Conceptualising and initialising the project --> Business Case
Develop the project plan and charter --> Project Charter and Plan
Execute and control the project --> product
Project closer --> Final reports
Project Evaluation --> Project evaluation and lesson learnt
IT project management methodology
Strategic level plan for managing and controlling the IT projects.
This has phases, deliverables, processes, tools, etc
Project management methodology
1.Conceptualising and initialising – Develop the business case
2.Develop project charter and detail plan
3.Execute and control the project
4.Project closer
5.Project evaluation
The Business Case
This is the first deliverable in the project life cycle. This has information about organisation value, feasibility, cost, risks and benefits of several proposed alternatives. This gives enough information for the senior managers whether this project is funded.
The process of developing the business case
1.Select the core team – Team is selected to develop the business case. If possible, this team must have many of stakeholders, managers, business specialists, IT specialists.
2.Define measurable organisation value
3.Identify Alternatives
4.Define feasibility
5.Define total cost of ownership
6.Define total benefits of ownership
7.Analyse the alternatives
8.Propose and support recommendations
Project plan
1.Who is the PM? Sponsor?
2.Project team? Roles and responsibilities
3.Resources
4.Total cost
5.Time
6.Scope?
Project charter
Project charter is the high level project plan. It is a kind of agreement between project team and the sponsor.
Project charter has
1.Scope
2.MOV
3.Roles and Responsibilities
4.Define the project infrastructure
5.Summary and details of the Project Plan
6.Show explicit commitment to the project
7.Set out the project control mechanism
Decomposition
Break the tasks into small units unit I understand what the required tasks are.
MOV -> Scope -> Phases -> Tasks -> Sequence, resources, time
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Project
A Project
A project is temporary attempt to accomplish unique purpose.
Project Management
Application of Knowledge, skills, tools and techniques for project activities to meet or exceed project Requirements.
Why Project Management is necessary?
To control the project
Create ownership
Define beginning and end
Create focus, team, motivation
Assign priority
Recognition of achievement
What is successful project?
Deliver its functionalities
Implement according to the budget, according to technical specification on schedule
Achieved its business purpose and objectives
Meet quality requirements
All the parties (Stakeholders, users, project team and sponsors) are happy during the project and the outcome of the project
Cancel project can also be consider as a successful project if it is cancel based on a reason and terminated effectively.
Project must commercially profitable for the contractor.
Why projects are failed?
Poor estimations and plans
Poor role definition
Management ignorance of IT
Lack of knowledge on domain area
Changing requirements
Lack of quality control
Lack of communication
Success factors of the project
Executive support
User involvement
Experienced project manager
Clear business objectives
Minimised scope
Standard software infrastructure
Formal methodology
Reliable estimates
Project Life Cycle
The collection of logical phases that maps life of the project from beginning to the end.
•Define project goals
•Plan the project
•Execute the plan
•Close the project
•Evaluate the project
Product development life cycle
•Planning
•Analysing
•Designing
•Implementing
•Maintain and support
Product life cycle is a part of Project life Cycle
A project is temporary attempt to accomplish unique purpose.
Project Management
Application of Knowledge, skills, tools and techniques for project activities to meet or exceed project Requirements.
Why Project Management is necessary?
To control the project
Create ownership
Define beginning and end
Create focus, team, motivation
Assign priority
Recognition of achievement
What is successful project?
Deliver its functionalities
Implement according to the budget, according to technical specification on schedule
Achieved its business purpose and objectives
Meet quality requirements
All the parties (Stakeholders, users, project team and sponsors) are happy during the project and the outcome of the project
Cancel project can also be consider as a successful project if it is cancel based on a reason and terminated effectively.
Project must commercially profitable for the contractor.
Why projects are failed?
Poor estimations and plans
Poor role definition
Management ignorance of IT
Lack of knowledge on domain area
Changing requirements
Lack of quality control
Lack of communication
Success factors of the project
Executive support
User involvement
Experienced project manager
Clear business objectives
Minimised scope
Standard software infrastructure
Formal methodology
Reliable estimates
Project Life Cycle
The collection of logical phases that maps life of the project from beginning to the end.
•Define project goals
•Plan the project
•Execute the plan
•Close the project
•Evaluate the project
Product development life cycle
•Planning
•Analysing
•Designing
•Implementing
•Maintain and support
Product life cycle is a part of Project life Cycle
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Risk Management Plan
Risk is some uncertain event or condition that can happen. If that happens, it will make positive or negative impact to the project.
Risk Identification
• Identify and name the risks.
• Workshops are organized with business people and IT people to identify the risks.
• Apart from that standard risk lists is also reviewed.
All stakeholders must commit to the risks.
Risks must have owners to monitor it. Therefore stakeholders are assigned for the each risk to monitor and inform about the status of the risk.
• Business Risks are handled by the business people. For example if system will not finish before end of this year, existing system must use for another year.
• Risks are identified as two parts to remove duplicates. First part is the situation and second part is the impact. For example vendors not meet deadline is the situation and budget overrun in the impact.
Risk Quantification
Risks are quantified using two dimensions. First one is the impact and the second one is the probability (likelihood).
Indexes called Low, High, Medium and Critical are used to measure the impact and numbers from 1 to 4 is used to measure the likelihood.
For example if one risk have low impact and there is a high probability, it is called medium risk.
If one risk have high impact and there is less probability, it is called high risk.
Risk Response
Project managers are responsible to minimise the impact of the risks.
The strategies for that is,
Avoid the risk. That means do something to remove it.
Transfer the risk. Make someone else is responsible for the risk.
Mitigate the risk. Take appropriate actions to minimum the chance of happening the risk.
Accept the Risk. If the impact of the risk is minimum. Then effort to minimise that risk is not worth.
Risk Control
Owner of the risk must continuously monitor the risk to identify any change in the risk.
This will help to identify new risks.
This will help to identify the impact and probability of risks
Risk Identification
• Identify and name the risks.
• Workshops are organized with business people and IT people to identify the risks.
• Apart from that standard risk lists is also reviewed.
All stakeholders must commit to the risks.
Risks must have owners to monitor it. Therefore stakeholders are assigned for the each risk to monitor and inform about the status of the risk.
• Business Risks are handled by the business people. For example if system will not finish before end of this year, existing system must use for another year.
• Risks are identified as two parts to remove duplicates. First part is the situation and second part is the impact. For example vendors not meet deadline is the situation and budget overrun in the impact.
Risk Quantification
Risks are quantified using two dimensions. First one is the impact and the second one is the probability (likelihood).
Indexes called Low, High, Medium and Critical are used to measure the impact and numbers from 1 to 4 is used to measure the likelihood.
For example if one risk have low impact and there is a high probability, it is called medium risk.
If one risk have high impact and there is less probability, it is called high risk.
Risk Response
Project managers are responsible to minimise the impact of the risks.
The strategies for that is,
Avoid the risk. That means do something to remove it.
Transfer the risk. Make someone else is responsible for the risk.
Mitigate the risk. Take appropriate actions to minimum the chance of happening the risk.
Accept the Risk. If the impact of the risk is minimum. Then effort to minimise that risk is not worth.
Risk Control
Owner of the risk must continuously monitor the risk to identify any change in the risk.
This will help to identify new risks.
This will help to identify the impact and probability of risks
Monday, June 8, 2009
Project Communication
Communication management has four phases called
Communication Planning
This describes how information is collected and distributed. For this
Project Communication Plan
Communication Plan has,
Project Metrics
Quantitative metrics of some attributes of the project.
Scope, schedule, budget, quality, risk and resources.
How to gather information about metrics?
Project team members must submit periodic reports or time cards that describes what tasks they worked on, the time spent, resources, etc
Data can collect from expense reports, invoices, purchase orders, etc.
Meyer (1994) says "Trying to run a team without good measurement system is like trying to drive a car without a dashboard."
Advantages of Metrics
- Communication Planning
- Information Distribution
- Performance Reporting
- Managing Stakeholders
Communication Planning
This describes how information is collected and distributed. For this
Identify all project stakeholders and their information needs.
Determine the different interests and roles of each stakeholder.
(Who need what information when)
Project Communication Plan
| Stakeholders | Reporting Requirements | Reports/Metrics | Reason |
Communication Plan has,
- Stakeholders
- Information Requirements
- Type of Reports
- Availability
- Medium
Project Metrics
Quantitative metrics of some attributes of the project.
Scope, schedule, budget, quality, risk and resources.
How to gather information about metrics?
Project team members must submit periodic reports or time cards that describes what tasks they worked on, the time spent, resources, etc
Data can collect from expense reports, invoices, purchase orders, etc.
Meyer (1994) says "Trying to run a team without good measurement system is like trying to drive a car without a dashboard."
Advantages of Metrics
- Team can get idea about the progress of the project
- Team can design their own metrics with the approval of PM
- Metrics allows to track the project progress.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Budget
Project cost management has mainly three steps.
Estimate the cost of a particular activity,
- Cost estimating - Cost estimating is doing based on the activities, resources and time.
- Cost budgeting - Calculate the whole cost of the project after finishing the cost estimation for the each activity.
- Cost control - Ensure that there are processes and procedures to control the changes to the budget.
Estimate the cost of a particular activity,
- What resources will be needed to perform the work.
- Determine the quality of the resources that are needed.
- Define the cost of using each resource.
- Calculate the cost for the each task or activity.
- Ensure that the resources are levelled.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Project Schedule
Project scheduling use tools like
Gantt Chart
Network Diagrams
Critical Path Analysis
- Gantt Chats
- Activity on Node
- Critical Path Analysis
- PERT
- Precedence diagramming method
Gantt Chart
- Simple and straightforward
- Useful to communicate the project status
- Don't display the relationships of the tasks
Network Diagrams
- Show logic sequence and visual representation of the work flow of activities and tasks.
- Activities are represented using nodes. Arrows are used to indicate the flow
- Predecessors, successors and parallel activities are defined.
Critical Path Analysis
- Critical path is the longest path in the project network.
- This is the shorted time in which the project can be cpmpleted.
- Identifying the critical path is very important for the project managers because change the duration of the activities on critical path will effect to the project schedule.
- Project managers can reduce the project schedule by allocating more resources to the critical path. However this can increase the budget of the project.
- Another way to reduce the project schedule is Fast tracking. Fast tracking means look for parallel activities.
Project Estimation
Most difficult activity in project management is estimate the time. There are mainly five methods to estimate the time.
This is not a best way to do the estimating. Just picking numbers out of the air. Many inexperience project managers use this, because this is quick and easy. There is no logical reasons to explain the estimate values.
In this technique number of experts are used to estimate the values for the same activity. After that these estimated values are compared. If values are reasonable close, then take the average value as an estimated value. If values are not closer, estimated values are distributed again among experts and discuss about the difference and do the estimation again.
This is the most expensive and time consuming estimation technique. However error is very low in this and also highly effective.
Box of time is allocated for a specific activity. This is based on the requirements. After end of the allocated time period work is stopped whether it is finished or not.
This estimation starts after schedule is identified. Project manager can allocate percentage of time for each activity. Data from the previous projects are very useful for this.
This is the most common estimation technique. Project is divided into small units and time is allocated for each model. WBS is the basis for the Bottom up estimation.
- Gusstimating
- Delphi Technique
- Time Boxing
- Top-Down Estimating
- Bottom-Up Estimating
Gusstimating
This is not a best way to do the estimating. Just picking numbers out of the air. Many inexperience project managers use this, because this is quick and easy. There is no logical reasons to explain the estimate values.
Delphi Technique
In this technique number of experts are used to estimate the values for the same activity. After that these estimated values are compared. If values are reasonable close, then take the average value as an estimated value. If values are not closer, estimated values are distributed again among experts and discuss about the difference and do the estimation again.
This is the most expensive and time consuming estimation technique. However error is very low in this and also highly effective.
Time Boxing
Box of time is allocated for a specific activity. This is based on the requirements. After end of the allocated time period work is stopped whether it is finished or not.
Top-Down Estimating
This estimation starts after schedule is identified. Project manager can allocate percentage of time for each activity. Data from the previous projects are very useful for this.
Bottom-Up Estimating
This is the most common estimation technique. Project is divided into small units and time is allocated for each model. WBS is the basis for the Bottom up estimation.
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