PM - Topic A and B Unit 2

Mrs. Patil

Project Management Plan

Document that details how a project will be executed to achieve its objectives

A well defined plan consists of certain components including:

• A description of the project management processes that will be used and the level of implementation for each

• A description of the tools and techniques that will be used to complete those processes

• Plans for monitoring and controlling changes to the project

• Details on configuration management (documented procedures for authoring and controlling changes to a product, service, or result)

• A description of the techniques that will be used to create and control the project’s performance baselines

• Techniques for communication with stakeholders

• A definition of the project life cycle

• A plan for identifying, documenting, and addressing open issues

Subsidiary Plans

Project management plans might be detailed or a simple summary, and might include any number of subsidiary management plans

How many subsidiary plans are there and what are they?

10 →

1. Scope Management Plan

2. Requirements Management Plan

3. Schedule Management Plan

4. Cost Management Plan

5. Quality Management Plan

6. Process Improvement Plan

7. Human Resource Plan

8. Communications management plan

9. Risk Management Plan

10. Procurement Management Plan

Scope Management Plan

• Provides guidance on how project scope will be defined, documented, verified, managed, and controlled

  • Plan can be formal, informal (depends on the needs of the project)

Requirements Management Plan

• Documents how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed throughout the project

  • Phase-to-phase relationships between various phases of the project strongly influence how requirements are managed

  • Components of the requirements management plan require project managers to choose the most effective relationships to aid the success of the project and document this approach in the plan

Components of the requirements management plan include:

1. Methods to plan, track, and report requirement activities.

2. Configuration management related activities.

3. Processes for requirements prioritization.

4. Formats and guidelines on developing a traceability matrix for requirements.

Schedule Management Plan

• Describes the scheduling methodology, the scheduling tools to be used, and the format and established criteria for developing, maintain, manage, control the project schedule

  • One of the subsidiary plans in the overall project plan

Cost Management Plan

• Document that outlines the guidelines and establishes the criteria for planning, structuring, estimating, budgeting and controlling project costs

  • Describes how risk budgets, contingencies, management reserves will be communicated and accessed

  • Provides the planning and structure necessary to control project costs and keep them within the budget limits

Quality Management Plan

• Document that describes how the performing organization’s quality policy will be implemented by the project management team throughout the project

  • Document that describes a team’s approach to implementing the quality policy 

    • Explains how quality control and quality assurance will be performed

Process Improvement Plan

• Document that describes the steps to analyze and determine areas of improvement in creating the project deliverables

  • Areas of process improvements include process boundaries, process configuration, process metrics, and targets for improved performance

    • Identify activities that enhance their value

Human Resource Plan

• Provides guidance on how human resources required for a project should be defined, staffed, managed, controlled, and eventually released after the project is completed

  • Components necessary for developing cost estimates such as the project staffing attributes, personnel rates, and related rewards and recognitions

  • Documents how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed throughout the project

    • Includes the staffing management

      • Describes the project management team’s approach to managing the increase and decrease of project staff across the project life cycle

Communications management plan

• Provides details that document the team’s approach to communicate efficiently and effectively with the stakeholders

  • What information must communicated to whome, by whom, when, and in what manner

  • How information is collected, archived, and accessed

Risk Management Plan

• Describes how risk management is structured and performed on the project

  • Approach to identifying risks

  • It identifies:

    • The methodology, approaches, and tools that will be used.

    • The roles and responsibilities of those involved.

    • The budgeting and scheduling for risk management activities.

    • The risk categories.

  • Does not address responses to risk

  • Addressed in the risk response plan

Procurement Management Plan

• Describes how the procurement processes will be managed from developing procurement documents through contract closure

  • Document that outlines the guidelines for obtaining or purchasing work from outside sources

    • Specifies the types of contracts that will be used

    • Describes the process for obtaining and evaluating bids or proposals, mandates the standardized procurement documents that must be used, and explains how multiple providers will be managed

      • How procurement activities will be coordinated with other PM activities

All of these plans (depending on the needs of the project) may be…

Formal or informal

Brief or detailed

Project Objectives

• Criteria used to measure whether a project is successful or not

  • Projects can have one or more objectives, and sub-objectives can be added to the project to further clarify project goals

  • Each project must includes at least one objective

Possible objectives:

• Specific in terms of the scope

• Quantifiable in terms of time, cost, and quality

• Realistic and attainable

• Consistent with organizational, plan, polices, and procedures

Customer Requirements

• Documented list of customers’ needs and expectations that must be met in order to meet the project objectives

  • Some of the requirements criteria include conformance to specific standards, quality, functional interface, data, security and control, content, technical, training and performance support, and deployment

  • Need to be elicited, analyzed, and recorded in sufficient detail from the customers to enable measurement during project execution

Collected Requirements

• Form the basis for planning the cost, schedule, and quality of the project

  • Requirements are further categorized into →

    • Project Requirements

    • Product Requirements

Project Req

Typically include the business, project management, and delivery requirements of the project

Product Req

Typically include the technical, security, and performance requirements of the product

Stakeholder Requirements Collection Methods

There are various methods to collect project or product requirements from stakeholders:

1. Interviewing

2. Focus groups

3. Facilitated workshops

4. Group creativity techniques

5. Group decision-making techniques

6. Questionnaires and surveys

7. Observations

8. Prototypes

Interviewing

• Uses one-to-one interaction to know more about project requirements from individual stakeholders

  • Identifies the stakeholder’s individual requirements, goals, expectations relating to the project

  • Gives opportunities to build questions and receive detailed answers while developing a good rapport with the stakeholders

    • Aids in identifying and defining the features and functions of the desired project deliverables

Focus Groups

• Trained moderator-guided interactive discussions that include stakeholders and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)

  • Form of qualitative research that is used to elicit stakeholders and SMEs expectations toward the proposed product, service, or result of the project

Facilitated Workshops

• Group sessions that bring together key multidisciplinary or cross-functional stakeholders to define project or product requirements

  • Quickly define cross-functional requirements of the various stakeholders of the project

  • Help build trust, foster relationships, reconcile differences, and improve communication among stakeholders

Group Creativity Techniques

• Group activities established within an organization to identify project or product requirements for a project

Different types of Group Creativity Techniques

Group Creativity Technique	Description
Brainstorming	Generate and create multiple ideas
Nominal group technique	Uses a voting process to rank the most useful ideas
Delphi Technique	Extracts and summarizes anonymous group input to choose among various alternatives
Idea mapping	Consolidates ideas created through brainstorming in a map that reflects the commonality, differences in understanding, and generation of new ideas
Affinity Diagram	Enables the sorting of a large number of ideas collected during brainstorming into distinct categories

Brainstorming →

Generate and create multiple ideas

Nominal Group Technique →

Uses a voting process to rank the most useful ideas obtained during brainstorming

Delphi Technique →

Extracts and summarizes anonymous group input to choose among various alternatives

Idea Mapping →

Consolidates ideas created through brainstorming into a map (reflects commonality, difference in understanding, and new ideas)

Affinity Diagram →

Sorting of a large number of ideas collected during brainstorming into distinct categories for review and analysis

Group decision-making techniques

• Assessment processes that evaluate multiple alternatives to arrive at an outcome

  • Used to generate, classify, and prioritize project or product requirements

  • Outcome is the resolution of future action for the project

Methods adopted to reach group decision:

Unanimity	Everyone in the group agrees
Majority	Support from more than 50% to indicate the decision
Plurality	Largest batch in group decides for the group (even if a majority is not achieved)
Dictatorship	1 individual makes the decision for the group

Questionnaires and Surveys

• Written sets of questions designed to quickly accumulate information

  • Used for statistical analysis

Observations

• A direct way of viewing individuals in their work environment or while using the product to identify the project/product (job shadowing)

Prototypes

• Method of obtaining feedback on requirements by providing a working model of the expected product

Requirements Documentation

• Describes how individual requirements meet the business need of the project

  • Requirements are documented in the requirements documentation must be unambiguous, traceable, complete, consistent, and acceptable to key stakeholders of the project

Traceability Matrix (RTM)

• Tabular document that links the project or product requirements to their origin and traces them throughout the project life cycle

  • Links each requirement to the business and project objectives, work breakdown structure, etc.

    • Ensures that approved requirements in the requirements documentation are met at the end of the project 

    • RTM also provides a structure for managing changes to the project or product scope

Scope Statement

• Defines the project and what it does and does not need to accomplish

  • Created at an early stage in the project to reflect the stakeholders’ common understanding of major activities to be performed in the project 

  • Provides a basis for future project decisions about what the project scope should and should not be included in the project

Project Scope Statement typically includes:

• Project objectives, deliverables, exclusions, and requirements

• Project constraints and assumptions

• Product acceptance criteria

  • May also include project organization, defined risks, schedule milestones, initial WBS and approval requirements

Project Objectives

Measurable success criteria for the project

• Critical success factors

Product Description

• Characteristics of the product, service, result of the project undertaken

Project Requirements

• Conditions or capabilities that the deliverables of the project must meet to a standard, contract, specification, or government or industry regulation

Project Deliverables

• Any measurable result or outcome required to complete a project or portion of a project

Project Boundaries

• Parameters of what is and what is not included within a project

Product Acceptance Criteria

• Process and criteria for accepting finished products or services resulting from a project

Project Constraints

• Factors that limit the way that the project can be approached

  • Limitations may concern time, cost, scope, quality, resources, and others

Project Assumptions

• Statements that must be taken to be true in order for the planning to begin

Constraints

• Limitations that concern scope, time, cost, and ultimately quality

  • Interrelated and exist in a state of equilibrium

  • If one of these factors is altered, the other two factors should be balanced to accomodate

Re-prioritization of constraints can…

• Occur at any time during the project

• In large or complex projects it can occur several times

  • Can be due to requests from any stakeholder, PM or whoever

Product Analysis

• Evaluation of the project’s end product and what it will take to create the product

  • Translates project objectives into tangible deliverables and requirements

Functional Analysis (Prod Anal)

• Analyzing all the things that are related functions, may drive up cost

Value Engineering and Value Analysis (Prod Anal)

• Identifying and developing each function of product

Quality Function Deployment (Prod Anal)

• Identifying what the customer’s needs are and making them technical requirements

Systems Engineering (Prod Anal)

• Analyzing products holistically and understanding stakeholders, users, usage environment needs

  • Systems thinking to analyze and model complex systems

Alternative Identification Techniques

• Methods for generating as many alternative solutions and plans as possible during proj planning

Lateral Thinking technique (AIT)

• Creative approach to problem solving in which you think about a problem in new ways and generate new solutions

Brainstorming technique (AIT)

• General creativity technique for generation of solutions

  • Goal is to generate as many ideas as possible

Delphi Technique (AIT)

• Extracts and summarizes anonymous group input to choose among various alternatives for an estimate or forecast

What is a well-defined scope statement?

• Provides a basis for project stakeholders to make future decisions about the project’s scope

  • Serves as a baseline for monitroing the scope during execution

  • Multiple guidelines to create an effective detailed scope statement