Project Management - Developing a Website for DropBy Cafe - Essay Example

Project Management A project is a synchronized event. There must be project harmony and understanding between the participants. The participants are equipped with the essential skills of planning, cooperating, helping and communication. However the most important activity here is to orchestrate the movement of the participants. The onus lies with the project manager to synchronize the activities of the project to result in a perfect presentation. In the present project, Project manager has to develop a website (software Project) for DropBy Caf for its products specifications and online ordering. For any software project management, phases can be broadly categorized as follows: 1. Project initiation, 2. Project Closedown, 3. Project planning, 4. Control and tracking & 5. Product implementation Basically the task performed for project initiation starts with requirement gathering, then scope determination, resource allocation and project planning. The first task is to gather the customer requirements. As in the present project the challenge for the project manager is to elicit the requirements in such a way that almost all the information regarding needs and wants of the customer could be gathered. Another important area for the project manager is to define the Project scope, as the work required for creating a software product (Website). Project manager needs to define the scope of a software project to ensure that all processes required to complete the project are identified. Scope of the software products (website) for DropBy Caf must include the functions it is expected to perform, its performance criteria and the constraints under which the software is developed. The function and performance requirement of DropBy Caf website must be identified by system analyst. This includes the features that enable the website to modify the user interface or process data in a specific manner. Parameters such as processing speed, data transfer speed and request processing speed will help to measure the performance of the website. To develop the correct website for DropBy Caf, the IT team which consists of 5 member (Project manager, quality manager, system analyst & 2 Progammers) will began to collect the information from the relevant stakeholders i. e. customers as well as owner of DropBy Caf i.e. Nathan Barlow to determine exactly the scope of the software project (website). The project team must interact with Nathan Barlow because he is the owner and has the complete authority. After collecting all the information regarding the required performance, functionality and constrained the team has used a decision tree to analyze and decide to create a feasible solution. In this situation, where DropBy Caf is trying to implement and develop a website project team found that client/server solution was more suitable for implementation at DropBy Caf because it allow different functional areas to connect to central databases, in house made solution which avoid the cost of purchasing and users could easily adapt to the new system. First of all, to collect and extract more and more information, a joint team of system analyst, programmers and project manager himself together must, converse with Nathan Barlow to identify the requirement, solution, alternatives and preliminary set of requirements for the website. A comprehensive list of requirements and concerns help the project manager to determine the scope of the website project effectively. Another technique at this level could be used specifically by quality engineer is quality function deployment (QFD) which includes interviews with Nathan Barlow, observation and surveys together information for scope determination. This QFD technique application starts with identification of client i.e., Nathan Barlow. Next step is to determine the client requirements. Here Nathan Barlow's requirement is to launch a website which must be dynamic and could be modified time to time because he needs to advertise new dishes weekly. The basic requirement of the website is to post the entire product and its specifications as well as special products at weekends. Through this interactive website customer can order at the start Coffee and limited range of food items. The current requirement of the website is to have online ordering system and information displays including food and products and weekly specials. In the latter stages Nathan Barlow requires to manage staff, inventory and store through its computerization. So our immediate need is to identify those food items which had been order by the most of the customers. This shows the prioritization of client requirements. In case of bench marking the competition, we know that there are several food outlets and one of the fast food outlets has used this online ordering and information system with success because in that area workers have less time for meals. So we as project management team could easily assess the level of competition. Now our next aim is to translate the client requirements to measurable technical specifications. The first step is to create a software requirement specifications (SRS) document. It will contain requirements o the project and provide the development team with a clear understanding of the quality required from the final website. In this document, we will define quality in terms of the functionality of the website, its performance, ease of use, interoperability, conformance with standards. The SRS document also includes all process and the inputs and outputs required for the processes. After completing the SRS document we have to divide the project into logical units or tasks by using work break down structure (WBS). Creating WBS is a perquisite for any estimation activity. It enables us to conceptualize an abstract entity such as a project into distinct, independent units. The first step to create WBS is to organize a meeting with clients with all the project team including system analyst, quality engineer, and perspective developer of the website. In the present situation, the main task is to provide information to the customer about DropBy Caf. WBS Activity The first task is to create a database of all the products and its features so that each product could be surfed and seen by the perspective customer after opening the website homepage. The next step is to create an interactive windows through which customer can interact and surf the products and go through the details of the product and finally order the product to the DropBy Caf. After getting the order through website, DropBy Caf software project has to develop such a system that creates centralized database and generate a report to supply (output) the product and lastly the information of final supply of product has to be entered into database. During the division of the task into multiple subtasks also enables us to estimate the duration and the effort required for individuals tasks. To estimate the total size of a project, function point's techniques (FP) is one of the time tested techniques. The total size of software project is expressed in total function points. Only user requested and user-defined components are connected. Function points components and their relationships The first step in the calculation of FP is the identification of the unadjusted function points. This involves assignment a value to the information domains. The information domain of a website application also includes the structure, flow of adapt objects and to control objects that make up a system. Functionality provides a user with the components to process data. Unadjusted transaction function points include user outputs and user inquiries. User inputs are the values entered by a user and saved on a database. The number of such individuals' inputs is counted. In this situation the name and contact details of the customer could be entered. Apart from it, the ordering process of products online could be entered by the user must be saved on a data base. Similarly user outputs are the results in response to a user input. When a customer input his/her order online there must be the command to create report for delivery of products. The number of user outputs is also counted individually. User inquiries are inputs related to queries by a user. Each query generates an output from an existing database such as product specifications, availability and supply of product. A user inquiry is retrieving the customer detail from the database and on the basis of that DropBy Caf could have the complete details about the customer and its ordering process and requirement from user inputs because inputs are saved into a database whereas user inquiries are4 not. Internal files and External interfaces are also part of FP. Each information domain value for the unadjusted adapt function point or in adjusted transaction function points will be multiplied by the total number of unadjusted function points with a suitable weight. This weight could be low medium or high. Here we can weight each customer according to his/her ordering quantity, frequency etc. For different information domain, standard values for weights followed globally by IFPUG ([IFPUG, 1], 1999). Information domain Low Medium High Total User inputs *3= *4= *6= User outputs *4= *5= *7= User inquiries *3= *4= *6= Internal files *7= *10= *15= External interfaces *5= *7= *10= TUPF Information Domain Weights Table These values enable us to determine the size of a software project in relation to unadjusted function points of the code has developed. Assume that the code we are developing has 10 simple screens. The unadjusted function point value for that code is 30 (10*3). Similarly, we will determine the unadjusted point function values for other domain parameters such as user outputs, user inquiries, internal files and external interfaces. All the values then added to arrive at a figure for total of unadjusted function points (TUFP). This value will be used later to calculate FP. Next step is to calculate general system characteristics through assigning a value for each GSC factor depending upon complexity. Degree of influence (DI) of each factor varies from zero to five i.e., no influence to strong influence. DI Values Then we calculate the DI value though DI is a subjective decision of an organization. After calculating TUFP & GSC, value adjustment factor will be calculated using formula of VAF = (0.65+ [0.01X sum of Fi ] ) where Fi is total of the weighed GSC. Finally we can calculate adjusted FP = TUFD X VAF. Suppose we have weighted information domains for DropBy Caf website as follows: Information domain Count Low Medium High Total User inputs 19 3x5=15 4x8=32 6x6=36 83 User Outputs 15 4x5=20 5x6=30 7x4=28 78 User inquiries 5 3x2=6 4x2=8 6x1=6 20 Internal files 6 7x1=7 10x2=20 15x3=45 72 External interface 3 5x0=0 7x2=14 10x1=10 24 277 TUFD DI values for the customer for online order: General system characteristics DI Values Data communication 5 Distributed function 4 Performance 5 Heavily used configuration 2 Transaction rate 3 On-line data entry 4 End-user efficiency 3 On-line updates 2 Complex processing 4 Reusability 5 Installation ease 2 Operational ease 2 Multiple sites 3 Facilitates change 4 Total complexity adjustment value 48 DI value for caf application So FP=TUFPxVAF =277x0.65 + [0.01x48] =313. Finding out the value of the FP we can easily assess/estimate the time and resources required for the project. Suppose one complete FP of work requires 10 hrs. So 313 FP need 3130 hrs and assuming 8 hrs working hrs it need 391 man days. Assuming 25 working days in a month project need almost 17 months to complete the project. So by doing all the basic calculation we can find the scope and requirement of the project. Thereafter we start with website development programming phase and testing it. After successful testing it has to be implemented. But taking all the precaution still does not nullify the risk factors. The software (website) development has different risks. The process related risks are one of the main risks faced by these products. Different software model need different models. In this project, we have the risk of customer interactions at a time. If at the present level of input interactions we define 10-20 screens but in the long run when customers will increase, the website may have problems not to serve more customers. So improper assessment of user input and user output & inquiries are the major risks. Similarly only one person Nathan Barlow is the main client and as a project team, we have to assess the requirement only on the basis of his versions. so there is huge amount of risks in estimation and defining scope of the software. Basically product scope changed towards the end of the project time, effort and cost estimates for a software project can go up dramatically when the customer changes the scope of the product towards the end of the project. Ill defined scope in terms of functionality requirements, the performance requirements, the assumptions have the constraints on the product. If the product scope is ill defined, the software project does not have a proper focus on the features required in the product. In the software development (website) projects the change in technology and requirements happens so fast that it is often might not be possible to integrate the latest software all the time. The modern software environment requires that all software should integrate with each other. However, many software projects do not plan for integration with existing software in the same or different domain. This limits the application of such software and reduces the shelf life drastically. Even the estimation by using FP generally uses data from the past projects and assigning weights to GSC's which may be unrealistic. This does not provide precise or approximate estimates of the effort, cost and size of a project. Consequently, at the end of a project, deviations from the estimated to the actual values of each of the factors may be quite extreme. References: [IFPUG, 1] IFPUG Function point counting practices manual, Release 4.1 dated January 1999 accessed from the website www.ifpug.org on 20th October 2008. Read More