Conceptualising & Initialising the Project

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

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

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

Project Communication

Communication management has four phases called

• 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,

1. Stakeholders


2. Information Requirements


3. Type of Reports


4. Availability


5. 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

1. Team can get idea about the progress of the project


2. Team can design their own metrics with the approval of PM


3. Metrics allows to track the project progress.

Budget

Project cost management has mainly three steps.

1. Cost estimating - Cost estimating is doing based on the activities, resources and time.


2. Cost budgeting - Calculate the whole cost of the project after finishing the cost estimation for the each activity.


3. Cost control - Ensure that there are processes and procedures to control the changes to the budget.

Estimate the cost of a particular activity,

1. What resources will be needed to perform the work.


2. Determine the quality of the resources that are needed.


3. Define the cost of using each resource.


4. Calculate the cost for the each task or activity.


5. Ensure that the resources are levelled.

Project Schedule

Project scheduling use tools like

1. Gantt Chats


2. Activity on Node


3. Critical Path Analysis


4. PERT


5. 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.

1. Gusstimating


2. Delphi Technique


3. Time Boxing


4. Top-Down Estimating


5. 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.

The Work Breakdown Structure

WBS is the bridge between project scope and the project plan. Activity definition and activity sequencing are part of the WBS.
WBS means divide project into small components and more manageable units called "packages". These packages make possible to develop project plan, schedule, budget and monitor the progress of the project.Package starts with project and then it divides into phases. Each phase has one or more deliverables. Under this deliverables there are activities to achieve this deliverable and milestone. At the end of the phase, there is a milestone called phase completion.
Milestones provides lots of advantages like

1. Keep project teams focus - It is easy to concentrate series of small short term deliverables than one single large deliverable.


2. Reduce the risk of the project- This provides opportunity to see the progress of the project. And also milestones act like proof for the concepts.


3. Provide mechanism for quality control.

Developing a WBS requires several versions until everyone is comfortable and confidant that all of the work activities have been included. The process of developing WBS starts with DDT and DSC. Each deliverable in the DSC must divide into lower level details. WBS must

1. Deliverable oriented - That should not be just sequence of events. It must produce something.


2. Support project's MOV - WBS must include only the activities which allow for the deliverables. Project team must ensure that WBS can develop all the deliverables which are mentioned in the project scope.


3. Level of detail should support planning and controlling - WBS must not be too short or must not be too details. It must have the required level of details that helps project manager and team to monitor and compare the progress of the project.


4. Developers must involve for creating the WBS - This helps to ensure that WBS has required level of information. They must have a better idea about what activities should do to produce particular deliverable.

Scope Management

Scope management has five phases such as

• Scope management planing
• 
  
• Scope definition


• WBS (Work break down structure)


• Scope Verification


• Scope Control

Scope management Planing

Scope management planing means defining how project team will define and develop the scope of the project. And also project scope verification and control process must be define with the project and product deliverables.

Scope management plan is the outcome of this process.

Scope definition

In this stage project's scope is clearly defined with all the project and product deliverables. Project scope must achieve the MOV (Measurable Organisation Value).
In scope and Out scope are clearly defined.

Project deliverables are define using the tools such as DDT (Deliverable definition table) and DSC (Deliverable structure chart).

Product deliverables focus on identifying the features and functionalities of the product. Context data flow diagrams (DFD) and user cases are used for this.

WBS

In this stage deliverable are divided into small modules according to a hierarchical manner.

Project scope verification

Project scope is verified and accepted by it's stakeholders and project team as a completed and accurate one. In this stage scope verification checklist is used as a tool. This checklist has,

• MOV - Is project's MOV clearly defined and accepted.


• Deliverables- Are all the deliverables are tangible or verifiable?


• Quality standards - There is a control process to ensure that work met its define standards.


• Milestones - Are milestones defined for each deliverable ?


• Review and acceptance - Are both sides clear on their expectations?

Scope change control

Changes of the scope is inevitable with new information and changing user needs. Changes of the scope can increase the time and budget of the project. Therefore well define change control process is required to track these changes.

scope grope- This happens when project team can't define project scope.
scope creep - This means adding new features to the system. (Increase featurism).
scope leap - Completely change the objective and the focus of the project

Scope change control must have a change request form and change request log. Change request form has details like requesters name, request date, request title, description, justification, etc.
Scope request log

Request Number	Request Title	Date of Request	Requested By	Priority (L, M, H)	Authority to approve the Request	Expected Response date	Scope change Approved ? (Y/N)