Information System Management - Coursework Example

Project Management A. ment: Project management (PM) daily grows famous in the business world. This trend is hugely attributed to the benefits that the concept introduces once employed in different project contexts. B. Value added to the statement is: 1. Project management provides project managers with an avenue to achieve different business endeavors just by careful planning and organization of the persons and the resources that underlie the project under execution. In essence, it is difficult attaining the objectives of any business endeavor without careful planning and organization. 2. Another benefit of project management is its ability to provide project managers with a chance to manage risks in a project. Basically, every project features numerous risks that need to be management for these reasons; disregarding project risks can lead to loss on the side of the organization pursuing the project in question. Further, unregulated risk taking could harbor destruction alongside other compliance issues. 3. Project management can also serve as a tool to manage the quality of a project outcome. Basically, it makes sense for an organization to produce something it finds valuable. In the case of IT-based projects, project managers manage quality by ensuring that every project phase is in compliance the predefined business specifications or cases alongside ensuring compliance with the federal quality standards. C. Conclusion: Project endeavors need to employ project management techniques in order to avoid project failures, manage risks and manage the team engaging in a project. In so doing, business entities stand higher chances of using projects to achieve overall organizational goals. Business Case A. Statement: A business case is a documentary that justifies a business’ involvement in a given project. Basically, enterprises aspiring to channel funds towards a project need take such action through provision of demonstrable and persuasive business needs. B. Value added to the statement is: 1. A business case is the chief reason behind the existence of a project. In fact, it is the business case that provides a framework for a business justification of the project to be pursued long before the management can approve the project’s existence. 2. Business cases are aimed at: demonstrating the logic behind a given course of action in relation to the prevailing business needs, assuring the top management that a project to be pursued is worthwhile, taking into account the internal and external strategic factors likely to impact the project and assessing, comparing and contrasting the costs along with the benefits that could result from choice of a given line of action in comparison with another. 3. Business cases describe the reason why the business needs the project outcome, an exploration of the alternatives that could lead to the realization of the project outcomes, the benefits associated with the expected project outputs, the risks that underlie each of the possible alternatives plus the investment appraisal, timescale and costs that evaluate the respective costs of the possible solutions. C. Conclusion: Presence of a business case can help the management to assess the feasibility of the project in question while allowing them to make informed financial decisions. Project Charter A. Statement: A project charter is a summary project proposal aimed at securing approval for the goals and terms associated with a project. This document has numerous roles in a project context. B. Value added to the statement is: 1. Typically, a project charter will be a single paged summary document providing eight fundamental elements that govern every phase of the project under execution. 2. The eight elements include project authorization, project goal plus scope, project deliverables, business case, the authority of the project manager, the project’s timeframe, the budget summary and the project sponsor. 3. Project authorization specifies the legal powers to use organizational resources to execute the project. Project goals plus scope specify what the project will and will not do. Project deliverables state the utilities expected to be produced from the accomplishment of the project’s tasks. Business case describes the project feasibility by presenting a cost benefit analysis of the project endeavor. The authority of the project manager details the authorized roles of the person to manage the project. The time frame describes the period within which the project’s product or is to be delivered. The budget summary details the anticipated financial expenditure on the project. Finally, the project sponsor section specifies the sources of funds to sustain the project. C. Conclusion: The project charter gives a framework for governing a project through a series of agreed upon principles in spheres such as staff roles, project scope and project schedule thus helping in attaining harmony whilst the project is under execution. Software Development Life Cycle A. Statement: Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC) refers to properly-defined and structured phases in software engineering projects in order to improve software quality. B. The value added to the statement is: 1. A typical SLDC cycle constitutes of six phases namely requirement analysis, design, coding, testing and implementation, though this could vary based on the model chosen. 2. Requirement analysis involves understanding of the business needs and translating the same to relevant system models. The design phase translates the knowledge elicited during the requirements analysis to system models to represent functionalities relating to the product under construction. Coding involves use of a programming language to transform the design resolutions into runnable program codes. Testing involves verification of whether the developed application functions as per the predefined business specifications. Implementation involves the use of the developed application in a production environment to meet the business needs that informed the project endeavor. Finally, operation and maintenance involves sustenance of systems and revisiting design approaches whenever deemed appropriate. 3. Generally, development of SDLC is founded on given models like waterfall, spiral and iterative models. Though these models depict somewhat contrasting development phases, they are all aimed at providing detailed plans of a means of developing, maintaining, replacing or enhancing a software application. C. Conclusion: A good software project needs a SDLC in order to better manage changes that surface while the project is under execution, allow for specialization of team members based on the respective phases and ultimately provide high-quality software. Measurable Organizational Value A. Statement: Measurable organization value refers to a project’s overall goal and metric for success. In general, actual measure for success lies in the extent to which the end result of the project under execution delivers the business values of the organization pursuing the project. B. The value added to the statement is: 1. IT projects are like other business investments hence the need to base them on MOV. At a primary level, every MOV should implicitly encompass the following; be verifiable and agreed upon among project stakeholders, be capable of providing value to the business enterprise and be measurable. 2. Verifying and agreeing upon a project MOV implies that the stakeholders must agree on the MOV before and after project completion. This is the most challenging perspective of MOV considering that it renders the business side better positioned to exploit the technology side while requiring the technologist to assume the position of being judges of a domain they probably have limited understanding about. 3. Use of MOV to provide value is analogous to the concept of return on investment (ROI) that is common place within business enterprises except that MOV only considers measurable business values following a project’s completion whilst disregarding the cost incurred during its own provisioning. C. Conclusion: Every project decision must be made while considering how it will affect the MOV that pertain to the project under execution. It is through this that an organization becomes better positioned to settle for project endeavors that can help in delivering business values. Triple Constraint A. Statement: Every project is performed under given constraints-conventionally scope, time and cost. The three factors will often behave in a collaborative manner as far as their influence on a project outcome is concerned. It is for this reason that they are always referred to as triple constraint. B. The value added the statement is: 1. A project schedule is a utility that can communicate the tasks that need to be accomplished, the supporting resources plus the timeframe within which the tasks are to be executed. A project manager needs a schedule to set out target dates to complete tasks. 2. A project scope refers to every piece of work that needs to be done in order to create a project deliverable. A project scope could also be treated as the impact of a project’s outcome on the business. Proper scope definition helps ensure that the involved team does not lose focus of the project objectives. 3. A project budget refers to the sum of the financial expenditure allowable on a project. Basically, a project budget revolves around establishing every anticipated project cost early enough followed by development of a realistic budget to meet the identified costs. Underlying the project budgeting process is proper coordination of tasks plus clear identification of deliverables or goals associated with different project phases. C. Conclusion: To succeed, a project manager needs to handle the scope, time and budget constraints as a unified factor considering that they will finally have a bearing on the quality of the product under construction. Work Breakdown Structure A. Statement: A work breakdown structure (WBS) refers to a project management method that deconstructs a project in order to establish the deliverables needed to lead a project to completion. WBS has roots in the difficulty that surrounds estimation of project cost by observing a project in entirety. B. The value added to the statement is: 1. Managers always use WBS at the start of a project in order to define a project scope, to estimate costs and to organize Gantt-related schedules. This move offers project managers with an opportunity to organize and manage different projects. 2. In view of its ability to facilitate task assignments, resource allocation and estimation of different project metrics, WBS turns to be a crucial tool when carrying out project estimates. In particular, WBS helps project managers to identify every piece of task that is detailed by project scope definition then provides a project manager with a foundation to comprehensively plan, control and implement a project. 3. WBS in itself never serves as cost estimation or a scheduling tool; it instead provides a basis to develop these two project management factors. The cost estimation aspect of a project suggests the anticipated financial expenditure of the project under execution whereas the scheduling perspective suggests the anticipated project completion time. C. Conclusion: WBS features numerous advantages which point to the idea that managers who use WBS to breakdown project tasks can better manage project staff, resources and time schedules. References Goldsmith, R. (2004). Discovering Real Business Requirements for Software Project Success. Norwood: Artech House. Khosrow-Pour, M. (2006). Cases on information technology: Lessons learned, volume 7. Hershey: Idea Group. Phillips, J., & Luckey, T. (2013). Software project management for dummies. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons. Project, M. I. (2013). Guide to the project management body of knowledge: Pmbok guide. S.l.: Project Management Inst. Taylor, J. (2008). Project scheduling and cost control: Planning, monitoring and controlling the baseline. Ft. Lauderdale, Fla: J. Ross Pub. Read More