IDE 399 Project Management

Project Management Lifecycle

1. Initiate the Project

2. Plan the Project

3. Execute the Project

4. Control the Project

5. Close the Project

Initiating Processes

recognizing a project or phase should begin

Planning Processes

devising and maintaining a workable plan

Executing processes

coordinating resources to execute the plan

Controlling processes

ensuring project objectives are met; monitoring, correcting and measuring progress

Closing processes

formalized acceptance

Project Life Cycle

Collection of project phases that defines what work will be performed in each phase, what deliverables will be produced and when, who is involved in each phase, and how management will control and approve work produced in each phase

Deliverable

a product or service produced or provided as part of a project

Early Phases of a Project Life Cycle

Resource needs are usually lowest

The level of uncertainty (risk) is highest

Project stakeholders have the greatest opportunity to influence the project

Middle phases of a project life cycle

-the certainty of completing a project improves

-more resources are needed

Final Phase of a Project Life Cycle

-ensuring that project requirements were met

-the sponsor approves completion of the project

Factors that decrease over the life of the project

stakeholder influence, risk, and uncertainty

Increase over the life of the project

cost of changes and correcting errors

Waterfall model

predictive life cycle model; has well-defined, linear stages of systems development and support

Spiral Model

predictive life cycle model; shows that software is developed using an iterative or spiral approach rather than a linear approach

Steps that happen before a project starts

assign project manager

identify key stakeholders

complete a business case

complete a project charter

guide execution

The main purpose of project planning is to:

stakeholders

People involved in or affected by project activities; a good source of ideas for major tasks and baselines

stakeholder register

A document that includes details related to the identified project stakeholders

project charter

key document which outlines the project; also called project brief or project proposal; a contract between the project team and the Project Sponsor

Things in a Project Charter

project title and description

project sponsorship, stakeholders, and staffing

project objectives

approach

signature

identify major tasks

what is work breakdown structure used for

work breakdown structure

a top-down hierarchical description of the work required to produce what is called for in the Project Scope and achieve the mission; provides approach for decomposing the work into measurable units; allows breakdown of work into deliverables, activities, tasks that can be assigned to an owner

the project schedule

based on WBS, develop this by adding resource assignments, task work effort and duration estimates and dependencies to all tasks in the WBS

WBS formats

indented lists or hierarchical tree

SMART acronym for project tasks

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

milestone

an event or a deliverable that marks a point in time in your projects progress

scheduling techniques

milestone charts

gantt or bar charts

critical path method

PERT-program evaluation and review technique

milestone chart

scheduling technique that allows us to find major tasks/steps in a project

gantt chart

bar graph showing production managers what projects are being worked on and what stage they are in at any given time

gantt chart benefits

one view, grasp dependencies, resource usage, clear scheduling

PERT

focus shorten time to completion

CPM

focus shorten time and reduce budget

problems with IT projects

reqs constantly changing, changes difficult to manage, there is more than one system

systems development life cycle

planning, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, maintenance, repeat

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

A framework for describing the phases involved in developing systems and information technology projects

predictive life cycle

Waterfall method, scope/schedule/cost are determined early, changes to scop is carefully managed

iterative life cycle

The scope is determined early, but time and cost estimates are modified as the understanding of the product increases.

incremental life cycle

The deliverable is produced through a series of iterations that successively add functionality within a predetermined time frame. The deliverable contains the necessary and sufficient capability to be considered complete only after the final iteration.

adaptive life cycle

Agile or change driven. a usable is produced at the end of each iteration also, things move in parallel

hybrid life cycle

a combination of approaches is used based on nature of the work

waterfall method

works well when:

requirements are very well understood and fixed at outset of project

product definition is stable and not subject to changes

technology is understood

outsourcing

when an organization acquires goods and/or sources from an outside source

agile project management

move quickly/easily- requirements are unknown and continuously changing; goal is to produce shorter development cycles and more frequent releases than traditional waterfall project management

trends affecting IT project management

Globalization

Outsourcing

Virtual Teams

Agile Project Management.

agile process

close collaboration w/ user

product and development adjust

models can be mixed, reused, scaled and reconfigured

scrum

leading agile development method

scrum roles

Product Owner

Scrum Master

Development Team

product owner

A person who represents the project stakeholders and is responsible for communicating and aligning project priorities between the stakeholders and development team.

scrum master

A person who ensures that the team is productive, facilitates the daily Scrum, enables close cooperation across all roles and functions, and removes barriers that prevent the team from being effective

development team

organizational unit responsible for delivering the product at the end of the iteration (sprint)

no one, it is self organizing

manages the scrum

sprint

one iteration of the agile planning and executing cycle

time box

the length of any particular sprint, fixed in advance, during the scrum meeting

user stories

Short descriptions written by customers of what they need a system to do for them

sprint backlog

The highest-priority items from the product backlog to be completed in a sprint

burndown chart

A chart that shows the cumulative work remaining in a sprint on a day-by-day basis

Product Backlog

a prioritized list of everything that might be needed in completed product and source of requirements for any changes

work backlog

evolving, prioritized queue of business and technical functionality that needs to be developed into a system

scrum ceremonies

Sprint planning

Sprint review

Sprint retrospective

Daily scrum meeting

stages in a sprint

sprint planning

daily scrum

development work

sprint review

sprint retrospective

problems with agile

1. Requires active user involvement and close collaboration. Time demanding.

2. Hard to predict what end product will resemble because of emerging requirements and flexibility.

3. Testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle, adds a lot of cost

4. Agile requirements are few, which can lead to confusion about final outcome

pressing needs in project selection

business opportunity

savings potential

keeping up with competition

risk management

government or regulatory requirements

Focusing on broad organizational needs

competitive strategy, projects address broad organizational needs

categorizing IT projects

align IT with business strategy

net present value

A method of ranking investment proposals using the NPV, which is equal to the present value of the project's free cash flows discounted at the cost of capital.

return on investment

calculated by subtracting the project costs from the benefits and dividing by the cost

weighted scoring model

A technique that provides a systematic process for selecting projects based on numerous criteria

SWOT analysis

a planning tool used to analyze an projects strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

checklist model

a list of criteria applied to possible projects

problems in project selection

no link between strategy and project selection

poor quality project portfolios

reluctance to kill projects

lack of adequate resources decision making based on power

success factors in project selection

centralized view of current and proposed projects

financial analysis

risk analysis

focus on performance

independence among projects

accountability and governance