Due to a large number of IT projects taken up by RIL internally, and
especially those which were not run on project management principles, there was
duplicity and lack of systematic tracking resulted in a lot of redundant
applications and issues of quality. Project delays, understaffing and low
employee morale were undesirable outcomes. With RIL taking large strides in
business with Exploration, Retail, SEZ and several other allied businesses, it
became even more important to manage all projects in a systematic manner with
real time information on progress available at any given time. IT teams started
with labor intensive manual processes and Excel sheet based practices initially.
However, with increasing number of projects, this became very difficult and
tracking the progress of projects and associated issues itself became an issue.
A hunt for a tool to facilitate this effort ended with the IT team developing an
IT Project Management System. The biggest challenge in deploying this system was
to guide all 22 Businesses, 78 Companies, 18 Plants, 94 other Locations and
innumerable other Departments in a standardized way. The system currently tracks
around 1200 running projects.