Lecture 3 Managing the Development Project SFDV2002 - Principles of Information Systems.

Lecture 3

Managing the Development Project

SFDV2002 - Principles of Information Systems

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Overview

Project Planning Phase Feasibility Analysis

Project Management Project Teams - An important element of

project management is managing people Planning and Scheduling Risk Management - What risks may stop us or

delayed us from completing the project in the right time or with our desired quality, on time, and within budget

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SDLC Review: Project Planning

Objectives Identify the scope of the new system Plan the project

Assess feasibility and prepare budget

Main activities1.Define the problem2.Produce the project schedule3.Confirm project feasibility4.Staff the project5.Launch the project

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Project Planning

1- Initiating systems investigation• Gather information (understanding the problem):

• Problems in or opportunities for the system / Overview of the proposed system• Expected costs and benefits of the proposed system

2- Determine who will participant (stakeholders)• Who will be involved (required) in the investigation phase • Initial IS development team

• the IS team may change between phases• Functional manger are heavily involved in this stage• Technical and financial expertise will be represented in the team

• Client: Likely to be both management and users• Participate in the investigation

• Gathering and analysing data• Preparing, justifying, and presenting results to top-level managers

3- Perform feasibility analysis (expanded on the next slide) • The group will perform analysis to see if the project was feasible or not

4- Document the results• Systems investigation report • Steering committee – an advisory group consisting of senior management and users from the

IS department and other functional areas. 5

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Feasibility Analysis

1- Technical feasibility• Can the hardware, software, and other system

components be acquired or developed to solve the problem?

2- Legal feasibility• Will any laws or regulations prevent or limit a

systems development project.• e.g. create a internet site that allows users to

share music without paying record company etc.

• Need to look at both existing laws and regulations. As well as determining any possible future consequences or legal action.

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3- Operational feasibility • Can a project can be put into action or operation?• Motivational (sometimes refer to as Political

feasibility). Will the user accept the change? Any flow on political consequences after implementing a new system.

4- Schedule feasibility• Can the project be completed in within the

timeframe? In a reasonable amount of time full stop?

• Involves assess whether the time and resources available can be balanced

5- Economic feasibility• Does the project makes financial sense? (e.g. the

predicted benefits offset the costs). 8

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Project Management

“the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements”

Results of poor project management

Constraints

[Source: Schwalbe, 2006]

Quality

Time

Cost

Quality

Time

Scope

1.delivered late2.unreliable software3.cost several times the original

estimates4.poor performance of the

system

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Define the problem: Scope

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Project Management

“The manager who forgets that software engineering work is an intensely human endeavour will never have success in project management.” [Source: Pressman, 1997]

1- People: Lots of different types of people involved in development. For example: • Senior managers who define the business issues that

often have significant influence on the project• Project (technical) managers who must plan, motivate,

organize, and control developers who do software work.• Developers who deliver the technical skills that are

necessary to make the application• Customers specify the requirements for the software • End users interact with the software once it is released

for production use2- Problem

Alternative solutions, constraints and risks considered3 - Process

How will the team go about implementing the problem solution (managing progress)

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Choosing Project Teams

[source: Sommerville , 2003]

Application domain

experience

Personality

Programming and platform experience

Educational background

Communication ability

Adaptability

Attitude

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Project Planning“Effective management of a software project

depends on thoroughly planning the progress of the project”

Identifying milestones • End-point of a software process or activity• Formal output (e.g. report or form) • Milestone can be (part or whole) of elements

from all phases of developmentIdentifying deliverables – Results that is

delivered to the CustomerProject plan

[source: Sommerville, 2003]

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Project Plan

1. Introduction2. Project organisation3. Risk analysis4. Hardware and software

resource requirements5. Work breakdown6. Project schedule7. Monitoring and reporting

mechanisms

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Project Scheduling

“estimate the time and resources required to complete activities and organise them in a coherent sequence”

What factors should be considered?Process

[Sommerville, 2003]

Difficulties with Scheduling 1- Estimating is hard

• Particularly demanding task for project managers. Remember software is intangible.

• Can depend on project managers intuition and experience

• Other factors – large organisations usually employ a number of specialists who work on a projects as required. Therefore add an extra requirement to the scheduling problem. Plus can also create a follow on effect to other projects

2- Unexpected events• Having contingency plans for scheduling some time for

unexpected events • E.g. developer may fall ill or may leave, hardware

breaking down (just like assignments) • Estimate nothing going wrong then increase to cover

known problems and again to cover unknown problems17

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Project Scheduling: Gantt Charts

[source: www.smartdraw.com]

Gantt Charts• Gantt chart is a graphical tool used to project

scheduling, monitoring and coordinating projectsProject Management Software

• Can be automated using software Facilitated by project management software

• NetSQL Partners BeachBox ’98• Microsoft Project• Welcom OpenPlan• Scitor Project Scheduler

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Project Scheduling: Network Diagram

Task Duration (days)

Dependences

T1 8

T2 15

T3 15 T1

T4 10

T5 10 T2, T4

T6 5 T1, T2

T7 20 T1

T8 25 T4

T9 15 T3, T6

T10 15 T5, T7

T11 7 T9

T12 10 T11

Examples: T1: Project Plan, T8: Rental Form

• Activity networks show the name, duration, and dependences between different activities making up the project.

• Explain from the table how T3 depends on T1 being complete (e.g. T1 could be design of a component and T3 could be the implementation of the project).

• Using the dependencies & estimated durations of activities, a sequence can be generated showing which activities can be done in parallel

• Minimum time required to complete a project is the longest path (know as the critical path)

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Summary

Investigation Define the project Desiring if it should go ahead or not

Project managerProject teamsPlanning

Scheduling Risk management-------------------------------------------------------NOTE: START 1- Tutorial 1 2- End of Practical Sessions 1

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References

Stair and Reynolds, Principles of Information Systems, 7th Edition, Thomson, 2006

Sommerville, Software Engineering, 7th Edition, Addison Wesley, 2004

Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 4th Edition, Thomson, 2006

Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, 4th Edition, McGraw, 1997