Information Technology - Essay Example

?IT Report Information technology has gained so much popularity in past few years. A number of companies have shifted their operations on internet, which has raised their sale dramatically. Nowadays, it has become a trend to list the website url on company’s profile. With an increase of internet usage, customers prefer to view all required information via internet just on few clicks. These days, nobody likes to visit an office or an organization for general information. People usually prefer to have first hand information about the company, their business, policies, process, contact information via internet, website is the only way to get first hand information on just few clicks. Company’s website contains all information, contact information, profile, careers and other related information for customer’s ease. Some companies display testimonials from customers on their website so that a new consumer can have an idea about their authenticity. Showing companies worth on websites help in attracting customers and bringing new business opportunities. Information technology has changed a business processes, it has given a new edge to companies sale and their income. E-commerce website are playing a vital role in bringing new opportunities in businesses. Business processes have achieved a new form and giving extra advantages to their consumers. Companies can sell their services and products online which helps in boosting their sales and customer can order their required product from home, office or workplace without going out. Company gets additional amount and the customer gets his desired product at home within few business hours. E-commerce websites are the best solution to sell services and products for the betterment of business in shortest time span. All company needs is a strong marketing of their website, a strong promotion of their websites through legal ways. Developing an IT project is not an easy task, it involves a lot of issues both technical and non-technical. It seems a few clicks story but behind the scene, picture is totally different. It involves lots of technicalities, issues and other facts that need to be solved for delivering a bug free online solution. As an IT manager, it’s really hard to manage all things over one platform while being on triple constraint i.e time, cost and quality. Three constraints are really hard to meet that’s the only reason IT projects get failed. As, things are getting better and information technology industry is frequently discovering new edges, projects are started being delivered on time, within budget while maintaining quality. Most of the IT solution providers offer 6 months free maintainance to their customers. These days, companies are preferring having e-commerce solution for their business, the only reason of this change is the growth in IT industry. IT industry applying new technologies, new techniques and has started delivering project on time and within budget. No doubt, still there is a vast room for improvement but industry has grown a lot. When a project starts, the main responsibility is of IT Project manager, he has to deal with all staff, both technical and non- technical, client and the management. He has to satisfy all stakeholders by all means till the project ends. Being an IT project manager it’s really hard to follow all three constraints i.e. time, cost and quality. Triple Constraint Project management is the field of securing, utilizing, and managing resources in order to obtain the successful and on time achievement of specific project objectives and goals. Sometime, it is blended with program management nevertheless technically that is basically a level up construction: a radical of linked and up to some extent connected engineering projects. Project Management is the discipline of managing resources such as scope, time and cost to achieve a desired result. Three constraints are also known as triple constraint. Triple Constraint is the counterbalance of the project’s boundary, schedule (time) and budget. Sometimes, it is also known Demister triangle as one of the corners present the scope, the second represents time and the third one represents cost of a project being handled by the project managers. Triple constraint is widely used to judge whether a project’s goals are being achieved. In the planning phase of an IT project, the executives identify the project scope, time, cost along with the quality of a project (Nokes & Sebastian, 2007). As the time passes, the project managers recognize that there may be few adjustments need to be done in any of the project’s scope, schedule and budget. When these changes occur, remaining factors of the triple constraint seems to be changed as well. For instance, if the budget rises, it is understood to assume that the scope and schedule will be raised as well. The same scenario takes place, if the budget decreases, the scope and schedule will get affected too. It is the responsibility of the project manager to manage the project risk which can be a a possible condition with a good or bad impact on the project (Lewis R. Ireland, 2006). Obenauf’s leather care Obenauf is an e commerce solution provided to the client, Robert Grover,President, COO, & CTO PCS Edventures, Inc.; PCSV.OB The website offers an online purchase and selling of leather products, it has helped a lot in boosting companies sales. Previously company was providing only manual selling. The e commerce solution has given a new edge to the company sales and sales has boosted dramatically within few months. The project was of few months but it required a lot of efforts and the success of this project is the right implementation of project management principles, it has also followed triple constraint (Kerzner, 2003). Project management concepts/ principles help a lot in achieving success. Proper implementation of project management concepts helps a lot in delivering a successful e commerce solution. Project management concepts according to PMBOK(The Project Management Institute Project Management Body of Knowledge) has made Obenauf’s leather care a successful e commerce solution. PMBOK states that the scope of a project should be clearly identified; project boundaries must be identified before the design phase. All features and functions should be clearly identified in the beginning. PMBOK also states that scope should be well defined before quoting the estimate (Hamilton, 2004). It helps a lot in estimating the correct budget; if the scope is well defined then there would be less chances of overestimation or underestimation. Project scope management is described as the sequence needed to ensure that the project involves the entire task required, and only the things required, to finish the project on time and within budget. PMBOK identified few problems that usually occurs with project scope such as requirements are ambiguous, incomplete, collaborative and sometimes client does not know actually what he wants. These issues got resolved by having three meeting with the client Robert Grover, President, COO, & CTO, PCS Adventures, Inc.; PCSV.OB. Website Feature Set Following is a list of features or services provided to Obenauf’s Leather care Design Requirements ? Logo Design Complete website/user interface design build from scratch with unlimited design revisions till client’s 100% satisfaction. ? Functional Requirements ? Content Management system (CMS): we should be able to add/edit/delete pages/menu items from admin panel. ? Product Image Gallery: An option to categorize images, create new galleries and add as many images as we require. ? Guestbook/Testimonials: An interface on website where our clients could write us their comments/testimonials. ? Contact form: Information submitted through contact form will be emailed to us and it will also be saved into our database so that we can login to admin panel and view. ? Newsletter: An interface to our site visitors so that they can subscribe to newsletter, we can manage subscribers and send them newsletters directly from admin panel. ? Other informational pages like about company, company profile, management bios, and services offered etc. ? An Image rotators on home page featuring our products, services or latest offers. Give any example while submitting your proposal. Bonus Incentives Free Offer for Logo. W3C Valid XHTML/CSS. User Manuals and Training Sessions. Submission of site to major search Engines like Google, yahoo, Bing. PMBOK refers some tools and techniques for clarifying the project scope: • Recognize the project need • Highlight key stakeholders • Highlight project drivers • Make operational concepts • Recognize external interfaces. PMBOK highly emphases on project planning, i.e. it should be clearly identified that how the project will move. Client must have a summary that what’s going on with his project, he can check the status of the project anytime. A brief overview or summary must be given to client in beginning of the project. Client must know that in how many phases his project will be completed, how much time will be required to complete one phase (Harrison, Lock ,2004). A brief report must be provided to client in a lay-man language. As per project management principles, a brief report was provided to the client for Obenauf’s e commerce solution. Process Project should be divided into following phases. Design phase: Once you accepted proposal, design phase will start, in this phase we’ll design all graphic elements/screens for site. HTML Conversion: In this phase we’ll convert all designed documents to HTML pages. Development: All dynamic functionality, functional features will be achieved in this phase. A brief overview must also be given to the client that how ,many resources, time and cost will require for each phase. This practice cannot guarantee a 100% successful of an IT project but it will help a lot in completing the project on time and on budget. PMBOK also highlights communication need for the successful completion of any project. Project plans are not helpful unless they've been traversed efficiently among all team members. Every team member requires knowing their tasks and jobs. The project manager sits in his office bordered by heavy paper schedules. The problem occurs when team members does not know their responsibilities, they do not what need to be done on second stage, so it’s really important that every team member must know all his responsibilities and duties. Cost and Schedule Estimating the accurate cost and schedule is really tough for all kinds of projects. However, by following some rules and principles, it can be made easy. Estimation becomes easy when a project scope is well defined and objectives are properly identified. Project scope and boundaries help a lot in estimating the budget and schedule. For obenauf’s team provided a complete cost schedule along with estimation after having a detailed requirements set. Payment Schedule for Total Cost i.e. Competitive rate in dollars consisting of the following break-up:-..$.5, 000/- • Upfront, 30% • Completion of design phase and …30% • Beta version …20% • On project completion. …20% Schedule: what would be your final delivery period for site to make it operative?. It will take 25 days to launch the website. Tools, Technology applied For example Adobe Photoshop, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL. Other Information ? Client shall provide all the company related images/text. ? All product images will be provided by the client. ? How much cost would be for hosting/domain registration fees? Once the project is in process, project manager must track and equate the real work with the planned work done. A project manager will require time to time progress reports from all project stakeholders. A project manager should note down the variance between the real work done and planned budget, time and scope. A project manager should report variations to upper level management and other key stakeholders and try to implement on time corrective actions in order to avoid failures. Stakeholders usually change their objectives about what must be delivered. Sometimes, it happens that the business environment gets changed after the project begins, so considerations built at the start of the project may no longer be alive. This change badly affects the project scope. If a project manager agrees on all new requirements into the project, the project would surely go beyond the budget,time and most probably never be accomplished. By incorporating new changes, the project manager can take decisions about to take new changes into the project or not immediately or in the future, he can also take decision to reject them. This raises the probability of project success as the project manager decides how the new requirements are incorporated; he can use resources as per the requirement and can decide when and how the new requirements are incorporated. Denying new changes are usually a reason of project’s failure. One of the biggest factors that can prevent a project from failure is proper risk management. If the project manager properly tracks the risk, there are a lot of chances of project’s success. Risks are cases which can highly affect the successful result of the project. Risks can be of different types and there can be many sources of risk, few of them are: staff lacking the technical abilities to complete the work, hardware not working properly, having issues in getting right hardware on time, the control room can get affected by flooding and many others. Risks vary from project to project but the top risks to a project must be highlighted as soon as possible. Proper contingency plans must be present to avoid the risk, or, in some cases it happens that the risk cannot be avoided, so there must be some other risk response plan in order to mitigate the risk. PMBOK recognizes as risk management. A project manager does not manage all the risks because there would be a number of risks and not all risks have the high impact. So, categorize all risks, compute the probability of each risk occurring number them as per team’s understanding and calculate its effectiveness on the project, categorize them as low, medium or high. Calculate risk factor by multiplying the category with 2 numbers. High risk factor indicates the risk severity and low risk factor indicates that there is a risk but its impact is not high. Continuously review all the risk and track and implement required risk response as needed. Lacking proper risk management is one of the reasons why projects gets fail. Conclusion Project management practices do not assure 100% success but they increases the chances of success, disregarding these practices will surely lead a project towards failure. Obenauf’s Lether care is working as a successful e commerce website as many f these practices were properly followed during construction. Jong Lang La salle can offer their services via internet which will surely help them in boosting their business; they will surely get more clients and more business through their website. A proper e commerce solution can be attached to their existing website so that a customer can not only view their services but also hire them for his work on just few clicks. Project will surely work well as the team will follow all project management practices and proper implementation of these practices will surely led a project towards success. References Nokes, Sebastian, (2007), The Definitive Guide to Project Management. . 2nd Ed.n. London (Financial Times / Prentice Hall). ISBN 978 0 273 71097 4 Lewis R. Ireland (2006) Project Management. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006. ISBN 0-07-147160-X. p.110. Winston W. Royce (1970). "Managing the Development of Large Software Systems" in: In: Technical Papers of Western Electronic Show and Convention (WesCon) August 25–28, 1970, Los Angeles, USA Harold Kerzner (2003). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (8th Ed. ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-22577-0. Albert Hamilton (2004). Handbook of Project Management Procedures. TTL Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0-7277-3258-7. F. L. Harrison, Dennis Lock (2004). Advanced project management: a structured approach?. Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2004. ISBN 0-566-07822-8. p.34. Obenauf's leather Care, (2010), Obenauf leather, retrived: 5-03-2011:http://obenaufs.com/ Read More