Projects by Gray and Larson - Essay Example

A project is a complex, non-routine, one time effort limited by time, budget, resources and performance specifications designed to meet needs - Gray CF & Larson EW. 1. Projects are one time effort as stated by Gray and Larson. That is also one of the reasons why projects should be standardised and their performances monitored. Standardising might become difficult with the increase in the complexity of projects and as Richard Thayer says, it involves to a large extent human performance. Unlike technology this might be difficult to judge and measure, but still there has to be clear standardisation wherever it is possible. In other places, the actions have to be standardised even if the performance is not standardised. Standards are usable wherever there is a fixed set of work that has to be completed. If there is a defined process, then standardisation is not a problem. In every software project, standard processes are employed and therefore, these can be standardised. For instance, PMI has created global standards of excellence for project management and so has National Competency Standards for Project Management (NCSPM 2007). Most of these standards are produced on an overall requirement and performance of people across the world. These might not be the ones that one might be able to adapt to their companies. Instead, a standard can be created based on the performance of the company's employees for their own internal requirement. This would ensure that the standards are more attainable and the same can be compared later with the global standards set by others. 2. The primary purpose of project management is to ensure that the customer requirements are met within the budgeted time and cost, in addition to the resources and performance specifications. While this is the target that the project manager would try to meet, there could always be issues which have to be countered by him. The time budget is drawn with the requirement of the customer in mind. The plan for the entire project in terms of time required will be drawn only on the basis of the requirements that the customer brings up. May be the customer or the company's management might bring up a time control in the plan which might make the project manager to recast the plan she has drawn. The time control and the requirements of the customer together will decide on the nature of resources that will be required for the company. Based on the resources that the project manager will employ to meet the requirements and the time limits, the costing budget is drawn. The performance specifications will be the measure to judge how efficiently the team worked to deliver what was expected out of it, which is nothing but the customer requirements. Therefore, the entire requirements of the customer is the starting point and therefore, when the project manager meets her time schedule, resources, budget and the performance specifications, there will not be any issue in meeting the customer requirements. 3. The time, budget, resources and performance specifications are neither complementary nor competing demands. They are interrelated but not necessarily complementing one another. For instance, the planned time for a project and the constraint of time is related to the resources and the budget. When the resources in the project are increased, there will be a reduction in the time required. Not necessarily a standard mathematical relationship. The reduction may not be proportional to the resources that were employed. The same way, an increase in the time keeping the resources constant will escalate the budget. There could clear relationship between the time, resource and the budget. However, the time increase itself could have been the result of reduced resource availability. In case of performance specifications, these are only measures of the rest of the parameters that make up the project. The project performance ratings that are normally done will be calculated out of the time, budget, all resources or specific resources, multiple jobs and then worked out to make it easy for comparison. Therefore, the performance rating can always be noted as the measure of the rest of the parameters of the project management. Therefore, there is no competition between them though they are supportive of each other and the nature of relationship between them can also be varying. 4. Information system projects are more complex than most of the other civil or mechanical projects that is executed. This is primarily because of the reason that the information system involves a multiple number of users unlike the other projects. In most of the projects there will be only one user who would demand specific requirements which has to be met by the project manager. But in the case of the information system project, there is more than one kind of user. Every user will have their requirements which have to be met. The same project might have to meet the requirements of the end user A as well as end user B. This could also create clashes in their requirements and these needs to be sorted out before they can be made use of. This makes the information system projects more complex when compared to the rest of the projects. Part B Software Engineering Project Management The article presents a detailed study on how a software engineering project is to be managed. The various factors that affect a software project is analysed in detail. The article starts examining the project management from the planning phase and on to organizing, staffing, directing and controlling of the entire project. According to the article it is important that a number of planning issues are not collected and analysed for future use. It is therefore needed for any project manager or program manager to ensure that all relevant data is collected and analysed from the planning stage onwards. The article also insists on assessing the risks in the project at the time of planning itself and helps in mitigating them earlier. Clear planning will mean that there are clear targets for all levels. Only then, there will be project strategies possible and it would be easy to achieve such requirements. This would include budgeting, time frames for the process and also to set processes and steps in the project for eventual completion of the job. Organising of the project also has a number of issues that need to be foreseen and laid out clearly to ensure that the project goes on as per plan. An organisational structure is to be finalised; more often this is the structure that the company recommends rather than finalised by the project manager. Group tasks need to be identified. It should also have an appropriate team that would verify, validate and also ensure Software Quality Assurance during the process. Once the structure is established, it is essential that the members of the team are made to understand and appreciate the structuring and therefore, make best use of the structure. There should also be training provided to the people who make them the staff of the project depending on the needs. Staffing needs to be established with a clear definition of the requirements and based on this requirement people are taken in for employment. Directing and then controlling are also detailed in the article listing out the issues that normally throng such exercises. Strengths and Weaknesses The article brings to the limelight the various factors that need to be addressed while planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. The extent of coverage is very detailed and lists varied possibilities that make up the entire process. This adds to the strength of the article. However, the article makes it too rigid and is applicable to cases where the waterfall method of project development is adapted. If it were to be iterative, then the process could go for a major shake up while applying. The organisation structures suggested by the author cover most of the functional structures. It lists out all the complications that a project manager might face during the execution with such an organisation structure. While this is the strength of the article, it does not cover some of the later day structures like the agile groups and agile development structures which would really be breaking the entire development team not under functional heads but under sub-product or sub-component heads. This would bring the features of the software closer to every one of the developers in the team as well as in the quality assurance or validation and verification teams. There may not be independent teams in such structures for each one of the function. Instead there will be individuals doing the job as a part of the team itself. The staffing function of the project manager has been explained very clearly including the list of faculties that need to be checked in the employee. It is quite possible for the project manager to design based on the information given in the article a selection process for his team. This would be comprehensive and it would help the project manager to ensure that his team meets up to the needs of his project. However, there is no mention in the selection process of the short term nature of the employment. Employment is only for the project and once the project gets over, the person concerned is also sent home. This factor is not analysed by the author and not offset as well. A number of people have written about agile project management and the scrum meetings that need to be held to take care of the major flaws in the water fall process of software development life cycle (Pace 2003). The staffing methodologies have also undergone rapid change with one off employment and contract employments forming a major part. There are also telecommuting employees who would be of interest for short term and even for long term projects since this would save on other resources as well and reduce the overall cost of the project. Since this is about project management and the intricacies involved in software engineering project management, it is of great significance in understanding and appreciating the nuances. This will certainly be very helpful for my work. References: 1. NCSPM (2007) National Competency Standards for Project Management. Australian Institute of Project Management. Available at: http://www.aipm.com.au/html/ncspm.cfm 2. Pace (2003) Agile Project Management. Available at: http://www.ccpace.com/Resources/documents/AgileProjectManagement.pdf Read More