Principles IT Project Management - Term Paper Example

IT Project Management Version 3.0 Document Control Section Role Reviewers Role Approvers Role Table of Content 4 2. Terminology & acronyms: 5 3. Introduction: 6 4. Capability Maturity Models and SDLCs: 6 5. Scope Management: 7 5.1 Principles of Scope Management: 7 5.2 Impact of Scope: 7 5.3 Effective Scope Management: 7 6. Time Management: 8 6.1 Principles of Time Management: 8 6.2 Impact of Time: 8 6.3 Effective Time Management: 8 7. Cost Management: 9 7.1 Principles of Cost Management: 9 7.2 Impact of Cost: 9 7.3 Effective Cost Management: 9 8. Quality Management: 10 8.1 Principles of Quality Management: 10 8.2 Impact of Quality: 10 8.3 Effective Quality Management: 11 9. Risk Management: 11 9.1 Principles of Risk Management: 11 9.2 Impact of Risk: 11 9.3 Tracking Risk: 12 10. Communication Management: 12 10.1 Communication principles: 12 10.2 Communication Impact: 12 10.3 Effective Communication Management: 13 11. References: 14 1. Abstract: IT project management involves certain methodologies to produce technically superior products that meet ever shifting business needs of the industries and demanding stakeholders. IT Projects are short-term development or long-term maintenance efforts to create unique products, services or applications, such as developing Intranet or internet based applications targeted for specific requirements, designing a custom e-commerce site, creating new brand related marketing applications, merging databases or maintaining huge user information by top retail giants. For such projects, use of the appropriate and structured procedures should be adopted with the suitable "technical" delivery process and then tailored to the specific project needs.  All IT projects are constrained by five essential factors: scope, time, cost, quality, risk and communication. For a project to be successful, all these constraints must be in well-balanced equilibrium. If any of the constraints is out of balance, the project in essence could head for disaster. All projects, IT or otherwise, projects follow certain phases depending on the chosen SDLC models among: Agile, Spiral, Waterfall, RAD etc. Each phase contains processes that drive the project from idea, initiation to implementation. Starting with the underlined principles of the mentioned factors, the document shows the impact of them in phases of software life cycle and how effective management strategies can be applied to those areas to ensure timely delivery of quality software in budget through better planning and rigorous testing. 2. Terminology & acronyms: Acronyms and terminology specifically used in this document are described below. # Terminology/ Acronyms Meaning 1 WBS Work Breakdown Structure 2 MNC Multi National Company 3 CMM Capability Maturity Model 4 CMMI Capability Maturity Model Integration 5 SW-CMM Software Capability Maturity Model 6 SDLC Software Development Life Cycle 7 SEI Software Engineering Institute 8 RAD Rapid Application Development 9 GUI Graphical User Interface 10 IT Information Technology 11 Gnatt Gantt chart is a production control chart by Henry L. Gantt 12 PERT Program Evaluation Review Technique 13 VPN Virtual Private Network 14 SDK Software Development Kit 3. Introduction: IT Project management being a sub-set or sub-discipline of Project Management, comprises of the extensive tasks driven towards the successful delivery and maintenance of the software projects. Behind the success of every IT project, the basic criterion involves various techniques, knowledge, available resources, and required expertise for related activities. A comprehensive Project Management Plan is required for effective scope, time, cost, quality, risk and communication management for projects. Individual projects might use specially tailored set of delivery processes with the introduction of different resource role, management structure, custom made tools providing the core process, work products and guidance towards the completion of the projects. It has been extended to align with business processes and integrated with quality standards followed by certain top grade software MNCs or industry at large. Quality control, risk assessment and communication managements must be used since the starting point for project management for they will provide consistency and standardization for delivering projects across industry maintaining certain predefined standards.  4. Capability Maturity Models and SDLCs: To benchmark for measuring the maturity of an organization’s software process, CMM level of standardization has been in use since the 1980s. It defined 5 levels of process maturity based on certain project process areas. Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) has been developed to help industries increase the maturity of their respective processes to improve business performance. Certain improvements areas covered by the model include systems engineering and most essentially software engineering. Reportedly since December 2005, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) began accepting results from SW-CMM-based assessments especially for software-based projects. The basic popular models adopted by many software development firms are driven towards the customer requirements as non user friendly products simply have no place in the market even though they can be engineered using the best technology. The interface and processes of the product is as crucial as the internal technology of the product. Few SDLC models as per today’s market are: Agile model, Rapid Application Development Model, Iterative, Sequential or Waterfall model, Spiral Model, Component Assembly Model etc. Being the essential part of software development, like the SDLC, we need to discuss in detail the five essential factors: scope, time, cost, quality, risk and communication management for they are the key issues for the success or failure of any IT project. These factors have direct impact into the respective SDLC models. 5. Scope Management: There are several different ways to successfully define scope of software projects. In effect, scope of a project is a well-documented contractual agreement on the expected outcome that includes all aspects of deliverables and related assumptions that need to be made. All these assumptions and expected outcomes should be documented and followed to validate the scope. 5.1 Principles of Scope Management: Scope of IT projects consists of two main components. 1. Boundaries: Boundaries are helpful to separate the things that are targeted to your project from those areas that are out of scope. For instance, a SAP based site could be targeted for US users only stating all other countries are out of the scope of the project. 2. Deliverables: Defining deliverables goes a long way toward defining the detailed components of the project. By listing all deliverables, we can define the high-level boundary of the scope. 5.2 Impact of Scope: Requirements describe the details of the deliverable components and related tasks. High-level scope defines the sides of the box and separates what is relevant to your project from that which is irrelevant. Once the IT projects start, however, there might not be change in boundaries and deliverables as most of the scope change requests are on business requirements. The success rate of IT projects depends on the clarity of defined scope. Some project might fail because of unwieldy scope. Any project with a larger scope can usually be better executed by breaking down it down into a series of individual tasks or even smaller projects. For example, in a project to build application handling employee and asset data with images of an organizations historical records, payable and leave transactions from paper to an online digital database that too for inter-organizational environment can be incredibly complex and time consuming as a whole. Multiple smaller project components allowing for more manageable tasks for converting the existing paper records to digital, and then a small project to make the digital data available in inter-organizational environment etc. could be helpful to achieve the larger goal fast. Based on the chosen SDLC model, these smaller projects can be completed sequentially or in rapid manner with more flexibility compared to a large and complicated project work. Also, choosing proper development model is important for the success of the determined scope. For instance, using a Sequential model for developments of software with minimal clarity of scope at time of project initiation might lead the project into disaster for added up cost accompanying the emerged changes and breach in deadlines while Agile or Spiral model could bring out the success through evolved and faster work, prototypes as the scope gains more clarity in the process. 5.3 Effective Scope Management: Finally, for effective scope management, we need project managers who can effectively capture what the end-user wants through listening to customer’s intricate requirement details. Documenting the details and any related change requests are equally important. Strong and timely communication with stakeholders is required for project manager or team responsible for scope management through effective querying and research. It is more like envisioning and planning the look of a house before starting to build it. To drive a project towards success, clear specifications of deliverable are necessary before commencement of the project. 6. Time Management: Time management or project scheduling is the method of planning dates for starting and completing project activities and component milestones. There challenges of scheduling woes cant be surmounted with technology alone as aspects of human habit play vital role here, not to mention the inherently unpredictable nature of software development. 6.1 Principles of Time Management: Time Management is the process of effective planning and recording the time spent by resources on a project or it’s individual components. Time process involves recording the time spent on tasks, using timesheets or tools and helps the manager know which tasks has been worked on, when, for how long, timeline left for completion and percentages of work needed to be accelerated for on time, on demand delivery. 6.2 Impact of Time: Time estimation is essential for overall good project management. For proper scheduling, project can be broken down into a number of sequential or parallel tasks that needs to be performed, the project manager needs to figure out task components, individual task schedule, related resources they require, and the order in which tasks need to be carried out. To avoid deferring decision and procrastination until the last minute, proper time estimation, planning and regular reporting is required for project success. There are number of tools meant for recording the timeline and tracking the same as work progresses. Over the years, software industries have witnessed success or failures for proper or improper time estimation and management. Over or under estimation in time both are equally wrong for projects. There should be space for some buffer in the estimation. Projects which slip back, delivered late, run over budget or fail to meet other requirement specification often cause significant problems in the industry with negative impact on teams, company reputation and managers are held responsible for those kind of disasters. Many planners are put under pressure to deliver projects sooner and more cost-effectively than is realistic. Investors and top project executives rarely question an over-ambitious plan, but they can turn ruthless when any overly ambitious project starts to fail. Exercising realistic vision at the beginning of a project regarding timeline can save any trouble later. 6.3 Effective Time Management: There are a number of scheduling techniques such as Gantt and PERT charts for effective time and dependency management. They also identify a critical path or the sequence of activities that will entail the greatest amount of time. The completion of one to start the other and can be undertaken simultaneously. These diagrams, methodologies list tasks in a project on a timeline with their interdependencies. Also, there are custom-made time planners, Microsoft project plans to help projects keep schedule adherence and effective usage of project and resource time. 7. Cost Management: Cost Management being a crucial factors for project initiation and success, includes certain processes required to ensure that the project get completed within the approved budget. It is one of the fundamental and yet most challenging tasks for any project. It can provide a control method to balance between internal and market pressures under certain conditions. 7.1 Principles of Cost Management: The basic of cost management principles every software executive must know. Cost models can follow major processes: Relating Resource—Identifying resource related costs. Estimating—Estimating the total costs of the resources to complete project activities. Cost Budgeting—Allocating the cost estimates to individual components. Cost Control—Controlling major or minor changes to the project budget. 7.2 Impact of Cost: Cost management being a mean for financial estimate, helps consumers and managers determine direct and indirect costs related to a software product or IT system. This incorporates beyond the initial purchase price or implementation cost to consider the full cost of an asset over its useful life. A project manager should plan for a smooth implementation of a project with efficient cost estimates to be presented before the stakeholders for approval and project initiation thereof. Estimating cost is the process of forecasting a future result in terms of cost, based upon information available at the time of project planning, also part of the management team’s responsibility involves maintaining cost as per project plan. Any change in the design, requirement or resource availability or software platform might impact cost to certain extent. Therefore, it is important to create an accurate and realistic estimate keeping all the constraints into account. For some reason, it has been seen that most project managers are fairly good in estimating for development projects or new product features, but could be terrible at estimating the effort required to support a running product. As a result, maintenance projects are inadequately staffed and supporting vendors cant respond to customer requests in a timely manner. 7.3 Effective Cost Management: Project cost is the amount, which is actually charged through project cost code, can consists of resource costs taken from weekly timesheets or other tools, as well as items bought i.e. hardware, software purchase, installation cost, logistics related cost etc. Effective cost management tends to comprise of methodologies needed to scrutinize project cost each week or certain time interval. Several planners and tools are available for cost planning and maintenance through various phases of software lifecycles. 8. Quality Management: Quality is the keyword of every IT or non-IT products which can be achieved or maintained through rigorous planning, testing and improvements. The quality includes defining requirement guidelines of the project and measuring whether the project result has ensured compliance with the same. 8.1 Principles of Quality Management: Basics of quality: 1. Quality Planning: The process of identifying the quality standards relevant to the project and determining ways to satisfy them. Various methodologies include plans, operational definitions, checklists etc. 2. Quality Assurance: The process of rating the overall project performance in regular intervals in a manner to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards. 3. Quality Control: The process of monitoring project outcomes to determine whether they comply with defined standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance. The process can suggest further improvement, rework or process adjustment. 8.2 Impact of Quality: The success of every project depends on consistent processes, outcomes and results at per standardization. It has become essential for an organization not only to complete a project within budget and timelines, but also to produce quality software that adheres to defined standards. Software organizations have adopted tools, methodologies and coding standards for checking the product every step of the way to avoid any last minute disaster. For IT projects, the project manager will have the final responsibility for the quality maintenance of the project. Responsibilities for quality should be agreed among team and stakeholders and communicated to all participants. The developers, testers play vital roles in delivering good results by sticking to stringent guidelines in development and doing post-development thorough testing. For example, certain top-grade organizations use custom made tools for checking coding syntax, indentations, comments, notes and other intricate details side by side the overall performance check of the products. Developing a quality product is guaranteed to generate greater value and better customer satisfaction. For some projects even right level of quality would be more important than getting things done fast. In larger projects there may separate quality manager and quality assurance, maintenance teams other than leads and service delivery managers. In some environments, quality functions may be performed by independent reviewers from outside the project team. Checking appropriate quality guidelines is extremely important so that developers can avoid making applications or websites following wrong or next to nothing quality specification, as a result the product fails in the testing phase and team needs to head back to the design board affecting cost and timeline of the project. 8.3 Effective Quality Management: Quality management is a critical phase in Software Development Life Cycle achieved through system testing or conformance testing. The developed software must be evaluated and tested to ensure its conformance with the specifications through standard or customized tool. The IT project outcomes go through multiple stages of testing and evaluations for the conformance to the customer’s business requirements. 9. Risk Management: Risk management is the assessment and prioritization of factors controlling the effect of uncertainty on objectives of IT projects and the capability to build action or backup plans to address project weaknesses. 9.1 Principles of Risk Management: Risk management does assessments of related risks to fit the type of proposal or project making prioritized list of risks by severity levels. The action plans recommend containment actions to help mitigate the identified risks. To effectively manage the factors that are likely to be detrimental to a project, there are tools to help identify the risk levels. Depending on the SDLC used in the IT project, the impacts could be identified for different phases of development model. Experienced IT project managers understand that the sooner the potential project landmines are identified, the easier it will be to lessen their impact or avoid them. 9.2 Impact of Risk: The risks could be divided into certain categories depending on the project. Effective risk management is vital to the success of any software project. In a survey among software companies across the globe, a list of better management practices has been found to complete formal and critical assessment of benefits, risks, and viability of projects prior to contractual agreements. In the comparison of management practices across Europe, African countries, Hong Kong, USA, China etc. the adoption rate for formal risk assessment measures has been found complying to the success or failure results proving the high dependency of risk management in any software project. Among many factors like external dependencies of software projects, proper planning & schedule adherence, business case defining the project requirements, technical aspects and skilled resource availability each risk factor includes calculations for measuring the prospective percentage of success of certain projects. Last year, in a unique case examination of the Canada based railways website system problems resulting downtime in unforeseen pick usage hours and loss of million dollar business was simply because of improper analysis of impact of the server maintenance timeline. We can consider another case of using wrong SDLC model unfit for requirement type and delivery date. Using Waterfall model of SDLC in developing software with unclear requirement analysis or introduction of new technology could drive the project towards disaster. For such cases, Spiral or RAD model would be better suitable with evolving models as more specific requirements and information come in. Thus, considering all the underlined factors, management needs to decide on whether and to what extent risk should be taken into account. 9.3 Tracking Risk: Lessons learned from thousands of IT projects, today’s industries have developed stringent policies to measure risk factors that can help create risk assessments and provide best practices, mitigation suggestions for individual process risks or in management plans at large. Many industries use custom designed methodologies to provide thorough risk assessments while minimizing the time it takes to use by eliminating the need to key-in risk statements and containment actions. Microsoft Project Plans, Gantt diagrams etc could be useful in the related procedure. 10. Communication Management: Project Communications Management area maintains critical link between resources, managers, stakeholders, ideas, technical aspects and information updates at all stages in the project life cycle. Any good Project Manager is expected to spend bigger percentage of the time in communication. 10.1 Communication principles: As per industry standard, communications management could comprise of planning effective communication needs etc, proper distribution of needed information available in a timely manner among related people, the process of gathering and distributing project performance updates including status reporting, progress measurement, forecasting risk factors and communicating stakeholders with proper information and updates. These processes deal with customer satisfaction and resolving any issues raised by the project stakeholders. 10.2 Communication Impact: The success of projects depends on effective, accurate, and timely communications for it provides a methodology for successfully implementing project strategies and prior analysis of risk factors. For troubled projects, many times, people feel that if the communication had been better, the project would have run much more smoother. For instance, in a case of technical difficulty or resource crunch situation of certain project, if not communicated properly and before deadline, there could be serious problem and breach of contract between organization and clients. Communication not only keeps everyone up-to-date about the project work, but also facilitates major project decisions and milestones. To avoid such breach, project managers must be in constant communication to ensure the success of a project with details including goals, needs, resource related expectations, status reports, budgets etc. and any emerging new requirement needs to be communicated to all the concerned major stakeholders. Another challenge is that software projects often include inter-organizational team members and customers. Working from different geographic locations definitely makes it difficult to work at pace with each other, also, parts of certain software could be developed or maintained by different teams or even organizations. Unique delivery methods and communication devices like remote desktop sharing method, VPN channeling or inter-organization based messaging system needs to be utilized to overcome this challenge. 10.3 Effective Communication Management: As industries understand the value of communication management in software projects, many project managers place communicating proactively on the top of their priority list. To keep up regular communication between all hands of project, some organizations use custom made status tracking and auto notification services that keep balance between ongoing jobs, proper escalation matrix and send alerts as specific jobs or fragment of it approaches deadlines. Also, the project manager needs to be clearly communicative with the team about the scope expectations, timeline, cost constraints and related risk factors to avoid ineffective result leading to disaster. In today’s ever changing market trend and requirement for higher quality software products, Six Sigma method has been introduced as a standard for quality maintenance through statistical methods. It extends professional project management and makes important contributions to successful business outcomes. 11. References: Wikipedia. (2011) Project management [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management (accessed 01/12/2011) Ambysoft. (2011) 2011 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results [Online] Available from: http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2011.html#Figure1 (accessed 30/11/2011) PROJECTSMART. (2011) Scheduling [Online] Available from: http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/scheduling.html (accessed 01/12/2011) Stephen R. Toney. (1998) Risk Factors in Technology Projects [Online] Available from: http://www.systemsplanning.com/6factors.asp(accessed 02/12/2011) MindTools. (2011) Estimating Time Accurately [Online] Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_01.htm (accessed 01/12/2011) Wikipedia. (2011) Six Sigma [Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma (accessed 01/12/2011) Read More