Flying Santa
Kimkorng

IT Project Management (ITPM)

14 MAY, 2024

Chapter 1: Introduction to Project Management

Growing Importance of Project Management:

  • The need for better project management is increasing, particularly for IT projects, driven by the growth of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Defining a Project:
  • A project is a unique, temporary endeavor with a specific goal, involving multiple attributes such as defined objectives, resources, and deadlines. Triple/Quadruple Constraint:
  • Project management must balance scope, time, and cost (the triple constraint) and sometimes quality (quadruple constraint) to ensure project success. Project Management Framework:
  • Key elements include:
    • Stakeholders: Individuals and organizations affected by the project.
    • Knowledge Areas: Integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholder management.
    • Tools and Techniques: Specific methods used in each knowledge area to meet project requirements. Project, Program, and Portfolio Management:
  • Project Management: Focuses on individual projects.
  • Program Management: Manages related projects in a coordinated way for greater benefits.
  • Portfolio Management: Organizes and manages projects and programs as investments contributing to enterprise success. Role of Project Managers:
  • Project managers are crucial for project and organizational success, requiring skills in planning, executing, and managing resources. Professional Growth:
  • The project management profession is expanding, with certifications (like PMP) and professional organizations (like PMI) playing significant roles in standardizing practices and ethics. Ethics and Certification:
  • PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct guides project managers, emphasizing responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty. Project Management Software:
  • Tools range from low-end (basic features, under $200/user) to high-end (advanced features for large projects, variable costs), facilitating project planning, execution, and monitoring.

Chapter 2: The Project Management & IT Context

Systems View of Project Management:

  • Systems Approach: Combines systems philosophy, systems analysis, and systems management to address business, technological, and organizational issues.
  • Three-Sphere Model: Integrates business, technology, and organization. Understanding Organizations:
  • Four Frames of Organizations: Structural, Human Resources, Political, and Symbolic.
  • Organizational Structures: Functional, project, and matrix structures.
  • Organizational Culture: Defined by shared assumptions, values, and behaviors, with ten key characteristics influencing project success. Stakeholder Management:
  • Internal stakeholders include top management, project team, and internal customers.
  • External stakeholders encompass external customers, competitors, suppliers, and regulatory bodies. Top Management Commitment:
  • Crucial for securing resources, getting approvals, and fostering cooperation across the organization. Project and Product Life Cycles:
  • Project Life Cycle: Generally includes starting, organizing, carrying out the work, and finishing.
  • Product Life Cycle: Follows models like predictive, iterative, incremental, adaptive, and hybrid, tailored to IT projects. Recent Trends in IT Project Management:
  • Globalization: Enabled by IT, with challenges in communication, trust, and work practices.
  • Outsourcing and Virtual Teams: Advantages include cost savings and flexibility, while disadvantages involve isolation and communication issues.
  • Agile Methodologies: Emphasize flexibility and customer collaboration, with frameworks like Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP).

Chapter 3: Project Management Processes

Five Project Management Process Groups:

  1. Initiating:
    • Recognize and start a new project or phase.
    • Key outputs: Project charter, stakeholder register. ECHO is off.
  2. Planning:
    • Define scope, objectives, and procedures.
    • Key outputs: Project management plan, scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), Gantt chart. ECHO is off.
  3. Executing:
    • Perform the work defined in the project plan.
    • Key outputs: Deliverables, performance reports. ECHO is off.
  4. Monitoring and Controlling:
    • Track, review, and regulate project progress.
    • Key outputs: Performance reports, change requests. ECHO is off.
  5. Closing:
    • Finalize all project activities.
    • Key outputs: Final product, project closure documents, lessons learned.

Project Management Knowledge Areas:

  • Integration, Scope, Schedule, Cost, Quality, Resource, Communication, Risk, Procurement, Stakeholder Management.

IT Project Management Methodologies:

  • PRINCE2: Emphasizes dividing projects into manageable and controllable stages.
  • Agile/Scrum: Focuses on iterative development and flexibility.
  • Six Sigma: Uses DMAIC and DMADV for process improvement and design.
  • Rational Unified Process (RUP): Aims at producing high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users within a predictable schedule and budget.

Case Study: JWD Consulting

  • Predictive Approach: Traditional project management with a single software release.
  • Agile Approach: Emphasizes delivering multiple usable software releases, adapting to changes quickly.

Scrum Roles and Artifacts:

  • Roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team.
  • Artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment.

Chapter 4: Project Integration Management

  1. Strategic Planning and Project Selection:
    • Strategic Planning: Defines long-term goals, predicts trends, and identifies the need for new products or services.
    • Project Selection: Uses methods like SWOT analysis, financial analysis, and balanced scorecards to choose projects.
  2. Developing a Project Charter:
    • Formally authorizes a project and outlines objectives and management.
    • Signed by key stakeholders to confirm agreement.
  3. Developing a Project Management Plan:
    • Consolidates all subsidiary plans from other knowledge areas.
    • Includes an overview, project organization, technical processes, and detailed work plans.
  4. Directing and Managing Project Work:
    • Involves executing the project management plan.
    • Requires effective coordination, leadership, and utilization of appropriate tools and techniques.
  5. Monitoring and Controlling Project Work:
    • Ensures project activities align with the performance objectives.
    • Includes integrated change control to manage and document changes.
  6. Closing Projects or Phases:
    • Finalizes all activities and transitions the project deliverables to the relevant parties.
    • Ensures all project aspects are documented and archived appropriately.
  7. Tools and Techniques:
    • Various software tools can assist in integration management, from word processors for documentation to project management software for tracking and communication.

Chapter 5: Project Scope Management

Project Scope Management encompasses the processes required to ensure that a project includes all the necessary work and only the necessary work to complete the project successfully. It involves six key processes:

  1. Planning Scope Management:
    • Involves creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, validated, and controlled. It includes preparing a detailed project scope statement and guidelines for maintaining and approving the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
  2. Collecting Requirements:
    • This process is about gathering stakeholder needs and requirements to meet project objectives. Methods include interviewing, focus groups, facilitated workshops, group creativity and decision-making techniques, questionnaires, surveys, observation, and prototyping. These requirements are documented and managed through tools like a requirements traceability matrix.
  3. Defining Scope:
    • Defining scope involves creating a detailed description of the project and its deliverables. This process uses inputs such as the project charter and requirements documentation, and produces a project scope statement and updates to project documents.
  4. Creating the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS):
    • The WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to accomplish project objectives. It breaks down the project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components. A WBS dictionary accompanies the WBS, detailing each component. The WBS forms the scope baseline used to measure performance.
  5. Validating Scope:
    • This involves formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables by stakeholders. It typically includes inspections and sign-offs to ensure that deliverables meet the required standards and criteria.
  6. Controlling Scope:
    • Controlling scope entails managing changes to the project scope. This involves influencing factors that cause scope changes, ensuring changes are processed according to established procedures, and managing actual changes as they occur. Techniques include variance analysis and trend analysis to monitor performance and detect deviations from the scope baseline. Best Practices:
  • Develop a robust project selection process.
  • Involve users in scope management and give them ownership of requirements definition and scope verification.
  • Use off-the-shelf hardware and software when possible.
  • Follow good project management processes to avoid scope-related problems.
  • Employ software tools for creating scope-related documents, performing calculations, and managing changes effectively.

Chapter 6: Project Time Management

Key Processes in Project Time Management:

  1. Plan Schedule Management: Establishes policies and documentation for schedule planning and control.
  2. Define Activities: Identifies specific tasks to produce project deliverables.
  3. Sequence Activities: Determines relationships and dependencies among tasks.
  4. Estimate Activity Resources: Assesses the type and quantity of resources needed.
  5. Estimate Activity Durations: Calculates the time required to complete each activity.
  6. Develop Schedule: Integrates all information to create a realistic project timeline.
  7. Control Schedule: Monitors and adjusts the schedule to manage changes and keep the project on track. Important Tools and Techniques:
  • Gantt Charts: Visual tool for scheduling and tracking project progress.
  • Network Diagrams: Shows the logical sequence of project activities.
  • Critical Path Method (CPM): Identifies the longest path of activities to determine the shortest possible project duration.
  • Three-Point Estimates: Uses optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates for more accurate duration predictions.
  • PERT Analysis: Statistical tool used to analyze the tasks involved in completing a project. Best Practices:
  • Define milestones early and include them in the Gantt chart.
  • Keep milestones small and frequent.
  • Monitor the critical path carefully to manage risks and delays.

Chapter 7: Project Cost Management

Key Concepts in Project Cost Management:

  • Cost Overrun: The extent to which actual costs exceed estimates. IT projects often experience significant cost overruns.
  • Importance of Early Cost Estimates: Accurate early cost estimates are crucial, as underestimating can lead to major overruns.
  • Software Defects: Addressing defects early in the project lifecycle is far more cost-effective than fixing issues post-implementation. Basic Principles of Cost Management:
  • Profit and Profit Margin: Understanding financial metrics is essential for communicating with stakeholders.
  • Life Cycle Costing: Includes both development and support costs over the project's lifespan.
  • Cash Flow Analysis: Assesses the annual costs and benefits to determine the project's cash flow.
  • Types of Costs:
    • Tangible vs. Intangible Costs: Tangible costs can be easily measured in monetary terms, whereas intangible costs cannot.
    • Direct vs. Indirect Costs: Direct costs are directly related to the project, while indirect costs are not.
    • Sunk Costs: Money already spent in the past.
    • Reserves: Include contingency reserves (known unknowns) and management reserves (unknown unknowns). Project Cost Management Processes:
  1. Planning Cost Management: Establishes policies, procedures, and documentation for cost management.
  2. Estimate Costs: Develops an approximation of the monetary resources needed.
  3. Determine Budget: Aggregates estimated costs to establish an authorized cost baseline.
  4. Control Costs: Monitors project status to update and manage changes to the cost baseline. Types of Cost Estimates:
  • Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM): Early estimate with an accuracy range of -50% to +100%.
  • Budgetary Estimate: Used for budget allocation with an accuracy range of -10% to +25%.
  • Definitive Estimate: Most accurate, used for final budgeting and purchasing decisions with an accuracy range of -5% to +10%. Cost Estimating Tools and Techniques:
  • Analogous Estimating: Uses costs from previous projects for estimation.
  • Bottom-Up Estimating: Sums detailed estimates of individual activities.
  • Parametric Estimating: Uses statistical relationships between historical data and other variables.
  • Three-Point Estimating: Uses optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely estimates to improve accuracy.
  • Reserve Analysis: Adds contingency reserves to account for uncertainties. Common Problems with IT Cost Estimates:
  • Estimates are often made too quickly without sufficient information.
  • Estimators may lack experience or reliable data.
  • Human bias towards underestimation.
  • Management desires unrealistic accuracy. Best Practices:
  • Gather as much information as possible early in the project.
  • Clearly define assumptions and ground rules for estimates.
  • Use historical data and expert judgment to refine estimates.

Chapter 8: Project Quality Management

Project Quality Management ensures that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It encompasses the following processes:

  1. Quality Planning: Identifying quality requirements and standards for the project and its deliverables.
  2. Quality Assurance: Auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements to ensure that appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used.
  3. Quality Control: Monitoring and recording results of executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes. Tools and Techniques:
  • Seven Basic Tools of Quality: Cause-and-effect diagrams, control charts, checksheets, scatter diagrams, histograms, Pareto charts, and flowcharts.
  • Statistical Sampling: Selecting a part of the population for inspection.
  • Six Sigma: A set of techniques and tools for process improvement aimed at reducing defects. Noteworthy Quality Experts:
  • Contributions from Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and Feigenbaum have significantly influenced modern quality management practices. Leadership and Organizational Influence:
  • Strong leadership, understanding of stakeholders’ expectations, cultural differences, and the use of maturity models contribute to improving project quality. Software Assistance:
  • Various software tools can help in managing project quality, and it’s essential to choose the most suitable one for each specific project.
SHARE