Introduction

1. Introduction • The chapter will address the following questions: • What is a a project and why do you need project management? • What is project management and what are the consequences of mismanagement? • What is the difference between project and process management? • How do you develop or modify a work breakdown structure for a project? • How do you read Gantt charts as a model of project activities, schedules, and progress? • How do you read PERT charts as a model of project activities, schedules, and progress? • What is a typical software approach to project modeling and management?

2. What is Project Management? • Introduction • A definition for project: • “A project is a sequence of unique, complex, and connected activities having one goal or purpose and that must be completed by specific time, within budget, and according to specification.” Wysocki, Beck, and Crane • As applied to information systems, note the following: • A system development methodology, such as FAST, defines a sequence of activities, mandatory and optional. • Every system development project is unique; that is, it is different from every system development project which preceded it. • The activities that comprise systems development are relatively complex.

3. What is Project Management? • Introduction • As applied to information systems, note the following: (continued) • While some tasks may overlap, many tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks. • The development of an information system represents a goal. • Although many information system development projects do not have absolute deadlines or specified times (there are exceptions), they are notoriously completed later than originally projected. • Few information systems are completed within budget. • Information system must satisfy the business, user, and management expectations and specifications.

4. What is Project Management? • Introduction • For any systems development project, effective project management is necessary to ensure that the project meets the deadline, is developed within an acceptable budget, and fulfills expectations and specifications. • Project management is the process of defining, planning, directing, monitoring, and controlling the development of an acceptable system at a minimum cost within a specified time frame.

5. What is Project Management? • Introduction • Different organizations take different approaches to project management. • One approach is to appoint a project manager from the ranks of the team (once it has been formed). • This approach is a result of the self-directed team paradigm. • But many organizations have found that successful project managers apply a unique body of knowledge and skills that must be learned. • These organizations tend to hire and/or develop professional project managers who are assigned to one or more projects at any given time.

6. What is Project Management? • Project Management Causes of Failed Projects • Failures and limited successes far outnumber successful information systems. Why? • Many systems analysts and information technologists are unfamiliar with or undisciplined in the tools and techniques of systems analysis and design. • Many projects suffer from poor leadership and management. • Project mismanagement can sabotage the best application of the systems analysis and design methods.

7. What is Project Management? • Project Management Causes of Failed Projects • One of the most common causes of project failure is taking shortcuts through or around the methodology. • Project teams often take shortcuts for one or more of the following reasons: • The project gets behind schedule and the team wants to ‘catch up.’ • The project is over budget and the team wants to make up costs by skipping methodology steps. • The team is not trained or skilled in some of the methodologies activities and requirements, so they skip them.

8. What is Project Management? • Project Management Causes of Failed Projects • Another common cause of project failures is poor expectations management. • All users and managers have expectations of the project. • Over time, these expectations change and takes the form of scope creep. • Scope creep is the unexpected growth of user expectations and business requirements for an information system as the project progresses. • Unfortunately, the schedule and budget are rarely modified at the same time. • The project manager is ultimately held accountable for the inevitable and unavoidable schedule and budget overruns. • The users' expectations of schedule and budget did not change as the scope changed.

9. What is Project Management? • Project Management Causes of Failed Projects • A similar problem is caused by feature creep. • Feature creep is the uncontrolled addition of technical features to a system under development without regards to schedule and budget. • Each unplanned feature, however impressive, adds time and costs to the overall schedule. • Cost overrun problems: • Many methodologies or project plans call for an unreasonably precise estimate of costs before the project begins. • Poor estimating techniques. • Schedule delays.

10. What is Project Management? • Project Management Causes of Failed Projects • Poor people management can also cause projects to fail. • Another cause of project failure is that the business is in a constant state of change. • If the project’s importance changes, or if the management and business reorganizes, all projects should be reassessed for compatibility with changes, and importance to the business.

11. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • These functions include planning, staffing, organizing, scheduling, directing, and controlling. • Scoping the Project: • At a minimum, a complete project definition should include the following: • A project champion and executive sponsor. • A brief statement the problem or opportunity to be addressed by the project. • The project goal. • The project objectives. • Project assumptions and constraints. • Failure to achieve consensus on the above dooms a project before it starts.

12. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • Planning Project Tasks and Staffing the Project Team: • A good manager always has a plan. • Each task required to complete the project must be planned. • The following are other planning issues. • How much time will be required? • How many people will be needed? • How much will the task cost? • What tasks must be completed before other tasks are started? • Can some of the tasks overlap?

13. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • Planning Project Tasks and Staffing the Project Team: • The project manager should carefully consider the business and technical expertise that may be needed to successfully finish the project. • The key is to match the personnel to the required tasks that have been identified as part of project planning.

14. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • Organizing and Scheduling the Project Effort: • Members of the project team should understand their own individual roles and responsibilities as well as their reporting relationship to the project manager. • The project schedule should be developed with an understanding of task time requirements, personnel assignments, and inter-task dependencies. • Many projects present a deadline or requested delivery date. • The project manager must determine whether a workable schedule can be built around such deadlines. • If not, the deadlines must be delayed or the project scope must be trimmed.

15. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • Directing and Controlling the Project: • Once the project has begun, the project manager becomes a supervisor. • As a supervisor, the project manager directs the team's activities and evaluates progress. • Every project manager must demonstrate such people management skills as motivating, rewarding, advising, coordinating, delegating, and appraising team members.

16. What is Project Management? • The Basic Functions of the Project Manager • Directing and Controlling the Project: • Perhaps the manager's most difficult and important function is controlling the project. • The project manager's job is to monitor tasks, schedules, costs, and expectations in order to control those elements. • The project manager must be able to present the alternatives and their implications for the budget and schedule in order to manage expectations.

17. What is Project Management? • Project Management Software • Today, project management software is routinely used to help project managers plan projects, develop schedules, develop budgets, monitor progress and costs, generate management reports, and affect change. • This software greatly simplify the preparation of the project management models such as Gantt and PERT charts. • The models and techniques would be difficult to apply without software assistance.

20. Process Management • Introduction • Information system development and maintenance are business processes — very complex business processes. • Like most business processes, information system development processes must be managed. • Process management is a prerequisite to systems development project management. • Process management is the planning, selection, deployment, and consistent application of standard system development methods, tools, techniques, and technologies to all information system projects. • For most information system organizations, process management is built around a system development methodology.

21. Process Management • Management of the Methodology • Once a methodology has been selected (or developed), it must be implemented. • This can be an enormous undertaking that requires the following: • Establishing visibility for the methodology by educating all developers, managers, and technical support staff in the basic development process, tools, and techniques to be used. • Providing just-in-time detailed training to development teams as each team begins its first project. • Providing consultation to project teams as they apply the methodology. • Improving the methodology.

22. Process Management • Management of the Methodology • Methodologies are notorious for becoming ‘shelfware’, that is, not used at all. • Methodology management is the key to avoiding the following common consequences. • No consistency in the processes used to develop systems — even successes cannot be reliably repeated. • No flexibility in the process used to develop systems — project teams are unable to adapt the methodology to new or unique situations. • Failure to follow the methodology — either because management doesn’t expect it, or project managers inappropriately skip or accelerate activities in response to schedule or budget problems.

23. Process Management • Management of System Development Technology • Development technology must be carefully evaluated and selected based on the technology architecture and vision of the business, and compatibility with (or adaptability to) the chosen methodology. • Once a technology has been chosen, developers must be trained in its correct use. • The most effective training occurs just-in-time (JIT) for the project team.

24. Process Management • Total Quality Management • A development process (methodology) does not ensure quality. • Quality must be managed and quality management begins with establishing quality standards. • Internal standards applicable to system development may include the following: • Standards for project deliverables such as reports and documentation. • Modeling techniques and standards. • Naming standards for models, objects, programs, databases, etc. • Quality checkpoints, deliverables, and signoffs at various stages of the projects.

25. Process Management • Total Quality Management • Internal standards applicable to system development may include the following: (continued) • Technology standards such as approved graphical user interface components and placement. • Testing procedures and tolerances. • Acceptance criteria for system implementation.

26. Process Management • Metrics and Measurement • This is a relatively new dimension of process management. • According to the SEI Capability Maturity Model sophisticated development organizations measure their productivity and quality with formal metrics, and adjust the development process to affect continuous improvement. • System and software metrics is a relatively new, and rapidly changing discipline. • The interest in that discipline is being increasingly driven by upper management’s desire to improve the accountability of developers and the entire information system unit to the overall organization.

27. Process Management • The Development Center • The ultimate process management infrastructure is a development center. • A development center is a central group of information system development consultants and managers who plan, implement, and support all aspects of process management including, methodology, technology, quality, and measurement. • Development Center staff does not develop information systems. • They provide consulting services to those who do develop information systems (including systems analysts and programmers).

28. Director of Systems Development Information Center Manager Development Center Manager Development Team Manager Development Team Manager Methodology Coordinator CASE Tools Analyst(s) Quality Analyst Measurement Analyst(s) Central Repository Data Administrator Methodology Steering Committee Internal CASE Tool User Groups Central Repository Database Analyst(s) Development Standards Committee Project Quality Referees

29. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • The Gantt chart was first conceived by Henry L. Gantt in 1917. • It is the most commonly used project scheduling and progress evaluation tool in use. • A Gantt chart is a simple horizontal bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar. Each bar represents a named project task. The tasks are listed vertically in the left-hand column. On a Gantt chart, the horizontal axis is a calendar timeline.

30. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Forward and Reverse Scheduling: • Initially, you must determine the scheduling strategy to be used. • There are two basic scheduling approaches supported by most project management software tools. • Forward scheduling establishes a project start-date and then schedules forward from that date. Based on the planned duration of required tasks, and the allocation of resources to complete those tasks, a projected project completion date is calculated. • Reverse scheduling establishes a project deadline and then schedules backward from that date. Essentially, tasks, their duration, and resources must be chosen to ensure that the project can be completed by the deadline.

31. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Calendars: • Every business operates on a calendar. • In project management software a base calendar can be established to identify the work week (e.g., Monday through Friday), work day (e.g., 8 AM -Noon; 1 PM - 5 PM), and holidays and conflict days. • After the project team has been identified, personal calendars can also be established to block out individual vacations and commitments.

32. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Work Breakdown Structures: • Most projects can be defined by a hierarchical breakdown of the required work. • A work breakdown structure is a hierarchical decomposition of the project into phases, activities, and tasks. • Those work units which are broken down into more detailed work units are called summary tasks. • They are not scheduled, per se. • The duration of summary tasks will be automatically be calculated based on the duration of those tasks that will not be broken down into more granular work units. • These are called primitive tasks.

33. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Work Breakdown Structures: • Another type of entry in a work breakdown structure is a milestone. • Milestones are events that signify major accomplishments or events during a project. • Milestones do not represent actual work, per se.

34. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Effort and Duration: • For each primitive task, the duration needs to be estimated. • This will determine the length of the bars in the Gantt Chart. • Sample estimating technique: • Estimate the minimum amount of time it would take to perform the task - called the optimistic time (OT). • The optimistic time estimate assumes that even the most likely interruptions or delays — such as occasional employee illnesses — will not happen. • Estimate the maximum amount of time it would take to perform the task - called the pessimistic time (PT). • The pessimistic time estimate assumes that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

35. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Effort and Duration: • Sample estimating technique: (continued) • Calculate the most likely time (MLT) that will be needed to perform the task. • Don't take the median of the optimistic and pessimistic times. • Attempt to identify interruptions or delays that are likely to occur, such as occasional employee illnesses, inexperienced personnel, and occasional training. • Calculate the expected duration (ED) as follows: ED = OT + (4 x MLT) + PT 6 • This formula provides a weighted average of the various estimates.

36. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Predecessors and Constraints: • The start of any given task may be dependent on the start or completion of another previous task. • Additionally, the completion of a task is frequently dependent on the completion of a prior task. • Milestones almost always have several predecessors that signify those tasks that must be completed before you can say that the milestone has been achieved.

37. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Critical Path and Slack Resources: • The critical path is a sequence of dependent project tasks that have the largest sum of estimated durations. • It is the path that has no slack time built in. • If any of these tasks fall behind schedule, the project’s completion date will be delayed. • The slack time available for any task is equal to the difference between the earliest and latest completion times. • Tasks that have slack time can get behind schedule by an amount less than or equal to that slack time without having any impact on the project’s final completion date. • Understanding the critical path and slack resources in a project are indispensable to the project manager.

38. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Resource Assignment and Management: • Resources are people, material, and tools that you assign to the completion of a task. • Resources may be constrained by the following: • Resources available to the project manager. • Competition with other managers and project for a resource’s time. • Calendars of resources. • Costs can be assigned to resources to assist in budgeting the project. • If actual time spent on tasks is also recorded, budgets can be compared to actual expenses.

39. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Using Gantt Charts to Evaluate Progress: • One of the project manager's frequent responsibilities is to report project progress to superiors. • Gantt charts frequently find their way into progress reports because they can conveniently compare the original schedule with actual performance. • If a task has been completed, the bar corresponding to that task is completely shaded. • If a task is partially completed, the bar corresponding to that task is partially shaded. • The percentage of the bar that is shaded should correspond to the percentage of the task completed.

40. Project Management Tools and Techniques • Gantt Charts • Using Gantt Charts to Evaluate Progress: • Gantt charts frequently find their way into progress reports because they can conveniently compare the original schedule with actual performance. (continued) • Unshaded bars represent tasks that have not begun. • A bold vertical line that is perpendicular to the horizontal axis and that intersects the current date assists in evaluating project progress.

41. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • PERT stands for Project Evaluation and Review Technique. • Was developed in the late 1950s to plan and control large weapons development projects for the U.S. Navy. • It was developed to make clear the interdependence of project tasks when projects are being scheduled. • PERT is a graphic networking technique.

42. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • PERT Definitions and Symbols: • Like Gantt Charts, PERT charts projects are organized in terms of tasks and milestones. • A variety of symbols — circles, squares, and the like — have been used to depict tasks and milestones on PERT charts.

43. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • The Critical Path in a PERT Network: • The critical path is a sequence of dependent project tasks that have the largest sum of estimated durations. • Each task appearing on the critical path is referred to as a critical task. • Critical tasks must be monitored closely by the project manager because any delays in those tasks will delay the entire project.

44. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • The Critical Path in a PERT Network: • Critical path example: Path 1: A(3) B(2) C(2) D(7) H(5) Path 2: A(3) B(2) C(2) E(6) H(5) Path 3: A(3) B(2) C(2) F(3) H(5) Path 4: A(3) B(2) C(2) G(2) H(5) • The total expected duration time for a path is equivalent to the sum of the expected duration times for each task in the path. Path 1: 3 + 2 + 2 + 7 + 0 + 5 = 19 Path 2: 3 + 2 + 2 + 6 + 0 + 5 = 18 Path 3: 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 0 + 5 = 15 Path 4: 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 5 = 14 • Path 1 is the critical path. It indicates that the expected time for completing the programming project is 19 days.

45. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • Using PERT for Planning and Control: • The primary uses and advantages of the PERT chart lie in its ability to assist in the planning and controlling of projects. • In planning, the PERT chart aids in determining the estimated time required to complete a given project, in deriving actual project dates, and in allocating resources. • As a control tool, the PERT chart helps the manager identify current and potential problems. • Particular attention should be paid to the critical path of a project. • When a project manager identifies a critical task that is running behind schedule and that is in danger of upsetting the entire project schedule, alternative courses of action are examined.

46. Project Management Tools and Techniques • PERT Charts • PERT versus Gantt Charting: • PERT is usually recommended for larger projects with high intertask dependency. • Gantt is recommended for simpler projects. • PERT and Gantt charts can be used in a complementary manner to plan, schedule, evaluate, and control systems development projects. • Most information systems project managers seem to prefer Gantt charts because of their simplicity and ability to show the schedule of a project.

47. Expectations Management • The Expectations Management Matrix • Every project has goals and constraints when it comes to cost, schedule, scope, and quality. • Often you must strike a balance that is both feasible and acceptable to management. • That is the purpose of the expectations management matrix. • An expectations management matrix is a rule-driven tool for helping management appreciate the dynamics of changing project parameters. The parameters include cost, schedule, scope, and quality.

48. Expectations Management • The Expectations Management Matrix • The basic matrix consists of three rows and three columns (plus headings). • The rows correspond to the measures of success in any project: cost, schedule, and scope and/or quality. • The columns correspond to priorities: first, second, and third. • For purposes of establishing expectations, we assign names to the priorities as follows: • Maximize or minimize -- The most important of the three measures in a given project. • Constrain -- The second most important of the three measures in a project. • Accept -- The least important of the three measures in a project.

49. Expectations Management • The Expectations Management Matrix • The management expectations matrix helps (forces) management to understand this through three simple rules: • For any project, you must record three Xs within the nine available cells. • No row may contain more than one X. In other words, a single measure of success must have one and only one priority. • No column may contain more than one X. In other words, there must be a first, second, and third priority.