Standards, Procedures, and Practices of Project Management - Assignment Example

The paper "Standards, Procedures, and Practices of Project Management" is a wonderful example of an assignment on management. The project I am working on is the green field school book recording and tracking system. Greenfield school faces a lot of problems owing to the current information system employed in the book recording and tracking. There are so many books to be recorded, tracked, and managed. The school currently uses an off the shelve software. This software is too general and cannot meet the specific needs of the users and management. The current system in use does not provide for online access by other campus users. This makes it difficult for book store management to serve all the campuses effectively. This project will greatly benefit from project management tools and concepts.

Project management provides a solid base of standards, procedures, and practices that gives clear management of projects. Using the time management concept, I will be able to build a detailed schedule of all project tasks as well as monitor the project progress in order to achieve an effective and efficient project. Similarly, project management requires a prudent assessment of project results and experiences, this will enable me to assess the success and weaknesses of the system and therefore make necessary improvements.
This project will adopt an adaptive approach to task planning. The field of natural-resources management has embraced the application of adaptive management for complex problems that have high uncertainty. This approach is becoming an increasingly popular management-decision tool. Unlike the predictive approach which is fixed and requirements highly certain, the adaptive approach is flexible and is highly consultative.

• The project developed would be very different and quite irrelevant if a different approach is used. This is because the school system needs to be iterated several times to capture user needs and preferences. Some users request for unique features which are better done in prototype to ensure user preference is well catered for before the final system is delivered. An adaptive approach is therefore the most prudent approach to ensure the development of a system that meets all the user needs.

2. PROBLEMS, OPPORTUNITIES, OBJECTIVES AND CONSTRAINTS MATRIX

Project:

Project Manager:

Created by:

Last Updated by:

Date Created:

Date Last Updated:

CAUSE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS

SYSTEM IMPROVEMENT OBJECTIVES

Problem or

Opportunity

Causes and Effects

System Objective

System Constraint

• Lack of visible audit trail

• Manual processes do not record processes

• Simplifies Audits

• The system must be well designed to record and send transaction logs.

• Slow and Inconsistency in processing

• Human error due to Manual Processing

• Eliminate human intervention. Good system process data faster and consistently.

• The new system must be fast, efficient and effective

• Managers cannot get reports in a timely fashion.

• DW team cannot load the reports on time.

• The automated system is much faster - reports can be automatically generated.

• Decrease the time required by managers to generate monthly sales reports.

• DW team cannot get flat files in the correct format

• Divisions do not send flat files correctly

• Automated division systems are important – all flat files will be automatically generated.

• Efficient ETL process by DW team.

3. LIST OF USE CASES

Use Case

Name

Use case description

Actor

Search flat files

This use case describes the process of locating sent the flat file.

• System

Report missing flat files

This use case describes the channel of reporting missing flat files.

• System
• Technical DW member

Start the ETL process

This use case describes the process involved in extracting, transforming, and loading flat files.

• Technical DW member

Report on available reports

This use case describes the channel of reporting to management once data has been fully verified and loaded.

• System
• Technical DW member
• Non-Technical DW member

4. ETL SUB PROCESS

Use Case

Name

Use case description

Actor

Start the ETL process

This use case provides instruction to the system to perform the ETL process

technical DW member

extracts the sales data

The use case describes how the system should extract sales data from the flat files

System

Verify file structure and format

This use case describes how to perform superficial parsing and indexing task to verify whether the basic structure and format is acceptable.

System

Request for data syntax

The user is prompted to give data syntax which is then matched with rules for validation

System

Provide data syntax the user

The use case describes the process of the user giving settings data syntax to be used for validation

Technical DW Member

Error trapping

The use case gives the options in case of an error. non-critical error and critical errors handling

System

Report on completion of the ETL process

This use case describes the process of emailing the technical DW member on ETL process completion

System

Summery log

The use case describes how the system will write a progress summary log.

System

• CONTEXT DFD FOR THE DW SYSTEM