Chapter 3: Managing Systems Projects

Activity

Any work that has a beginning & an end & requires the use of company resources

Best-Case Estimate

The most optimistic outcome

Bottom-Up Technique

Method for analysing a large, complex project as a series of individual tasks

Brooks’ Law

Adding more manpower to late software project only makes it later; Fredrick Brooks IBM engineer

Code Review/Walk-Through

Concurrent Task

Task that can be completed at the same time as another task (parallel)

Critical Path

Series of events & activities with no slack time; if one falls behind the rest falls behind

CPM (Critical Path Method)

Shows a project as a network diagram; activities shown as vectors & events displayed graphically as nodes

Dependent Task

Task has to completed in a serial sequence

Design Review/Structured Walk-Through

Duration

Amount of time it will take to complete a task

Event/Milestone

Reference point that marks a major occurrence; used to monitor progress & manage a project

Finish Day/Date

Day or date when a task is scheduled to be finished

Gantt Chart

Horizontal bar chart that illustrated a schedule

Network Diagram

PERT chart

Open Source

Software supported by a large group of users & developer; source code made freely available

Person-Day

Amount of work that one person can complete in one day

PERT/CPM

Was developed by the US Navy to manage very complex projects, developed by private industry to meet similar project management needs

Predecessor task

A single prior task upon which two or more concurrent tasks depend

Probable-case estimate

The most likely outcome

Project coordinator

Person who handles administrative responsibilitie sfor the development team & negotiates with users who might have conflicting requirements or want changes that would require additional time or expense

Project leader

Person charged with leading a project from a technical perspective

Project management

Process of planning, scheduling, monitoring, controlling, & reporting upon the development of an information system

Project manager

Person charged with managing a project from an administrative perspective

Project monitoring

Guiding, supervising, & coordinating the project team’s hard work

Project planning

Identifying project tasks & estimating completion time & costs

Project reporting

Providing regular progress reports to management, users, & the project team itself

Project scheduling

The creation of a specific timetable to facilitate completion of a project, also involves selecting & staffing the project team & assigning specific tasks to team members

Project triangle

3 major components of a project: cost, scope, & time; project manager tries to find optimal balance among these factors

Qualitative risk analysis

Evaluating risk by estimating the probability that it will occur & the degree of impact

Quantitative risk analysis

Evaluating risk in terms of the actual impact in terms of dollars, time, project scope, or quality

risk

An event that could affect the project negatively

Risk identification

Listing each risk & assessing the likelihood that it could affect a project

Risk management

The process of identifying, evaluating, tracking, & controlling risks to minimize their impact

Risk management plan

Includes a review of the project’s scope, stakeholders, budget, schedule, & any other internal or external factors that might affect the project plan should define project roles & responsibilities, risk management methods & procedures, categories of risks, & contingency plans

Risk response plan

A proactice effort to anticipate a risk & describe an action plan to deal with it; an effective risk response plan can reduce the overall impact by triggering a timely & appropriate action

Slack time

The amount of time by which an event can be late without delaying the project; the difference between latest completion time (LCT) & earliest completion time (ECT)

Start day/date

The day or date when a task is scheduled to begin

Structured walk-through

A review of a project team members work by other members of the team; generally, systems analysts review the work of other systems analysts, & programmers review the work of other programmers, as a form of peer review; should take place throughout the SDLC & are called requirement reviews, design reviews, code reviews, or testing reviews, depending on the phase in which they occur

Successor task

Each of the concurrent tasks of a predecessor task

Task

Any work that has a beginning & an end & requires the use of company resources including people, time, and/or money

Task box

A component of a PERT/CPM chart that contains important scheduling & duration information about a task; each task in a project is represented by its own task box in the PERT/CPM chart

Task ID

A number or code that uniquely identifies a task

Task name

A brief descriptive name for a task, which does not have to be unique in the project

Task pattern

A logical sequence of tasks in a WBS; can involve sequential tasks, multiple successor tasks, & multiple predecessor tasks

weight

An important mutiplier that manages factor into estimates so they can be analyzed

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

A project broken down into a series of smaller tasks

Worst-case estimate

The most pessimistic outcome