1. Introduction and project management

Project management

Project management is the application of processes, methods, knowledge and experience to achieve project objectives.

The process follows:

• Initiating the project
  • Defining the scope
    • Provide success criteria
      • Time
      • Cost
      • Quality
    • Major constraints and dependencies
    • Project Initiation Document / Specification
      • Protects client and project manager
      • Helps estimating
      • Assess initial risks
• Planning
  • Tasks
  • Cost / time estimation
  • Risk assessment
• Executing, monitoring and controlling
  • Life cycles
  • Stakeholders management
  • Group work

The benefit of a standard methodology:

• consistent terminology
• common understanding associated with roles
• consistent documentation across projects
• structure for development of new project managers
• greater mobility of staff between projects

A project is a “unique, transient endeavour, undertaken to achieve planned objectives, which could be defined in terms of outputs, outcomes or benefits. A project is usually deemed to be a success if it achieves its objectives.”

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2. Initiating a project

Initiating a project

When building a project we need to look at:

• Success and benefits: Understanding what success means to different stakeholders
• Objectives and requirements: Comprehensive and measurable requirements are critical to project success
• Options and solutions: Exploring multiple options until a preferred solution is identified
• Scope definition: The translation of requirements into outputs for the chosen solution
• Quality planning: Ensuring outputs are delived in accordance with the requirements

Scope Management

In scope management, there is a range of different activies you can partake in:

• requirements management: gathers and assesses stakeholder wants and needs. The various requirements are assesed to ensure they are practical, achievable and define what is needed than how they will be achieved.

  A well specified requirement is:

  • uniquely identified: only addresses one core requirement
  • current: it is up to date and relevant to business needs
  • consistent: it does not contradict any other requirement
  • understandable: concisely stated and not open to interpretation
  • verifiable: compliance can be verified through inspection, demonstration, test or analysis
  • traceable: the requirement can be traced back
  • prioritised: its relative importance is understood

  A simple process for requirements management:

  1. gather requirements from stakeholders
  2. analyse requirements, look for gaps and conflicts
  3. justify the requirements to distinguish want from need
  4. baseline the needs before commencing development

• solutions development: takes the stakeholders’ requirements and investigates how they may be achieved to provide the best value. A simple process produces a clear set of baselined stakeholder requirements.

Strategies to exploit innovation

The emerging solution is subject to periodic review.

• prototyping: exploring innovation offline
• use of modelling, simulation and synthetic environments
• phased implementation of new technology

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3. Planning

Planning

Planning determines what is to be delivered, how much it will cost, how much will be delivered, how it will be delivered and who will carry it out.

Project planning involves breaking down the work into parts and assign these to project team members, anticipate problems that might arise and prepare tentative solutions to those problems.

The project plan, created at the start, is used to communicate how the work will be done to the project managers and customers, and to help assess progress on the project.

Planning is done at different stages:

• At the proposal stage, you are bidding for a contract to develop or provide a software system.
• During the project startup phase, when you have to plan out who will work on the project, how the project will be broken down into increments, how resources will be allocated.
• Periodically throughout the project, as requirements change or new things come to light, we may need to plan again.

Tasks

• List the tasks
• Involve the team
• Organise your tasks logically
• Consider granualarity

Schedules

Schedules are presented in different ways in order to suit the circumstances. The presentation will depend on:

• level of detail required
• whether time / resources are being shown
• context of the work
• dimension being scheduled
• target audience

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4. Risk assessment

Risk assessment

Risk management is a process that allows individual risk events and overall risk to be understood and managed proactively, optimising success by minimising threats and maximising opportunities.

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5. Execution and group work

i give up

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