The Technology 4 U

Project Management Process Groups

• 5 project management process groups  :
• Initiating processes
• actions to commit to begin/end project & project phases.
• define the business need for the project, sponsor, and project manager.
• initiate activities, documents lessons learned and resources.
• Planning processes
• devising & maintaining a workable scheme.
• created project plans & produce the products/deliverables of project.
• define scope, schedule, estimate costs, decide resources.
• Executing processes
• coordinating people & other resources to carry out plan, product/deliverables of the project.
• E.g: develop project team, providing leadership, verifying project scope, project quality and etc.
• Controlling processes
• ensure the project objectives are met.
• performance & status review.
• Closing Processes
• formalizing acceptance of the project.
• bringing project to an orderly end.
• administrative activities such as archiving project files, documenting lessons learned and receiving formal acceptance.

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Skills For A Project Manager

• 3 areas to lead project:
• Involvement
• executive management support
• clear statement requirement
• Skill for project manager:
• Management skills
• to understand, navigate and meet stakeholders need & expectations.
• to lead, communicate, and problem solve.
• Strong communication
• to lead & communicate with stakeholders.
• Leadership
• to lead their project team by providing vision & positive environment.
• Political skill
• Skill in organization
• to be able to plan, analyze, set and achieve project goals.
• to be able to motivate.
• strong teamwork & coping skills.
• Effective use of technology
• make decision using the special tools/technologies.

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The Importance of Project Stakeholders

Stakeholders

• people involved in or affected by project activities.
• Internal/external to the organization.
• Internal, e.g: project sponsor, project team, support staff and etc.
• External, e.g: project’s customer, competitors, suppliers and etc.

• to meet stakeholder needs and expectations
• identify, understand, and manage relationships with all project stake holders.

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Organizational Structures

Understanding Organizations

• Improve the success of project with better understanding of organizations.
• Organizations can viewed as:
• The structural frame - deals with how the organization is structured.
• The human resources frame - focuses on producing harmony. between the need of organization and the need of the people.
• The political frame - address organizational and personal politics.
• The symbolic frame - focuses on symbols and meanings.
• Project manager must learn to use all four of these in order to function well in organizations.

• Functional:- the hierarchy most people think of when picturing an organizational chart. For example, colleges and universities.
• Project:- the hierarchy structure, but instead of functional managers or vice presidents reporting to the CEO, project managers report to the CEO. For example, MAS Aircraft Company.
• Matrix:- represent the middle ground between functional and project structures. Personnel often report to both a functional manager and one or more project managers.

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Project Phases & Project Life Cycle

Concept phase:

• briefly the project, develop very high level/summary plan.
• describes the need for the project and basic underlying concepts.
• preliminary cost estimate.
• the work involved is created.
• the end of the phase, deliver a report and presentation on its finding.

• Creates a more detailed project plan, a more accurate cost estimate and more thorough project work.
• Minimizes the time and money.

• delivers the required work and creates a definitive or very accurate cost estimate.
• bulk of time should be spent here.

• completed work.
• lessons learned(provide document/report).
• customer acceptance.

• A framework to describe the phases involve in developing and maintaining systems.

• The waterfall model - well-defined, linear stages of systems development support.
• The spiral model - developed based on experience with various refinement project of the waterfall model.
• The incremental model - for progressive development of operational software, with release providing added capabilities.
• The prototyping model - developing software prototypes to clarify requirements for operational software.

• A project must successfully pass through each project phases.
• Organization commit more money as a project continues, a management review to evaluate.
• Management reviews called phase exits/kill points.
• Important for keeping projects on track and determining if they should be:
• Continued
• Redirected
• Terminated.

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Systems View of Project Management

• Systems thinking - taking a holistic view of projects and the organization to effectively handle complex situations.
• Systems approach - a holistic and analytically approach to solving complex problems that includes using a systems philosophy, systems analysis, and systems management.
• Systems philosophy - an overall model for thinking about things as systems.
• Systems - sets of interacting components working within an environment to fulfill some purpose.
• Systems analysis - a problem-solving approach that requires defining the scope of the system to be studied, and then dividing it into its component parts for identifying and evaluating its problems, opportunities, constraints, and needs.
• Systems management - addressing the business, technological, and organization issues associated with making a change to a system.
• Project manager identify key business, technological, and organizational issues related to each project in order to identify and satisfy key stakeholder.
• Projects address issues in all three spheres of the system management model: business, organizational, and technological.
• Issues:
• Technology and day-to-day problem, people problems, politics, business and organizational issues .
• Project manager integrate issues into their planning to ensuring project success.

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Introduction of Software Project Management - 2

 Software Project Management? 

• Increasing demand for more complex software.
• Growing inventory of software to maintain
• Maintenance costs are 50% of original software costs
• Shortage of well-trained software professionals
• Only learning the languages, not Software Engineering

• Software is delivered behind schedule
• 20-50% schedule slip is common.
• Software budgets are overrun
• Overruns of 50-100% are common.
• Success is defined as an overrun of <30 br="">
• Software quality is unacceptable
• Software is not maintainable.
• Users are dissatisfied

• Software is conceptual.
• Software has a higher level of complexity than hardware.
• Software is constrained by hardware, but not vice-versa.
• Deceptively easy to introduce changes, and bugs.
• Software includes more complex logic and data structures.
• Software Configuration Management (SCM) is more complex.

• Lack of understanding and training
• Software Managers typically come from technical backgrounds
• Program and Systems Managers typically come from hardware backgrounds and don’t understand ANYTHING about software.
• Lack of Research
• Management researchers assumed computer scientists should research software management.
• Computer scientists more interested in technical issues.
• Currently, software community is doing more research into managing the software development process.

• Better control
• Improved customer relations
• Shorter development times
• Lower costs
• Higher Quality & Increased reliability
• Higher profit
• Improved productivity
• Better internal coordination
• higher worker morale

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