Project Management

1
Project Management

• IT project management tools
• and how they can help
• manage a business

2

• Format of session
• IT Project Management Issues
• Film The Great IT Horror Story
• Prince2 Project Management Methodology
• MS Project Gantt Charts
• Practical using MS Project
• Summary

3
The Characteristics of a Project

• What is a Project?
• A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a
  unique product or service
• A Project is in contrast to Operations that are
  ongoing and repetitive

4
The Characteristics of Projects

• Every project has
• Unique product or service
• A start date
• Expected end date
• Set of deliverables
• A predetermined set of tasks and activities to
  complete the project.
• These tasks constitute the scope of a project

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The Characteristics of Projects

• Every Project-
• Performed by people
• Have their own organisation
• Constrained by limited resources
• Budget
• Time
• Cost
• Planned, executed, and controlled

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What is an IT Project?

• An IT project can be
• The delivery of a software application
• The delivery of a hardware configuration
• Both
• Any project where IS/IT has the main focus
• For example
• Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) Project
• An accounting software implementation

7
What is Project Management?

• The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and
  techniques to project activities to meet project
  requirements
• Typical Project Management Activities are
• Communication with team, clients, management
• Effort estimations
• Planning activities and assigning resources
• Comparing actual performance to plan
• Risk analysis
• Negotiation with subcontractors
• Staff acquisition

8
What is Scope Creep?

• The introduction of more requirements that are
• not included in initial planning
• within the same time frame of the project
  delivery
• Projects are initiated to solve business needs
  but, due to continual market and environmental
  changes, the requirements that are originally
  defined may change over time

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Causes of Scope Creep

• Some common causes of scope creep are
• Insufficient requirements analysis definition
  resulting in poorly defined project requirements.
• Underestimating the complexity of a problem.
• Failure in managing user expectations
• Only Involving users in later stages of a project
  life cycle such as testing.
• An individual or team who is reluctant to say
  "no" to customer requests to change the
  requirements.
• Over engineering systems to include features and
  functionality not specified in the approved
  requirements definition.

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Measuring Project Success

• A project is successful if the specified results
  are
• Delivered on time. (Time)
• On or under budget. (Resource)
• Work as required (Quality)

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Why do Projects Fail?

• Lack of co-ordination of resources and activities
• Lack of communication with interested parties,
  leading to products being delivered that are not
  what the customer wanted
• Poor estimation of duration and costs leading to
  projects taking more time and costing more money
  than expected

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Why do Projects Fail?

• Insufficient measurables
• Inadequate planning of resources, activities and
  scheduling
• Lack of control over progress so that projects do
  not reveal their exact status until too late
• Lack of quality control resulting in the delivery
  of products that are unacceptable or unusable

Slide 12
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Video - Case Study

• The Great IT Horror Story
• Project Hell

Slide 13
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Prince2 Project Management Methodology
http//www.prince2.org.uk/home/home.asp
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Project Management Methodology (PMM)

• What is a Project Management Methodology?
• A PMM will guide the project through a
  controlled, well managed, visible set of
  activities to achieve the desired results
• Without a PMM those who commission a project,
  those who manage it and those who work on it will
  have different ideas about
• How things should be organised
• When different aspects of the project will be
  completed
• How much responsibility, authority and
  accountability they have
• Without a PMM Projects are Rarely Completed on
  Time or Within Budgets

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Prince2

• What is Prince2?
• Is a structured method for effective project
  management
• A de-fact standard used extensively in the UK
• Is a public domain method
• (Projects IN Controlled Environments)

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Prince2 Features

• The Key Features of Prince2 are
• Its focus on business justification
• A defined organisation structure for the project
  management team
• Its product based planning approach
• Its emphasis on dividing the project into
  manageable and controllable stages
• Its flexibility to be applied at a level
  appropriate to the project

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Prince2 Benefits

• Prince2 provides projects with
• A controlled and organised start, middle and end
• Regular reviews of progress against plan and
  against the business case
• Flexible decision points
• Automatic management control of any deviations
  from the plan
• The involvement of management and stakeholders at
  the right time and place during the project
• Good communication channels between the project,
  project management and the rest of the
  organisation
• http//www.prince2.org.uk/PRINCE2Resources/Case-St
  udies.asp

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Prince2 Component Overview
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MS Project Gantt Charts
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MS Project Gantt Charts

• MS Project is comprised of Project Task and
  Resource data
• Stored in various internal tables and project
  information is displayed across many different
  views
• The default view in MS-Project is the Gantt Entry
  View
• This view is used to enter the work breakdown
  structure, assign resources and dependencies.
• A graphical Gantt chart is built with every task
  in the work breakdown structure
• Gantt - A horizontal bar chart used in project
  scheduling and management that shows the start
  date, end date and duration of tasks within the
  project

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MS Project Example Screen
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Why Use Tools Such as MS Project?

• Automatically Tracks Dependencies
• Calculate the critical path across all inserted
  projects
• Calculate a single critical path for the overall
  master project
• Can Link with other Management Tools such as
  Visio, Excel etc.
• Exchange Information with Stakeholders over an
  Intranet or the Internet
• Common Standard
• MS Interface
• Available training materials

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Summary

• IT project management tools are an aid to
  managing a business/IT project
• The tools however do not run the project the
  people who use the tool do
• For a small project
• MS Project is probably sufficient
• For a larger team based projects
• Prince2 or equivalent becomes an option
• Alternatives to Prince include DSDM

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Self Study

• IT

Slide 25