Chapter 11 Systems Development and Project Management

CHAPTER 11 SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1. Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.
A project’s vision needs to be clear, concise and comprehensible, but it also has to be the same to all stakeholders. It is imperative that everyone be on the same page. From a business perspective, everyone has to be aligned with the direction of the overall business and the project’s overall objectives. It is key for members of an organization who desire to make meaningful contributions to understand the company’s investment and selection strategy for projects and how it determines and prioritizes the project pipeline. Projects consume vast amounts of resources. It is imperative to understand how the organization allocates its scarce and valuable resources on order to get the big picture. Time, cost and scope are interdependent variables. All projects are limited in some way by these three constraints. The Project Management Institute calls the framework for evaluating these competing demands the triple constraint. The relationship between these variables is such that if any one of the three factors changes, atleast one other factor is likely to be affected. For example, moving up a projects finish date could result in either increasing costs to hire more staff or decreasing the scope to eliminate features or functions. Increasing a project’s scope to include additional customer requests could result in extending the project’s time to completion or increasing the project’s cost or both in order to accommodate the new scope changes. Project quality is affected by the project manager’s ability to balance these competing demands. High quality projects deliver the agreed upon product or service on time and on budget.
Project management is the science of making intelligent trade-offs between time, cost and scope. All three of the factors combined determine a project’s quality. A successful project is typically on time, within budget, meets the business’s requirements and fulfills the customer’s needs.
 Increased Scope = increased time + increased cost
 Tight Time = increased costs + reduced scope
 Tight Budget = increased time + reduced scope.









2. Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning?
• Pert Chart- A PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical network model that depicts a project’s tasks and the relationships between those tasks. A dependency is a logical relationship that exists between the project tasks, or between a project task and a milestone. PERT charts define dependency between project tasks before those tasks are scheduled. The boxes in Figure represent project tasks, and the project manager can adjust the contents of the boxes to display various project attributes such as schedule The arrows indicate that one task is dependent on the start or completion of another task. The critical path (often indicated in red) is a path from the start to the finish that passes through all the tasks that are critical to completing the project in the shortest amount of time. PERT charts frequently display a projects critical path.


• Gantt chart – a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar



3. Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success?
A project manager must focus on managing three primary areas to ensure success:
Managing People- Managing people is one of the hardest and most critical tasks a project manager undertakes. Resolving conflicts within the team and balancing the needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the team are two of the challenges facing project managers. More and more project managers are the main (and sometimes sole) interface with the client during the project. As such, communication, negotiation, marketing and salesmanship are just as important to the project manager as the financial and analytical acumen. Many times, the people management side of project management makes the difference in pulling off a successful project. Project managers not only need to ‘manage’ the stakeholders and the project, the need to manage the development team.
All teams undergo a life cycle. This cycle needs to be understood and managed as it is often critical to a project’s success (and the success of subsequent projects).
Managing communications- While many companies develop unique project management frameworks based on familiar project management standards, or adopt specific methodologies such as PRINCE all of them agree that communication is the key to excellent project management. This is quite easy to state, but not easy to accomplish. It is extremely helpful if a project manager plans what and how he or she will communicate as a formal part of the project management plan. This is most often referred to as a communications plan. A project manager distributes timely, accurate and meaningful information regarding project objectives that involve time, cost, scope and quality, and the status of each. The project manager also shares small wins and the project progresses, informs others of needed corrections, makes requests known for additional resources and keeps all stakeholders informed of the project schedule. The use of planning and scheduling tools such as Microsoft Project, blogs, wikis, and task tracking tools such as Flyspray aid in communicating information to the team about the project’s status.
Managing change- Change, whether it comes in the form of crisis, a market shift or a technological development, is challenging for all organizations. Successful organizations and successful people learn to anticipate and react appropriately to change. Snap-on tools, an internationally recognized maker of tools and equipment for specialists such as car mechanics, is successful at managing change. The company increased profits by 12 per cent while sales were down 6.7 per cent. Dynamic organizational change is inevitable and an organisation must effectively manage change as it evolves. With the numerous challenges and complexities that organisations face in today’s rapidly changing environment, effective change management this becomes a critical core competency. Change management is a set of techniques that aid in evolution, composition and policy management of the design and implementation of a system. A change management system includes a collection of procedures to document a change request and define steps necessary to consider the change based on the expected impact of change. Most change management systems require that a change request form be initiated by one or more project stakeholders (systems owners, users, customers, analysts, developers). Ideally, these changes request are considered by a change control board (CCB) that is responsible for approving or rejecting all change requests. The CCB’s composition typically includes a representative form each business area that has a stake in the project. The CCB’s decision to accept or reject each change is based on an impact analysis of the change. Change is dynamic and ongoing. Change is an opportunity, not a threat. Realizing that change is the norm rather than an exception will help an organisation stay ahead. Becoming a change leader and accepting the inevitability of change can help ensure that an organisation can survive and even thrive in times of change.


4. Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed.
The two reasons of failure rates are:
 Failure to align project with organizational objectives
 Poor scope
 Unrealistic expectations
 Lack of executive sponsorship
 Lack of project management
 Inability to move beyond individual and personality conflicts
 Politics
Reasons for Success:
 Project Sponsorship at executive level
 Good project charter
 Strong project management
 The right mix of team players
 Good decision making structure
 Good communication
 Team members are working toward common goals