• Projects are different from operations in that they end when their objectives have
been reached or the project has been terminated
• Projects can be large or small and involve one person or thousands of persons
• IT projects involve hardware, software and networks to create a product, service or
result.
 Functional vs Project Management
Functional Managers
1. Manage existing processes
2. Work mainly with insiders of the organization
3. Work with similar employees
4. Have/Acquire detailed technical knowledge
5. Life may become routine
6. Results are not attributable to a person; so less
visible for an individual
Project Managers
Create an organization where none existed and set the
processes
Provide direction, coordination and integration to the
project team
Work with outsiders like vendors, suppliers, sub-
contractors who do not share project loyalty
Work with diverse project team
Limited technical knowledge and so need to induct the
right people at the right time to address the right
issues to make the right decisions
Not a dull moment; each day is different and new and
unforeseen challenges arise
Since an new and innovative product is being created
results are attributable and satisfying to project
managers
 IT Project Attributes
• Project has a unique purpose (stated in its objectives): results in a unique
product or service
• Project is temporary (not ongoing – has beginning and end)
• A project is developed using “progressive elaboration” (projects are
defined broadly when they begin and become clearer as time passes)
• Projects require resources from various areas (hardware, software,
telecom, project management, human resources domains)
• Projects should have primary customer or a sponsor (projects have many
stakeholders but someone has to take primary role as sponsor)
• Project involves uncertainty (Technological, Organizational)
 Importance of Projects
https://hbr.org/2021/11/the-project-economy-has-arrived

 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez From the HBR Magazine (November–December

2021)
• Quietly but powerfully, projects have displaced operations as the
economic engine of our times. That shift has been a long time coming.
• During the 20th century, operations (which involve the running of
organizations) created tremendous value, and they did so through
advances in efficiency and productivity.
• But for most of the current century, productivity growth in Western
economies has been almost flat, despite the explosion of the internet,
shorter product life cycles, and exponential advances in AI and robotics.
 Importance of Projects
https://hbr.org/2021/11/the-project-economy-has-arrived

• Meanwhile, projects (which involve the changing of organizations) are increasingly

driving both short-term performance and long-term value creation—through more-
frequent organizational transformations, faster development of new products, quicker
adoption of new technologies, and so on.
• This is a global phenomenon. In Germany, for example, projects have been rising steadily
as a percentage of GDP since at least 2009, and in 2019 they accounted for as much as
41% of the total
• In 2017, the Project Management Institute estimated that the value of project-oriented
economic activity worldwide would grow from $12 trillion in 2017 to $20 trillion in
2027,
• This process will put 88 million people to work in project management–oriented roles—
and those estimates were made before nations started spending trillions on pandemic-
recovery projects.
 Importance of Projects
• Forward-looking companies have recognized the organizational
implications of this surge. “Soon we will no longer have job
descriptions,” one senior IBM talent executive told me. “We will have
only project roles.”
• That’s where the management thinker Roger Martin believes we
already should be. “The average person in an office thinks that their
life is some sort of regular job, and that the projects they work on get
in the way of doing it”.
• In fact, in organizations the entire decision factory should be thought
of as nothing but projects.”