Cowper, D.D.; (2005) Technology planning and management. Doctoral thesis , University of London.

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Abstract

The term 'Technology' is widely used in our society and is also loosely defined. It is often used to gloss over intractable problems by implying 'we have the technology' and therefore reassuring everyone that everything is going to be okay! So, what are technology, and technology planning and management, why do we need technology, and where and how do we plan for technology to avoid it continuing to be a 'grey mist' of missed opportunity This PhD thesis sets out to explore the "What", "Why", "Who", "Where", "When", and "How" of technology planning and management. A review of existing tools and techniques established some of the "how" of technology planning and management and identified some gaps. The most significant of these gaps is a lack of a "lifecycle" framework for technology planning and management that will allow an organisation to know when and where to use the appropriate tools and techniques. The existing tools were also modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) to gain a deeper insight into how they worked. A study was conducted into two instrumentation supply chains and resulted in 101 observations associated with technology planning and management. However, the most important observation was that the majority of organisations were not using a formal process for technology planning and any that were carried out were ad hoc. The most common reason for this was the lack of awareness of any formal tools and techniques and any that were used produced dubious results. The technology planning and management lifecycle model developed addresses the gaps in the existing range of tools, provides a framework indicating when to use particular tools and addresses the issues identified by the study. The aim of this model is to put some science and management back into technology development rather than it just being a good thing to do. The technology planning and management lifecycle model was tested in part by a hypothetical example and by a series of field trials. The untested parts will need to be explored further through implementation of this model within organisations and any follow-on projects. The main outcome from this thesis is an improved generic technology planning and management lifecycle model and a tool kit to help tailor it to an organisation's context.

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