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Week-15

Project Management
Project Initiation
• Initiating a project includes recognizing and starting a new
project or project phase.
• Some organizations use a pre-initiation phase, while
others include items such as developing a business case
as part of the initiation.
• The main goal is to formally select and start off projects.
• Key outputs include:
– Assigning the project manager.
– Identifying key stakeholders.
– Completing a business case.
– Completing a project charter and getting signatures on it.
Project Initiation Documents
• Every organization has its own variations
of what documents are required to initiate
a project. It’s important to identify the
project need, stakeholders, and main
goals.
Project Planning
• Project Management Cycle
• Plan the Project
– What are the deliverables?
– What tasks are needed to produce the
deliverables?
– What resources are needed and for how long?
– What will the project cost?
• Project Plan & Project Control
• Project Plan includes overall control methods for
– Project schedule
– Project cost and budget
– Resource management and team organization
– Change and scope management
– Status reporting methods
– Project process model
An outline of step wise planning
activities
• Select project.
• Identify project scope and objectives.
• Identify project infrastructure.
• Analyze project characteristics.
• Identify project products and activities.
• Estimate effort for each activity.
• Identify activity risks.
• Allocate resources.
• Review/Publicize Plan.
• Execute Plan
• Project Plan includes steps in the delivery
and support of the final product.
• Broken down into work packages (tasks)
with specific deliverables.
– Analysis and design – Training
– Construction – Delivery/installation
– Data loading – Maintenance
– Testing
• Project Plan includes methods used to control the
produce and process quality
– Quality Assurance
– Configuration Management
– Security
– Auditability
– Risk Management
– Documentation Management
– Data Management
– Proposed tools and techniques for any of the above
• Purpose of a Project Plan
• Developing a formal project plan forces management to
consider all of the activities and phases of a project.
• Project Plan is used for communication
– Information about the scope and structure of a project
– What must be done, how, why and when?
• Information for participants and stakeholders.
• The Project Plan is used
– To schedule and organize the activities in a project.
– To request appropriate time and budget.
– To track project progress.
• The purpose of a project is to achieve clear goals that
can be described by documented deliverables.
• Examples of intermediate deliverables
– Design documents
– Application source code
– Approvals of intermediate work
– Quality Assurance proofs
• Examples of final deliverables
– Product and/or service
– Customer/client satisfaction
– Profit for the developers
i.e. the realization of the project benefits
Project Monitoring & Control Tasks
Tasks performed continuously*

Monitor software Monitor work


Monitor software Monitor
project activities products and
acquisition commitments
and resources project data

Tasks performed as needed

Generate
Manage corrective Conduct milestone Document lessons
management
actions reviews learned
reports and reviews

“Monitor data management, stakeholder involvement,


and risk elements of the software project as you go”.
Project Monitoring
• Project Monitoring Control Tasks
• Task 1: Monitor project activities, resources, and personnel
a) Monitor progress against the schedule by periodically
measuring actual completion of activities and milestones.
• Compare this progress against the planned documented
schedule.
b) Monitor the project’s cost and effort by periodically measuring
actual cost and effort expended by project staff.
• Compare the cost and effort to the planned documented
estimates.
c) Monitor resources provided and used by the project.
• Compare the resources to the planned documented estimates.
• d) Monitor documented risks in the context of the
project’s current status and circumstances.
• e) Monitor project personnel training schedule by
periodically measuring the progress of scheduled
training.
• Compare actual training against the planned
documented training
• Identify and document significant deviations and
trends (in options a,b,c,e).
• Task 2: Monitor work products and project data
a) Monitor the project’s work products and tasks by
periodically measuring the actual characteristics of the
work products and tasks, e.g. size, complexity, quality,
security, etc.
• Compare the actual characteristics and the changes to
the characteristics to estimates documented in the
SMP/PP (S/w management plan/product plan).
• Identify significant deviations and trends.
b) Monitor data management activities against the
description in the SMP/PP on a periodic basis.
• Task 3: Monitor software acquisition
• Monitor the project’s acquisition of software by periodically
performing the following as needed:
a) Reviewing the needs of the project for new acquisitions
of software.
b) Initiate Requests-for-Proposal (RFPs) to satisfy
identified needs.
c) Prepare or update contracts to acquire software.
d) Monitor suppliers for compliance with contract
provisions, on-time software delivery, and quality of
software to be delivered.
e) Monitor acceptance of software that is delivered to
assure full compliance with acceptance processes and
quality requirements.
• Task 4: Monitor commitments
a) Monitor internal and external commitments against the
plan.
b) Monitor the status of stakeholder involvement against
the plan.
c) Identify those commitments that have not been
satisfied or those that are at significant risk of not being
satisfied.
d) Document the results of these reviews.
• Task 5: Manage corrective actions
a) Gather issues for analysis developed during
previous tasks or input from other processes.
b) Negotiate changes to internal and external
commitments.
c) Review and get agreement with the relevant
stakeholders on the actions to be taken and the
priority to be assigned for their completion.
d) Monitor the corrective actions for completion
e) Analyze results of corrective actions to
determine their effectiveness.
• Task 6: Generate reports and review progress
a) Assemble project measures and the identified significant
deviations and trends from what was planned in the
SMP/PP.
c) Produce project status report.
d) Communicate status on assigned activities and work
products to relevant stakeholders, including project, line
management, and the project team.
e) Review the results of collecting and analyzing measures
for controlling the project with relevant stakeholders.
f) Identify and document significant issues and action items
resulting from these project progress reviews.
g) Track action items and issue resolution to closure.
• Examples of progress reviews include the
following:
• Reviews with the project team
• Reviews with project management and
suppliers
• Reviews with line management
• Reviews with customers and end users
• Task 7: Conduct milestone reviews
a) Conduct the reviews at meaningful points in the project’s schedule
with relevant stakeholders.
b) Review the commitments, plan, status, and risks of the project.
c) Track action items and issues to closure.
• Task 8: Document lessons learned
a) Collect and document issues that are found to have had a
significant positive or negative impact on the project. If possible
provide a suggestion for improvement to processes.
Summary
• Project Monitoring and Control Tasks
– Performed continuously:
• Monitor software project activities and resources
• Monitor work products and software project data
• Monitor software acquisition
• Monitor commitments
– Performed as needed:
• Manage corrective actions
• Generate management reports and reviews
• Conduct milestone reviews
• Document lessons learned
Project Risk management
• Risk management is concerned with
identifying risks and drawing up plans to
minimise their effect on a project
• A risk is a probability that some adverse
circumstance will occur
– Project risks affect schedule or resources
– Product risks affect the quality or performance
of the software being developed
– Business risks affect the organisation
developing or procuring the software
The risk management process
(I)
• Risk identification
– Identify project, product and business risks
• Risk analysis
– Assess the likelihood and consequences of
these risks
• Risk planning
– Draw up plans to avoid or minimise the effects
of the risk
• Risk monitoring
– Monitor the risks throughout the project
The risk management process
(II)

Risk Risk analysis Risk planning Risk


identification monitoring

List of potential Risk avoidance Risk


Prioritised risk and contingency
risks list assessment
plans
Risk identification
• Technology risks
• People risks
• Organisational risks
• Tools risks
• Requirements risks
• Estimation risks
Risks and risk types
Risk type Possible risks
Technology The database used in the systemcannot process as
many transactions per second as expected.
Software components which should be reused contain
defects which limit their functionality.
People It is impossible to recruit staff with the skills required.
Key staff are ill and unavailable at critical times.
Required training for staff is not available.
Organisational The organisation is restructured so that different
management are responsible for the project.
Organisational financial problems force reductions in the
project budget.
Tools The code generated by CASE tools is inefficient.
CASE tools cannot be integrated.
Requirements Changes to requirements which require major design
rework are proposed.
Customers fail to understand the impact of requirements
changes.
Estimation The time required to develop the software is
underestimated.
The rate of defect repair is underestimated.
The size of the software is underestimated.
Risk analysis
• Assess probability and seriousness of
each risk
• Probability may be very low, low,
moderate, high or very high
• Risk effects might be catastrophic,
serious, tolerable or insignificant
Risk planning
• Consider each risk and develop a strategy to
manage it
• Avoidance strategies
– Probability that the risk will arise is reduced
• Minimisation strategies
– Impact of the risk on the project or product is
reduced
• Contingency plans
– If the risk arises, emergency plans are plans to
deal with the risk
Risk management strategies
R isk Strategy
O rganisational Prepare a briefing docum ent for senior m anagem ent showing how the
financial problem s m aking a very im portant contribution to the goals of the business.
R ecruitm ent Alert custom er of potential difficulties and the possibility of delays, in
problem s buying-in com ponents.
Staff illness R eorganise team so that there is m ore overlap of work and people
understand each other’s jobs.
D efective R eplace potentially defective com ponents with bought-in com ponents o
com ponents reliability.
R equirem ents D erivetraceability inform ation to assess requirem ents change im pact, m
changes inform ation hiding in the design.
O rganisational Prepare a briefing docum ent for senior m anagem ent showing how the
restructuring m aking a very im portant contribution to the goals of the business.
D atabase Investigate the possibility of buying a higher-perform ance database.
perform ance
U nderestim ated Investigate buying in com ponents , investigate use of a program generator.
developm ent tim e
Risk monitoring
• Assess each identified risks regularly to
decide whether or not it is becoming less
or more probable
• Also assess whether the effects of the risk
have changed
• Each key risk should be discussed at
management progress meetings
Key points (I)
• Good project management is essential for
project success
• The intangible nature of software causes
problems for management
• Managers have diverse roles but their most
significant activities are planning, estimating and
scheduling
• Planning and estimating are iterative processes
which continue throughout the course of a
project
Key points (II)
• A project milestone is a predictable state where
some formal report of progress is presented to
management
• Risks may be project risks, product risks, or
business risks
• Risk management is concerned with identifying
risks which may affect the project and planning
to ensure that these risks do not develop into
major threats

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