Project Management Methodology-Bankstown Methane Company - Case Study Example

Project Management Methodology Name: Institution: Course Title: Tutor: Date: Bankstown Methane Company Project Plan for Setting up sheep methane production software calculator Date of Issue Project Manager/ Student Name Project Brief 1. Purpose For companies to stay afloat, they have to engage in continuous improvement. One way to engage in this is through innovation.1 Information system offers a company a competitive advantage over its competitors by helping in decision making. Bankstown Methane Company has decided to engage experts in developing system that can help them match production and demand. The application to be developed is to run on a lab computer or other system that is capable of accessing a complete set of raw data files. This would allow the user to specify a set of data files and then perform all required calculations, removing the need to import data into excel and manually perform the computation. The results of the computations will be then displayed to the user and written to a user specified file. The application will be written in Java. 2. Derivations The scope entails building an application that is able to run on a lab computer or a system that is capable of accessing a complete set of raw data files. This would allow the user to specify a set of data files and then perform all required calculations, removing the need to import data into excel and manually perform the computation. The results of the computations will be then displayed to the user and written to a user specified file. The application will be written in Java. In to order to attain the specified aim, the developers will lay down some of the objectives and functions that would act as parameters towards that position. The objective of investing in this project is to be able to develop a system that would be able to calculate the total production in 24 hour period in relation to total product demand when provided with a set of data file and write it to a specified comma separated value file. 3. Quality Criteria In a normal day to day life of business/ organisation, there are operations/ functional activities which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent that are aimed at producing goods and services. Apart from the above, organisations/ businesses usually engages in projects defined in certain programmes so as to bring beneficial change and added value as a means towards continual improvement.2 Project management is a field that involves planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to achieve a particular goal that was articulated from the onset. For clear realization of these under the constraints of time, resource and scope, a qualified project manger is required. A project manager has to have full responsibility and authority in order to complete the project. One critical tool that is available for project manger while undertaking various projects is the project plan. This tool acts as guideline of directing series of interrelated activities in a sequential manner. This article is geared towards developing project plan for setting up a sheep methane production software calculator. This plan adopts process based management approach of event chain methodology, projects in controlled environment 2 (PRINCE 2). 4. Tailoring Software development is a long and expensive process that requires proper planning in terms of time schedule and cost budgeting in advance. This greatly helps in determining the level of success in terms of following guidelines, resource allocation and sourcing of technicians.3&4 This project is geared towards ensuring continuous improvement through production accountability. Therefore, the project will be controlled by a project manager and quality assurance team in each phase and system life development cycle. The project manager will determine mistakes on project before implementation. After developing team correct mistakes, documents are delivered as a new version. 5. Project definitions Background In generic view, human beings are faced with numerous options for utilizing their scarce resources and so are the project managers. The success of a project and organizational performance is greatly predetermined by what appropriate choices are made. Choices to be made during the project lifetime includes whether to outsource or not, identifying the supplier, the number of staffs and the allocation of resource. In addition, the core aim of any organization is to be a market leader in their respective field of operation through delivery of high quality product and services. This desire for market leadership can only be achieved through continual improvement (Sohal et al., 16). As one of the approaches towards matching production of methane gas and the demand in the context of just in time production, the company decided to outsource for the development of sheep methane production software production.5 Project objectives The principle objective of the project is to develop an application that would automatically perform the necessary calculations upon being provided by raw data files instead of the initial manual methods. This would help in reconciling the demand and production process. Desired outcomes In order to meet the core aim of embracing just in time production and objective of reconciling production and demand the system to be developed is expected to meet two criteria. The first criterion is to develop the system that would be able to calculate the total methane emitted in 24 hour period when provided with a set of data file and write it to a specified comma separated value file. The system would be able to specify how long a sheep was within a respiration chamber by specifying total experimental time. This would allow the calculation of methane emitted on an hourly basis. Determination of food consumption on an hourly basis and write it to a file as an avenue of comparison purposes. In addition to the above, the system would be able to display food consumption data, display food –methane table so as to show comparison between food consumed and methane produced. The second would be to determine additional respiration chamber support, display, historical data record that would allow retrieval of previous results. Further, the application would be able to specify arithmetic operations to be performed on data sets compare data sets graphically and output them into a graph file, allowing of semi-automatic importation by remembering folders where data files were previously imported and look for new ones through import wizard. Lastly, the system would play a function of being able to annotate data sets so as to accompany recently imported and historic experiments. Constraints and assumptions The team assumes that there are numerous challenges in the process of building software. Contemporary software developers encounter complex and dynamic challenges in the process of software development. The challenges are not only technical but also conflicting due to a wide variety of stake holders. Apart from these conflicting stand points, software development remains formidable challenges as software are now developed for novel applications. This translates to developers having limited experience and incomplete information about the trajectory and undertakings.6 The expected constraint relates to modelling. Modelling is a critical requirement during software development process. It is important in the event of performance evaluation, system validation and provision of prediction and comparison of alternative design. The above process can be achieved through representation and analysis of the program system dynamic tied on performance model to provide a feedback.7 Project tolerances Name Value in AUD ETC (person hours) VER ($/person hours) Rank Calculate total methane emitted in 24 hour period $15 40 0.38 8 Specify total experimental time $15 12 1.25 2 Calculate methane emitted on an hourly basis $8 10 0.8 4 Determine food consumed on hourly basis $8 6 1.33 1 Compare data sets graphically $1 30 0.03 15 Semi-automatic importation of new data files $15 30 0.5 6 Annotate data sets $5 10 0.5 6 Display computation results in a website $0 0 NA 0 Table 1. Project tolerances 6. Business Case Bankstown Methane Company deals with methane production and distribution to its clients. The company has a sheep farm that acts as a source of the raw material required for further production. Over the recent years the company has had a great challenge to match up its production and demand. With the last board meeting, the company decided to embrace the concept of just in time production so as to match the demand and supply. This kind of approach will lead to creation of value for both the consumer and the company. In order to attain this, the company decided to invest through outsourcing for a developer who will build a system that can calculate methane production automatically. The purpose of this project is to create sheep methane production software calculator. The project involves writing a tool to automate the processing of data for an experiment by taking input files, running calculations on them, and then outputting the history to a CSV file and display the data. In order to achieve this, the system developers will use tools and languages such as Java with Net beans, Maven, a database called H2 and an ORM called Active JDBC, github for source control and issue tracking, Base camp for communication to complete the project. 7. Project Product Predictions The users of the system will be the members of the research group. Given the highly specialised nature of the experiment, it is expected that users will require specialised training to master the experimental setup including the hardware and software (including the system being developed) being used. However, these users will not necessarily have computer science backgrounds. As a guide, it is expected that users will be able to use the core functionality of the system (specifying data files and writing computation results to a file) and be comfortable accessing remaining features (possibly with reference to a user manual) after one hour of training. This requirement is likely to be difficult to verify given the timeline of the project, but usability issues will be addressed by showing the client and users iterative prototypes of the interface as it is being developed to ensure they are comfortable using the final version. 8. Project Approach The contracted company will venture into the program development foray starting from the month of August. The group will venture in the process by first devising plans and making schedules for delivering and executing the work in phases. The team will be formulated by 6 Members, one of them allocated to be a leader. The group will further be divided into 3 smaller teams. The teams respectively will be: design team: 3 members, coding team: 2 members, documentation: 1 member. In order to ensure control of the progress, weekly meetings will be conducted. In addition, by each week assessment will be done on what needs to be improved on and changing direction if required. The table below provides the project schedule with distinctive phases of execution, milestones drawn by the group and workload division among team members. To run the application, the user should double clicks on the application file to start it and goes to import data. The application will remember the location of the data files user accessed the last time she/he ran the program and as the new data files are in the same location, user can quickly select the files she/he wants to process. User clicks the button to run the calculations, specifies how long each sheep was in each respiration chamber and then the methane produced by each of the 4 sheep is displayed. User then displays a table of the methane produced by one of the current batch of sheep on an hourly basis. Satisfied with her/his examination of the data, she/he specifies that it should be output to a CSV file. This can be done quickly, as the system remembers the location of the last output report that she saved. She then closes the application. To run the application without network access user downloads the data files from the temperature and pressure loggers onto the old laptop, which still has a serial port with which to access this hardware. User copies the data produced to a USB key, then shuts down this laptop. She/he then access the computer for recording sheep feed volumes and copies the feed data file to her USB key. Finally, user accesses the GC computer. She/he copies the data files from the other two computers onto this computer’s hard drive and runs the application. User then runs various calculations on the data files as in the previous two scenarios. Finally, she/he has the application copy its calculation report (in CSV format) onto her/his USB key. Finished, she/he shuts down the GC computer and takes the USB key to her office to analyse the data. Week starting Project phases Project milestones 1st august (1) Group allocation Project allocation 8th August (2) First group meeting Client meeting 1 Research technologies 15th August (3) Draft requirements Mentor meeting 1 22nd August (4) Requirement analysis document Deliverable A 29th August (5) Research preliminary design 5th September (6) Draft project plan Finish system design System design Draft acceptance test Begin implementation Mentor meeting 2 12th September (7) Client discussion regarding project plan Deliverable B Project plan Project plan Requirements analysis document Revised requirements analysis document Acceptance tests Acceptance tests Client signs off 19th September (8) First GUI prototype GUI prototype 26th September (MS) Finish implementing backend Backend complete Client meeting regarding first GUI prototype Finish first functional iteration of GUI First functional GUI iteration complete 3rd October (9) Client meeting regarding functional GUI iteration Coding Write user manual Mentor meeting 3 10th October (10) Complete GUI implementation Second GUI iteration complete Final testing Acceptance testing Installation at client site Finalize documentation 17th October (11) Deliverable C System source code Instructions on running system on client computers Source code version repository Bug tracking log Testing documentation Acceptance test checklist Time analysis Ethics checklist 24th October (12) Plan presentation Mentor meeting 4 31st October (13) Deliverable D Table 2. Work breakdown structure Schedule allocation Task Subtask Responsibility Budgeted hours Learning techniques Team 10 Research and investigation Team 4 Requirement analysis 10 Deliverable A Andrew 6 Deliverable B Andrew 4 System design 10 Backend James 6 GUI James 4 Testing 45 Unit testing Hao 30 Acceptance test design James 5 Acceptance testing James and Andrew 10 Documentation 41 Project plan Andrew 6 Minutes and timesheets Team 10 User manual Andrew 5 Technical Andrew 5 Testing Andrew and James 5 Project review Andrew 10 Project meetings and communication 87 Group meetings Team 66 Client meetings Andrew 15 Communication Team 6 Development 153 Setup development environment Team 14 Database interface Bowie and James 15 Daily calculations Bowie 15 Export to CSV Bowie 10 Import pressure files Darren 15 Import GC files Darren 25 Import temperature files Darren 8 Import food files Darren 10 GUI-main window Ashwina 9 GUI-import wizard Ashwina 22 GUI0experiment table Ashwina 10 Total 378 hours (63 hours/team member) Table 3. Schedule allocation Schedule and budget summary Number Name Value in AUD 3.2.1.1 Calculate total methane emitted in 24 hour period $15 3.2.1.2 Specify total experimental time $15 3.2.1.3 Calculate methane emitted on an hourly basis $8 3.2.1.4 Determine food consumed on hourly basis $8 3.2.1.13 Compare data sets graphically $1 3.2.1.14 Semi-automatic importation of new data files $15 3.2.1.15 Annotate data sets $5 3.2.1.16 Display computation results in a website $0 Table 4. Schedule and budget summary 9. Project Management Team Structure The table below show roles and responsibilities from different players Project Roles and Responsibilities table Roles Responsibility Member Name Project sponsor/client Overall financer and final decision maker Provider of conducive environment, project oversight and direction Bankstown Methane Company Quality assurance team/ Steering committee Coordinate all relevant departments and commits department resources Approves major funding and resource allocation strategies, and significant changes to funding/resource allocation George Warwick (CEO) Fredrick Hacksaw (operations manager) Ingrid Boaz (IT manager) All departmental heads Project manager Supervise vendor(s) Offers overall project direction Guide team members toward project objectives Supervises consultants Handle problem resolution Student name Other integral participants and experts Understand the user needs and business processes of their area Communicate project goals, status and progress throughout the project to personnel in their area Lend expertise and guidance as needed To be identified by steering committee 10. Supporting Information Source: Crawley, 2011, p. 15 11. Project Brief Sections Source: Crawley, 2011, p. 12 13 Document Distributions 12. Analysis of the selected methodology One critical factor needed when a company engages in any given new project is the effective project management. This concern should be applied regardless of the nature of the business and the scale of the organisation. PRINCE 2 as an approach to managing controlled projects was first established by Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency which is presently called Office of Government Commerce. One the periods of its utilization, the approach has proved to be fruitful in numerous ways. One greatest advantage of this approach relates to its versatility. PRINCE 2 can be applied in almost all projects that touch on seven principles of change, progress, business case, quality, risks, plans and organisation. In addition, instead of following the old approach of project management, PRINCE 2 is processed based. This kind of concept is a plus as it ensures that steps that need to be followed are observed to the latter. Moreover, this kind of approach is less rigid. This allows for change even in the course of project formulation. This kind of flexibility has made one of the favourites of project managers.8 Apart from the above, the approach is also product based and it also divides the project into different stages making it easy to manage. Thus, allowing the team to remain focused. In addition, the approach improves communication among team members. Apart from the above, it allows stakeholders a chance to have a say when it comes to decision making. The other positive point about this approach is about ensuring that improvements can be made in the organisation. This is because project manager would be in a position to pinpoint flaws and make corrections. Lastly, the team working with this kind of approach would be in a great position to save a lot of time and be more economical when it comes to the use of assets and other resources. Thus, it aids in cost cutting.9 Bibliography Cochran, Craig. The continual improvement process: from strategy to the bottom line. California: Paton Press LLC, 2003. Dingsoyr Torgeir, Tore, Dyba & Nils, B. Moe. Agile software development: current research and future directions, New York: Springer, 2010. Gillard, Sharlett. “Soft skills and technical expertise of effective project manager”, Issues in informing science and information and technology, Vol. 6, 2009. Retrieved on 22nd February 2012 from: http://iisit.org/Vol6/IISITv6p723-729Gillard599.pdf. Henderson, G. Robin. Six sigma quality improvement with Minitab, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2011. Lum et al. “Handbook for software cost estimation”, JPL D-26303, Rev. 0, 2003. Retrieved on 22nd February 2012 from: http://ceh.nasa.gov/downloadfiles/Web%20Links/cost_hb_public-6-5.pdf Peter, Hill. Practical software project estimation: a toolkit for estimating software development effort and duration, USA: Benchmarking standard groups, 2010. Sohal, A.S., Keller, A.Z., and Fouad, R.H. A Review of Literature Relating to JIT, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 9 Issue: 3, pp.15 – 25, 1988. Wirsing Martin, Alexander, Knapp & Simonetta, Balsamo. Radical innovations of software and systems engineering in the future: 9th international workshop, RISSEF 2002, Venice, Italy, October 7-11, 2002: revised papers, Volume 9, 2002. Nainis, W. Scott, Schedule management for complex projects. Noblis publication. n.d. Retrieved on 12th February 2012 from: http://www.noblis.org/NewsPublications/Publications/TechnicalPublications/SigmaJourn al/Documents/Sigma_PMO_Schedule_Mgmt_Complex_Projects.pdf 14 Approvals Approved by: Project Leader Approved by: Project Leader Prepared by: Project Manager Prepared by: Project Manager Reviewed by: Quality Assurance Manager Read More