Overview of Project Planning - Report Example

Table of Contents 5.5 Project Planning (Clause 5 of the PMP) 1 Introduction 1 Purpose 2 5.5.1 Project initiation 3 5.5.1.1 Estimation Plan 3 5.5.1.2 Staffing Plan 4 5.5.2 Project Work Plans 5 5.5.2.1 Work Activities 5 5.5.2.2 Schedule Allocation 6 5.5.2.3 Resource Allocation 11 5.5.2.4 Budget Allocation 12 5.6 Project Assessment and Control 13 5.6.1 Requirements Management Plan 13 Configuration Management 14 5.6.2 Scope Change Control Plan 14 5.6.3 Schedule Control Plan 16 5.6.4 Budget Control Plan 17 5.6.5 Quality Assurance Plan 18 Programming Language and Deployment Approach 18 References 19 5.5 Project Planning (Clause 5 of the PMP) Introduction A project management plan is a formally approved document that details how the project tasks will be executed, controlled, and monitored (Schwalke, 2015). It is the most important communication document in the entire project as it outlines in great detail what the project has to achieve, how to achieve it, who will be involved, and how information is communicated among the project stakeholders. The PMP is usually approved by the project manager and the functional managers before commencing project operations. According to the PMBOK guide (Eastham, Tucker, Varma, & Sutton, 2014), a standard PMP should have the following sections: i. Scope change control plan that details the project’s deliverables satisfying project requirements including scope, project specifications, and success criteria ii. Scheduling in the form of a milestone schedule including costs and resource estimates. iii. Resource Management with a responsibility matrix, project authority schedules and role descriptions iv. Budgeting and cost control which involves and setting an agreed budget and managing the forecasted and actual costs against that budget . Purpose The PMP serves as a reference for all decisions made regarding the project and should be available to all project participants (Schwalke, 2015). This part of the PMP will outline the project management processes undertaken during the project. In doing so, the PMP attempts to predict the project risks, organize, plan, and control resources and activities so that the project completes on schedule despite the risks. The PMP conforms to the project scope and will also specify the project initiation plans, the project work plans, assessment and control plans, and the final closeout plan. 5.5.1 Project initiation This part of the PMP specifies the details on how we estimated the project scope, the necessary staffing for successful project completion. 5.5.1.1 Estimation Plan As soon as the team develops the high level architecture and the app is decomposed into modules and subsystems, the team will prepare an updated estimation plan and include it as part of the PMP. The method used to estimate the project resource requirements include using industry averages for each phase of the app development process including the time taken and average cost of resources at each stage. The table below shows the cost and schedule for the stock trading app. As the development team achieves various milestones, the estimates will be revised on a monthly basis to determine the adherence to schedule, rate of work, and whether additional resources are required to complete the project on time. Name Actual Work Standard Rate Cost Project Manager 208 $40.00/hr $10,400.00 UX Designer 216 $50.00/hr $10,800.00 Quality Assurance Engineer 996 $50.00/hr $35,000.00 Backend Developer 568 $50.00/hr $28,400.00 Admin Panel Developer 440 $50.00/hr $22,000.00 Android/Ios Developer 328 $50.00/hr $16,400.00     Total $123,000.00 5.5.1.2 Staffing Plan Role Responsibilities Competency Time Commitment Estimated Duration Project Manager Communicating with client, Defining project scope Project Management Full Time 117days UI Designer Designs app UI including number of pages and menus Photoshop Full Time 26days Android Developer Designing and developing app for android platform Java Full Time 16days Ios Developer Developing the app for the IOS platform javascript, php Full Time 25days Quality Assurance Engineer Ensuring project output conforms to client specifications Licensed QA Engineer Full Time 115 days Backend Developer Developing the backend database for the app including user authentication modes SQL query, PHP Full Time 71days Admin Panel Developer Integrating with third party APIs; Social media, Exchange API MySQL, PHP, Ajaz Part Time 55days The project staff will be hired by the client with advice from the project manager for the duration of their respective tasks. 5.5.2 Project Work Plans This clause of the application project management plan will specify the tasks undertaken in the project, responsibility centers, budget, estimated start dates and completion dates. 5.5.2.1 Work Activities This part of the PMP specifies the various work activities that will be undertaken during the project. Figure 1: Project Work Breakdown Structure 5.5.2.2 Schedule Allocation Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors Mobile App Project 117 days? Fri 12/23/16 Mon 6/5/17   Start Project 1 day Fri 12/23/16 Fri 12/23/16   Project Initiation 1 day Fri 12/23/16 Fri 12/23/16   Project Plan Development 2 days Mon 12/26/16 Tue 12/27/16 2,3 Task list 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Project estimates 2 days Mon 12/26/16 Tue 12/27/16 3 Network diagram 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Work Breakdown Structure 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Work Schedule 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Milestone Plan 1 day Tue 12/27/16 Tue 12/27/16 3,8 Organization Plan 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Assign resources 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Create project Budget 1 day Mon 12/26/16 Mon 12/26/16 3 Project Plan Approval 0 days Tue 12/27/16 Tue 12/27/16 13,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 Project Communications Planning 2 days? Wed 12/28/16 Thu 12/29/16 8 Create communications Plan 1 day? Wed 12/28/16 Wed 12/28/16 14 Communication plan approval 1 day? Thu 12/29/16 Thu 12/29/16 16 Project Quality Planning 2 days Fri 12/30/16 Mon 1/2/17 14 Develop project quality plan 1 day Fri 12/30/16 Fri 12/30/16 17 Quality plan approval 1 day Mon 1/2/17 Mon 1/2/17 19 Project Risk Planning 3 days? Tue 1/3/17 Thu 1/5/17 14,17 Develop risk control plan 2 days Tue 1/3/17 Wed 1/4/17 20 Risk control plan approval 1 day? Thu 1/5/17 Thu 1/5/17 22 Execution Phase 1 day Fri 1/6/17 Fri 1/6/17 14,17,20,23 Project Design 8 days Fri 1/6/17 Tue 1/17/17 23 Create use cases 1 day Fri 1/6/17 Fri 1/6/17 23 Create data architecture 3 days Mon 1/9/17 Wed 1/11/17 26 Design hardware architecture 2 days Thu 1/12/17 Fri 1/13/17 27 Create migration strategy 2 days Mon 1/16/17 Tue 1/17/17 28 Product Design 28 days Wed 1/18/17 Fri 2/24/17 29 Design UI 3 days Wed 1/18/17 Fri 1/20/17 26 Design Objects 2 days Mon 1/23/17 Tue 1/24/17 31 Design rules 1 day Wed 1/25/17 Wed 1/25/17 32 Design database 8 days Thu 1/26/17 Mon 2/6/17 29,33 Design connectivity with third party APIs 14 days Tue 2/7/17 Fri 2/24/17 34 Design Permissions 4 days Tue 2/7/17 Fri 2/10/17 33,34 Product Design approval 0 days Fri 2/10/17 Fri 2/10/17 36 Manual Design Tests 16 days Mon 2/13/17 Mon 3/6/17 37 UI tests 1 day Mon 2/13/17 Mon 2/13/17 31 Object tests 2 days Mon 2/13/17 Tue 2/14/17 32 Rules tests 1 day Mon 2/13/17 Mon 2/13/17 33 Database test designing 2 days Mon 2/13/17 Tue 2/14/17 34 Connectivity test design 3 days Mon 2/27/17 Wed 3/1/17 35 Design beta test 1 day Thu 3/2/17 Thu 3/2/17 37,43 Design user acceptance tests 2 days Fri 3/3/17 Mon 3/6/17 44 Approval of design tests 1 day Tue 3/7/17 Tue 3/7/17 39,40,41,42,43,44,45 Application Development 36 days Wed 3/8/17 Wed 4/26/17   UI development 5 days Wed 3/8/17 Tue 3/14/17 46 Objects developments 3 days Fri 3/10/17 Tue 3/14/17 48SS+2 days Rules development 5 days Wed 3/15/17 Tue 3/21/17 49 Database development 20 days Tue 3/14/17 Mon 4/10/17 46,49SS+2 days Develop system permissions 5 days Thu 3/23/17 Wed 3/29/17 51SS+7 days Integrate with 3rd party APIs 14 days Fri 4/7/17 Wed 4/26/17 51 Create documentation 3 days Thu 3/30/17 Mon 4/3/17 52 Completion of product development 0 days Mon 4/3/17 Mon 4/3/17 54 Product Tests 13 days Tue 4/4/17 Thu 4/20/17   Develop unit tests 3 days Tue 4/4/17 Thu 4/6/17 55 Develop application tests 3 days Wed 4/5/17 Fri 4/7/17 57SS+1 day Create integration tests 2 days Mon 4/10/17 Tue 4/11/17 58 Create app environment tests 2 days Wed 4/12/17 Thu 4/13/17 59 Create test documetnation 5 days Fri 4/14/17 Thu 4/20/17 60,57,58,59 Application testing 37 days Fri 4/14/17 Mon 6/5/17   Undertake manual testing 14 days Fri 4/14/17 Wed 5/3/17 60,38,57,58,59 Undertake automated tests 3 days Thu 5/4/17 Mon 5/8/17 63 Beta test 10 days Tue 5/9/17 Mon 5/22/17 64 User acceptance test 10 days Tue 5/23/17 Mon 6/5/17 65 Analyze Test results 3 days Tue 5/23/17 Thu 5/25/17 63,64,65 App approval by Quality Assurance 0 days Thu 5/25/17 Thu 5/25/17 67 App Deployment 0 days Thu 5/25/17 Thu 5/25/17 68 5.5.2.3 Resource Allocation Labor Resource Allocation Name Start Finish Remaining Work Project Manager Fri 12/23/16 Tue 1/17/17 208 hrs UX Designer Mon 12/26/16 Fri 4/7/17 216 hrs Quality Assurance Engineer Mon 12/26/16 Mon 6/5/17 996 hrs Backend Developer Mon 12/26/16 Mon 4/10/17 568 hrs Admin Panel Developer Mon 12/26/16 Wed 4/26/17 440 hrs Android/Ios Developer Mon 12/26/16 Thu 4/13/17 328 hrs 5.5.2.4 Budget Allocation The figure below shows the budget allocation by costs for each resource 5.6 Project Assessment and Control This clause of the project management plan will specify the procedures utilized to assess and control the project scope, schedule, resources, budget, and quality of output. It will provide visibility into the project’s technical progress allowing the team to undertake preventive action if a disruptive trend is recognized or when performance is different from schedule estimates (Hu et al., 2013). 5.6.1 Requirements Management Plan The requirements for the stock trading application will be documented in the project Software Requirements Specification (SRS). The control plan has two aspects: i. Traceability where every artifact as an outcome of the project must be traceable back to the client’s requirement documents (Jacobs & Chase, 2013). This aspect will be addressed during the weekly review meetings as well as during the design and code reviews. ii. Change control. While we do not anticipate any major changes in requirements, once the final SRS is approved, all changes will be applied and documented as per the guidelines outlined in the configuration management plan. Configuration Management The application configuration management will be done via GIT, which has a command line interface and integrates smoothly with the Mantis bug tracking tool and Eclipse IDE (Loeliger, & McCullough, 2012). The project will have a master development branch that receives all developments made by the project team members. When a new version is planned for release, a branch will be forked from the master, isolated, tested, fixed, and eventually delivered. The figure below illustrates the relationship between the master and the branches. 5.6.2 Scope Change Control Plan The original project scope was defined by the Dean of the College of Business and economic who detailed a mobile application that would encourage students to get acquainted with the local business market. The lack of proper scope management and the timely handling of change may introduce risks in the project’s completion and delivery schedules (Jalote, 2012). The project manager is in charge of change control where he shields the team members from external pressures regarding increases in project scope to protect the project from scope creep. The change control plan takes into account that when utilizing an agile software development methodology, there is a need for the sprint teams, product owners, and scrum masters to understand the distinction between scope increase and progressive elaboration of app requirements. The project will have integrated change control where if changes are required in the scope, the team members will first examine the proposed changes and determine their effects on: Scope Schedule considering the availability of resources and schedule deadlines Costs of requested changes Quality as changes in scope may affect quality as the project members rush through tasks to meet deadlines Additional labor required to adhere to the project schedule as delays may lead to the loss of key resources that may have prior assignments Communication with the appropriate stakeholders in a timely manner. Risks that may appear as a result of a domino effect from minor scope changes When a change in the project scope is proposed, the project manager will document the full process. This begins with a written change request to ensure that the client and project manager are in agreement about the requested changes. He should then update the following documents to show the updated project scope (Jalote, 2012); i. Project schedule and the associated baselines ii. Project Scope statement iii. Work Breakdown Structure iv. Change log v. Project Budget vi. Project Management Plan 5.6.3 Schedule Control Plan The schedule for the Stock trading app team will be maintained as a separate document. MS Project 2013 will be used to monitor the progress of the projects and understand its deviance from the original estimates. The planning manager will have the responsibility of maintaining and updating it. He is also responsible for gathering information about the individual tasks for all team members and then creates a plan for each phase of the project at the beginning. Each team member will contribute in keeping time logs by recording time spent on each task on the time log and comparing it against the deadline for every week. The planning manager will then record the time logs and update the project plan accordingly. Additionally, during the weekly review meetings, the time spent on milestone tasks will undergo review. If slippage is found to have occurred, then the team will implement corrective measures such as making a more reasonable schedule or making sure that the team adheres to the schedule. These weekly meetings will also give the planning manager a platform to give updates on the status of the project plan. The manager will review tasks that are late and highlight tasks in the upcoming week. During these meetings, each team member is expected to provide accurate status of the tasks under their purview. In slippage scenarios, the team manager should take corrective steps to correct the schedule such as additional personnel, additional changes, or in extreme situations, personnel change. 5.6.4 Budget Control Plan The budget estimates for the project will be reviewed and revised on the completion of each project milestone. The project planning tool used in this project is MS Project 2013. The project assumes that all equipment used such as servers, android and IOs gadgets, and personal computers are already in place thereby making resources the only cost driver for the project. The method used for project budget control is the earned value method where the current progress is reviewed in comparison to the project goals. The earned value technique considers project scope, costs, and time in determining whether the project is adhering to the schedule or not (Schwalbe, 2015). This method is also useful in forming a cost breakdown structure that can provide a graphical breakdown of project costs. As the app development project progresses, MS Project 2013 will be used to plot actual progress against cost of work scheduled and the pre forecast values. Earned value for major tasks will be calculated based on the following criteria: i. Tasks can be considered as complete ii. Tasks can be considered as not started in which case EV=0 iii. A task can be considered as partially complete in which chase the value of work done will be calculated based on the amount of work completed for a particular task The project manager will then prepare a report that details: Time allocated to each task Value of work done Costs of rework Non-productive work/ Lost hours Cost rates To prevent extreme deviations from the project budget, the project manager will review and reforecast the budget weekly. This will minimize the amount of corrective action needed if any. 5.6.5 Quality Assurance Plan To ensure that the project outputs conform to the client’s specifications, the Quality Assurance team will continuously test each component after the completion of the project. These tests will seek to establish whether the application conforms to the criteria set out in SPS (Turk, France, & Rumpe, 2014). The tests include: UI Tests Database tests Connectivity tests Integration tests Application environment tests Beta test User acceptance test If a part of the application is found to be sub-standard relative to client’s specifications, the QA team will immediately inform the project manager who will then determine how best to proceed considering the project schedule and available resources. Programming Language and Deployment Approach In developing the mobile stock trading app backend, the developers will utilize MySql Database to store user records including the trade transaction data. Sql query will be used as the preferred tool for user data updates, deletion, and other search functions. On the server side, PHP will be used for the authentication module and server side scripting. Javascript offers a cross platform solution for validation of user data before posting to the database. The app UI will be developed using HTML/CSS which is a lightweight cross platform solution. Deployment will take an iterative approach where the complete build will be released for a beta test, a user acceptance test, and a final build that incorporates recommendations from the previous tests. References Eastham, J., Tucker, D. J., Varma, S., & Sutton, S. M. (2014). PLM software selection model for project management using hierarchical decision modeling with criteria from PMBOK® knowledge areas. Engineering Management Journal, 26(3), 13-24. Hu, Y., Du, J., Zhang, X., Hao, X., Ngai, E. W. T., Fan, M., & Liu, M. (2013). An integrative framework for intelligent software project risk planning. Decision Support Systems, 55(4), 927-937. Jacobs, R., & Chase, R. (2013). Operations and supply chain management. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Jalote, P. (2012). An integrated approach to software engineering. Springer Science & Business Media. Loeliger, J., & McCullough, M. (2012). Version Control with Git: Powerful tools and techniques for collaborative software development. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.". Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning. Turk, D., France, R., & Rumpe, B. (2014). Assumptions underlying agile software development processes. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6610. Read More