Chapter 5,6,7,8 Project Management

HR Management

Identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships.

One method of determining the size of tasks or projects is

LOC- lines of code. Can be very quick and inexpensive to generate, can be done early in the process BUT, must compensate for technology differences, can't be done well unless relevant history exists, must determine what counts as a line of code (code types can be very different), what level of resource is generating the code, no industry standards, need to distinguish between auto-generated code and original work.

OPM3:

Organizational Project Management Maturity Model. 4 stages: Standardize—A standard process, with defined deliverables, is adopted. Measure—Metrics are created and measured. Control—Actions are taken, based on facts gathered to improve the project. Continuously improve—Modifications are made to improve the process with each project

Dr. Juran: known for the

Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule. As a general rule, a small amount of issues cause the most problems on a project. For example, 80% of the rework time spent on the product was caused by 20% of the requirements.

Ishikawa Diagram (aka Fishbone diagram) is a

"cause-and-effect" tool to aid workers in discovering the true root cause for quality issues.

Risk is an event which if it occurs,

, will have a negative impact on one or more of: project scope, time, cost, quality, or resources.

Probability

- an estimation of the likelihood the risk will materialize and affect the project (low, medium, high)

Fast tracking

- compressing the schedule by doing work in parallel.

Consequence

- explanation of the impact to the project if the risk occurs

Mitigation

- explanation of the strategy being used to lesson the chances the risk will occur

Balanced Scorecard

- measuring business performance from four perspectives: Learning and growth/training, continuous improvement, investment Business process/reduce non-value added activities, number of opportunities and success rates Customer perspective/customer satisfaction and needs, delivery performance Financial/ROI, shareholder value, Return on equity, Cash flow

Six Sigma

- to reduce variation and thereby reduce the number of product or service defects. Six Sigma for IT projects is calculated based on the number of defects per million opportunities.

To reach six sigma you would have no more than

3.4 defects per million opportunities on your IT projects

Deming estimated that up to

85% of all quality problems could be corrected by changes in the process and only 15% could be controlled by the workers on the line.

Dependency Types

: Finish-to-start (Finish coding module before unit testing), Start-to-start (Start on Training Model after Use cases started), Finish-to-Finish (Can't complete training model until User Interface model complete), Start-to-Finish (Phase out legacy system can't finish until x days after New system starts acceptance testing.)

Requirements Document/Definition includes

: Functional and nonfunctional system requirements, Business rules, Impacts on any other systems and/or departments, support and training requirements, Specific acceptance criteria for each requirement or set of requirements, Quality requirements.

Recurring vs. Nonrecurring costs

: Recurring costs appear more than once throughout the life of the project (annual hardware and software maintenance). Nonrecurring costs appear only once (initial purchase cost of hardware and software.)

Risk avoidance

: eliminating a specific threat or risk, usually by eliminating its causes

Risk response planning

: taking steps to enhance opportunities and reduce threats to meeting project objectives. After identifying and quantifying risks, you must decide how to respond to them:

A Staffing Management Plan is

Process to follow when adding or removing people from the project, in assigning work, managing different groups of workers, list of training needed and the process for scheduling and funding, type and process for awarding bonuses both monetary and non-monetary, any safety issues that need to be followed, any specific personnel policies that need to be included, note any human resource specific risks.

Opportunity Costs

A measure of the expected return on a project compared to the expected return on an alternative investment.

Schedule Estimating Methods

Analogous Top-down Bottom-up Three-point Simulation

Estimate accuracy levels

ROM (-25% to + 75%), Budget (-10% to + 25%), Definitive (-5% to 10%.)

Benefits of leveling:

Team Productivity, Team Morale, Reduced costs (less overtime and less multitasking), Leveled costs, less erratic swings from period to period, Less management, Especially important when hiring outside help to fully utilize them while assigned, Better use of resources across projects.

To build a project schedule you need to

Build the WBS, Define Activities (work packages), Sequence Activities and Assign proper activity dependencies.

Another method of determining the size of tasks or projects is by

Business Function; count the number of business functions within each of the following categories: user inputs, user outputs, inquiries, data structures, and external interfaces. (It is independent of programming language and technology, it can be used early in the project life cycle at the end of the requirements discovery phase or design phase -BUT requires many subjective evaluations, can vary due to personal bias.

Tools used for schedule development:

Critical path method - the series of activities that determines the earliest time by which the project can be completed. Slack or float - the difference between the earliest time an activity can begin and the latest time an activity can begin without changing the completion date of the project. PERT - Program Evaluation and Review Technique developed/used by the U.S. Navy for Polaris missile/submarine project in 1958 to help organize the activities of 11,000+ contractors. Resource Leveling - rescheduling activities on the project to achieve a more balanced distribution of resource usage. Examples: Remove scope, add resources, lengthening duration of work, authorize overtime Benefits of leveling: Team Productivity, Team Morale, Reduced costs (less overtime and less multitasking), Leveled costs, less erratic swings from period to period, Less management, Especially

Importance of Good Communications:

The greatest threat to many projects is a failure to communicate. IT projects require extra communication due to the language gap (computer jargon) that occurs on many projects.

A Risk Register contains:

The name of each risk along with short description Trigger event (explanation of the event that signals to the person monitoring that this risk is about to happen) Person responsible, for executing mitigation activities

Estimates can be

Top-down estimates, "Bottom-up", Three Point or Simulation (ex; Monte Carlo.. using software to generate estimates.) 3 point: Most Likely, Optimistic, Pessimistic (aka PERT) a = optimistic estimate m = most Likely estimate b = pessimistic estimate Estimate = (a + 4m + b)/6

HR Management Key Deliverables include

a Roles and Responsibilities Matrix (RACI is most common), Project Organization Chart, and a Staffing Management Plan.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

a combination of quality tools to achieve increased business while reducing costs and waste.

Developing an estimate for a large technology project is

a complex task requiring a significant amount of effort.

A WBS is

a list of tasks executed by the project team to accomplish project objectives. It is a foundation document that provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources and more.

Risk acceptance

accepting the consequences should a risk occur without trying to control it

Time Robbers

activities that at first seem to be short and unobtrusive but when they are all added together can completely fill an entire work day.

Life Cycle Costs

all costs incurred over the life of a product or service.

Reserves:

all costs incurred over the life of a product or service.

Most expensive project mistakes

are made during planning

Estimates are completed

at various stages of the project and "Progressive Elaboration" takes place.

Maturity Models

can be used as a benchmark for assessing different organizations for equivalent comparison.

Qualitative risk analysis

characterizing and analyzing risks and prioritizing their effects on project objectives.

Crashing

compressing the schedule for the least incremental cost.

Sunk Cost:

cost expended that cannot be retrieved on a product or service. Money already spent that can't be recovered.

Risk Management Planning

deciding how to approach and plan the risk management activities for the project.

Risk identification

determining which risks are likely to affect a project and documenting their characteristics.

Direct vs. Indirect Costs

direct costs are directly attributable to the activities of the project (purchasing hardware or software, labor cost of workers on the team. Indirect costs, the opposite of direct, are costs that are not directly attributable to the activities of the project (overhead rates such as management salaries, energy costs, rents, etc.)

Management reserves

extra money set aside to allow for future situations that are unpredictable (sometimes called unknown unknowns.)

Contingency reserves

extra money to allow for known unknowns included in the project cost baseline.

Fixed vs. Variable costs

fixed costs are expenses whose total does not change in proportion to the activity of a business or project, within the relevant time period or scale of production (rent, insurance). Variable costs change based on the activity of a business or project (project employee costs.)

Quality planning

identifying which quality standards are relevant, and determining the activities needed to meet the established standards, to deliver the product fit for customer use.

Project scope management

includes the processes involved in defining and controlling what is or is not included in a project.

Project Plan

is a document used to coordinate all project planning documents. Its main purpose is to guide project execution. Building the plan should not be done in secret or in isolation; the whole project team needs to participate.

Scope definition

is accomplished by conducting a requirements discovery and analysis exercise, the use of subject matter experts, and a stakeholder analysis.

Quantitative risk analysis:

numerically measuring the probability and consequences of risks.

Good Scope planning is one

of the best ways to limit scope creep; the unanticipated gradual growth of systems requirements during the life of the project causing budget and time overruns.

Risk identification is not a

one time process; but should be a continuous process of team members and stakeholders looking for new issues that may affect the success of the project.

Crisis management ("fire fighting") is the

opposite of good risk management - organizations find themselves trying to figure out what to do about a problem after it has occurred instead of planning for issues in advance.

Project Cost Management

planning, estimating, budgeting, and control of the cost of project resources needed to complete 100% of the activities of the project.

The two techniques of activity sequencing are the

precedence diagram method (uses boxes to represent activities) and lines with arrows to represent the dependencies see example next slide, and the activity on arrow diagramming method (Activities are represented by lines with arrows-Nodes or circles are the starting and ending points of activities.)

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

prioritizes the needs that workers possess which motivates them to do their best work. Physiological, Safety, Social, Esteem, Self- actualization.

ISO 9000

provides minimum requirements for an organization to meet their quality certification standards.

Risk mitigation

reducing the impact of a risk event by reducing the probability of its occurrence

Risk transference

shifting the consequence of a risk and responsibility for its management to a third party internal or external to the organization

McConnell (1998) states

that errors found "upstream" during the planning phase cost on the order of 200 times less to fix than errors found "downstream" during the building of the product.

Frederick Herzberg found

that the factors causing job satisfaction (implying motivation) were different from that causing job dissatisfaction. Hygiene factors (physiological, safety, and social) if present didn't motivate employees to perform better but if missing created job dissatisfaction and became de-motivators. Motivation factors (esteem and self-actualization) - if workers experienced these items they tended to be satisfied, happier, and more productive.

Burden Rate

the cost of a human resource including benefits, vacation, holidays, etc.

The American Society for Quality and PMI define quality as

the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.

Cost estimating/budgeting process

the entire picture of costs for the project - taking into account all of the following cost categories: direct and indirect, recurring and nonrecurring, fixed and variable, and all life cycle costs.

Time is

the most precarious element of the triple constraint: Time has the least amount of flexibility. You make something deliver on time when it already didn't.

Plans should never assume

the team will work overtime, at least not at the start.

McGregor's 2 leadership styles include

theory X and theory Y. Theory X workers are inherently lazy and require direct supervision on a constant basis - authoritarian approach to managing using punishment as the primary motivator. Theory Y workers enjoy work and can be trusted to work efficiently without direct supervision - participative style approach to managing with group decision making.

The first step of risk identification is

to identify as many risks as possible for the upcoming project with the knowledge that you can never see them all. Methods of gathering risks include Analogy, Brainstorming, Interviews, Delphi Technique (like polling), SWOT Analysis.

The main objectives of risk management are to

to increase the probability and impact of positive outcomes and decrease the probability and impact of negative outcomes.

Cost of quality

total costs incurred by an organization to prevent a faulty product or development of a system that does not meet system requirements. Costs include: assessments, rework, lost time, injury, and death. (Prevention and Inspection included.)

Philip Crosby is known for the phrase

zero defects" or "doing it right the first time". (preventing defects was cheaper than fixing them later.)