Project
A project is an endeavour that aims to achieve specific goals within a fixed period of time under certain resource constraints. They are unique, temporary, and constrained.
Quality of a project is generally constrained by scope, cost, and time. Adjusting one but not the other may cause quality to suffer.
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Project Manager
Roles of a project manager:
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- Proposal writing.
- Reporting.
- Project planning and scheduling: deciding tasks, estimating costs, scheduling tasks, allocating people and resources to tasks.
- Risk management: identity, assess, monitor and address risks.
- People management: choose people and establish ways of working.
Project Planning
Project Planning
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Task (Project Planning)
Tasks are the basic unit of scheduling, they posses:
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- A description of the task.
- The “effort” / number of work units a task requires.
- Duration of the task / amount of time taken to complete a task.
- Elapsed time / amount of time between start and end of a task.
- Deadline which is the time the task needs to be complete by.
- Dependencies that other project activities this activity depends on.
- Prerequisites which are required before starting this task.
- Defined endpoint which is a clearly specified condition which indicates the end of the activity.
Milestone (Project Planning)
A milestone is the end of a “project stage”:
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- Correspond to completion of a set of activities.
- Reaching a milestone usually involves a report.
- Milestones are not deliverables.
Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart visually represents time allocations for tasks and milestones.
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Risk Management
Risk Management
An example risk management process:
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- Risk identification: list potential risks Estimation risks, organisation risks, people risks, requirements risks, technology risks, tools risks.
- Risk analysis: prioritised list of risks
- Probability of risk: qualitative label assessing the likeliness of something happening; insignificant, low, moderate, high, very high.
- Effect of risk: qualitative label assessing impact; insignificant, tolerable, serious, catastrophic.
- Risk planning: risk avoidance & contingency plans
- Risk acceptance: no action.
- Risk prevention: upfront action to stop risk arising.
- Risk reduction: upfront action to reduce probability / impact of risk.
- Risk transfer: transfer risk to someone else.
- Contingency planning: no upfront action, plan response in case risk arises.
- Risk monitoring: risk assessment