Revised CHAPTER-TWO.pptppppppppppppppppp

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CHAPTER TWO
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

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INTRODUCTION
 It has been believed that information technology in the
development of information systems are more important
than the management of development projects.
 BUT Project management is an important aspect of the
development of information systems and a critical skill for a
systems analyst.
 The focus of project management is:
 To assure that system development projects meet customer
expectations (e.g. scope) and are delivered within :

budget

time constraints.

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Managing Information Systems
Projects
 The project manager is a systems analyst with a
diverse set of skills:
 management, leadership, technical, conflict management,
and customer relationship, team mgt, and risk & change
mgt.
 Many of the skills are related to general management,
not simply technical skills.
 In some organizations the project manger is a senior
systems analyst who "has been around the block" a
time or two.

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Projects
 Creating and implementing successful
projects require managing:
 resources and activities needed to complete
the information systems project.
 A project is a planned undertaking of a
series of related activities to reach an
objective that has a beginning and end.
 The first question you might ask yourself is
"Where do projects come from?"

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Projects
 During project identification and selection
the need for a new or enhanced system is
recognized.
 Organization vary in as to how they
identify potential projects.

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Projects
 There are varieties of forms to be used in
requesting for information systems
development.
 One form is a System Service Request (SSR) filled
by user departments collaborating with a system
analyst
 This request was then evaluated by the Systems
Priority Board.
 The review board selects those projects that best

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Managing Information Systems Projects
 In summary, systems development
projects are undertaken for two primary
reasons;
 To take advantage of business
opportunities and
 To solve business problems.

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Information System Project Phase
 Determining the scope and resource requirements
for a project are just a few of the many activities that
a project manager must involve.
 He/she is a person who is responsible for:

initiating, planning, executing, and closing down a
project.
 The PM process, which involves four phases:
 Initiating the project
 Planning the project
 Executing the project
 Closing down the project

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Information System Project Phase
 Several activities must be
performed during each of these four
phases.

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1. Initiating a Project
 During project initiation, the project manager performs
several activities that assess the size, scope, and
complexity of the project.
 The Activities are:
1. Establishing the project initiation team.
 This activity involves organizing an initial core of project
team members.
2. Establishing a relationship with the customer.
 A detailed understanding of your customer builds stronger
partnership and higher levels of trust.

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1. Initiating a Project cont…
3. Establishing the project initiation plan.
 This step defines the activities required to
organize the initiation team and also the scope
of the project
 The core team members of the project needed
to define:
 when and how they would communicate,
 define project steps, deliverables and set
deadlines.
 These steps eventually led to the creation of
their System Service Request (SSR) form.

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4. Establishing management procedures.
 Successful projects require the development of
effective management procedures.
 In some org’n, many of the mgt procedure
would be established as SOP
 In establishing procedures, you are concerned
with developing:
 team communication and reporting procedure
 job assignments and roles, project change
procedures, and
 Determining how project funding and billing will
be handled.

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5. Establishing the project management
environment and project workbook.
 The focus to this activity is to collect and organize the
tools that you will use while managing the project and
to construct the project workbook.
 The project workbook serves as a repository for
all project:
 correspondence, inputs, outputs, deliverables,
procedures, and standards established by the project
team.

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2. Planning the Project
 Project planning involves defining:
 clear, discrete activities and
 the work needed to complete each activity within a
single project.
 There is positive relationship between effective
project planning and better project outcomes.
 In actual fact, you often have to construct longer-term
plans that are more general in scope and nearer term
plans that are more detailed.

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2. Planning the Project cont…
 Varied and numerous activities will be
performed during project planning.
1. Describing project scope, alternatives, and
feasibility.
 The purpose of this activity is to understand
the content and complexity of the project.
 The scope answer the following question
 What problem or opportunity does the project
address?
 What are the quantifiable results to be achieved?
 How will success be measured?
 How will we know when we are finished?

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
After defining the scope of the project,
identify and document general alternative
solution for the current business problem or
opportunity.

You must then assess the feasibility of each
alternative solution and choose which to consider
during subsequent SDLC phases
 In some instances, off-the-shelf software can be
found.

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2. Dividing the project into manageable
tasks.

Divide the entire project into manageable tasks and
then logically order them to ensure a smooth
evolution between tasks.
 The definition of tasks and their sequence is
referred to as the work breakdown structure.
 Some tasks may be performed in parallel where
as others must follow one another sequentially.

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 Defining tasks in too much detail will make the
management of the project unnecessarily complex.
 For example, it may be very difficult to list tasks that
require less than one hour of time to complete in a final
work breakdown structure.
3. Estimating resources and creating a resource
plan.
 Estimate resource requirements for each project activity
and use this information to create a project resource
plan.

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 The resource plan helps assemble and deploy
resource in the most effective manner.

Project time estimates for task completion and
overall system quality are significantly influenced
by the assignment of resource(e.g. people) to tasks.
 One approach to assigning tasks is to assign a single
task type to each worker for the duration of the project.

Like business analyst, designer ,programmer…

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4. Developing preliminary schedule.
 Using the information on tasks and resource
availability assign time estimates by creating target
starting and ending dates for the project.
 Target dates can be revised and modified until a
schedule produced is acceptable to the customer.
 The schedule may be represented as a Gantt chart
or as a Network diagram (PERT) chart.

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5. Developing a communication plan.
 Outline the communication procedures among:

management, project team members, and the customer.
 The communication plan includes:

when and how written and oral reports will be provided
by the team…
6. Determining project standards and
procedures.
You will specify how various deliverables are
produced and tested by you and your project team.

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 For example, the team must decide:
 which tools to use
 how the standard SDLC might be modified,
 which SDLC methods will be used
 documentation styles (e.g., type fonts and margins
for user manuals).
 Setting project standards and procedures for work
acceptance is a way to assure the development of a
high-quality system.

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7. Identifying and assessing risk.
 It identify sources of project risk and to estimate
the consequences of those risks.
 Risk might arise:
 from the use of new technology,
 prospective users' resistance to change,
8. Creating a cost benefit analysis.
 Create a preliminary budget that outlines the
planned expenses and revenues associated with your
project.

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 The project justification will demonstrate that
the benefits are worth these costs.(B>C)
 This analysis shows NPV, ROI and cash flow
analysis.
9. Developing a Statement of Work.
 It is developed primarily for the customer.
 This document outlines work that will be done and
clearly describes what the project will deliver.
 The statement of Work is useful to make sure:
 You, the customer, and other project team members
have a clear understanding of the intended project
outcomes.

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10. Setting a Baseline Project Plan.
 Once all of the project planning activities have been
completed, you will be able to develop a baseline
project plan.
 This baseline plan provides an estimate of the
project's tasks and resource requirements and is
used to guide in next project phase - execution.

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 As new information is acquired during
project executions, the baseline plan will
continue to update.

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Executing the Project
 Project execution puts the Baseline
Project Plan (BPP) into action.
 project execution occurs primarily during
the analysis, design, and
implementation phase.
 the project manager is responsible for
five key activities during project
execution.

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1. Executing the Baseline Project Plan.
 you initiate the execution of project activities

acquire and assign resources;
 orient and train new team members,

You are responsible for initiating new team
members by providing them with the resources
they need and helping them assimilate into the
team.

keep the project on schedule, and

assure the quality of project deliverables.

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 Regular project status meeting,
 team-level reviews of project deliverables, and
other group events to mold the group into an
effective team.
2. Monitoring Project Progress against the Baseline
Project Plan.
 While you execute the BPP you should monitor
your progress.
 If the project gets ahead of (or behind) schedule,
you may have to adjust resources, activities, and
budgets.

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 Monitoring project activities can result in
modifications to the current plan.
 Measuring the time and effort expended on
each activity will help you improve the
accuracy of estimations for future projects.
3. Managing changes to the Baseline Project
Plan.
 You will encounter pressure to make changes to
the BPP.

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 You include only approved changes to the project
specification, all changes must be reflected in the
BPP and project workbook.
 A formal change request must be submitted and
approved by the steering committee.

The request should explain why changes are desired and
describe all possible impacts on prior and subsequent
activities, project resources, and the overall project
schedule.

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4. Maintaining project workbook
 Maintain complete records of all project
events.
 The workbook provides the documentation
new team members require to assimilate
project tasks quickly.

It explains why design decisions were
made and is a primary source of information
for producing all project reports.

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5. Communicating the project status.
 The project manger is responsible for keeping all
team abreast of the project status.
 Clear communication is required to create a
shared understanding of the activities and goals
of the project; such an understanding assures
better coordination of activities.
 Procedures for communication project activities
vary from formal meeting to informal hallway
discussions.

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 The ease with which the project can be
Executed/managed is significantly influenced
by the quality of prior phases.
 If you develop a high-quality project plan, it is
much more likely that the project will be
successfully executed.

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Closing Down the project
 The focus of project closedown is to bring the
project to an end.
 Project can conclude with a natural or
unnatural termination.
 Several events can cause an unnatural
termination to a project. For example,
 it may be learned that the assumption used to
guide the project proved to be false or

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 the performance of the system or development
group was somehow inadequate.
 the requirements are no longer relevant or valid in
the customer’s business environment.
 The most likely reasons for the unnatural
termination of a project relate to running out of time
or money, or both

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 Within the context of the SDLC, project closedown occurs
after the implementation phase.
1. Closing down the project.
 project completion may signify job and assignment
changes for some members.
 Assess each team member and provide an appraisal for personnel
files and salary determination.

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 write letters to superiors, praising special
accomplishments of team members, and send
thank-you letters to those who helped but were not
team members.
 notify all interested parties that the project has
been completed. ( managing group, customers…)
 finalize all project documentation and financial
records so that a final review of the project can be
conducted.
 You should also celebrate the accomplishments of
the project

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2. Conducting post project reviews.
 Final review of the project would be
conducted with management and
customers.

The objective of these reviews is:
 To determine the strengths and weaknesses of
project deliverables,
 To evaluate the processes used to create the
deliverables, and the project management
process.

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 It is important that everyone understands
what went right and what went wrong in
order to improve the process for the next
project.
3. Closing the customer contract.
 The focus of this final activity is to ensure
that all contractual terms of the project
have been met.
 you must gain agreement from your
customer that all contractual obligations
have been met.

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 You must also must agreed that
further work is either their
responsibility or covered under
another SSR or contract.
 A project is not complete until it is
closed, and it is at closedown that
projects are deemed a success or
failure.

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Representing and Scheduling
Project plans
 A project manager has a wide variety of techniques
available for depicting and document project
plans.
 The most commonly used methods are Gantt and
or Network diagram PERT (Program Evaluation
Review Technique) Charts.
 Gantt Charts
 Useful for depicting simple projects or parts of
large projects
 Show start and completion dates for individual
tasks
 Network Diagrams
 Show order of activities

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Comparison of Gantt Charts
and Network Diagrams
 Gantt Charts
 Visually shows
duration of tasks
 Visually shows time
overlap between
tasks
 Visually shows slack
time
 Network Diagrams
 Visually shows
dependencies
between tasks
 Visually shows
which tasks can be
done in parallel
 Shows slack time by
data in rectangles

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Representing Project Plans
 Project scheduling and management require
that time, costs; piece of equipment, or
material used in accomplishing an activity.
 Network diagram (PERT) is a critical path
scheduling technique used for controlling
resources.
 A critical path refers to a sequence of task
activities whose order and durations directly
affect the completion date of a project.
 Network diagram is best-known scheduling
methods.

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Calculating Expected Time
Duration using PERT
 where

ET= expected time for the completion for an activity

o=optimistic completion time for an activity
 r= realistic completion time for an activity

p= pessimistic completion time for an activity
 Calculate an expected time for the completion of
an upcoming programming assignment. For this
assignment, you estimate an optimistic time of 2
hours, a pessimistic time of 8 hours, and a most
likely time of (r) 6 hors. Using PERT, how much is
the expected time for completing this assignment.
6
4 p
r
o
ET




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Constructing a Gantt Chart and
Network Diagram
 Steps
1. Identify each activity

Requirements Collection

Screen Design

Report Design

Database Design

User documentation

Software programming

Installation and testing

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Gantt Chart and Network
Diagram for GM Furniture
2. Determine time estimates and expected
completion times for each activity.

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3. Determine sequence of activities

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4. Determine critical path

Sequence of events that will affect the final
project delivery date
1
5
3
2
4
8
6 7
TE=11
TL=11
ET=6
TE=13
TL=13
TE=18.5
TL=21
TE=22
TL=22
ET=5
ET=3
TE=5
TL=5
ET=6
ET=2
ET=5.5
TE=21
TL=21
TE=18
TL=18
ET=1
ET=5
TE=11
TL=11
Critical Path
Non Critical Path

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Commercial Project
Management Software
 Many systems are available
 Three activities required to use:
 Establish project start or end date
 Enter tasks and assign task relationships
 Select scheduling method to review
project reports

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Summary
 Skills of an effective project manager
 Activities of project manager
 Initiation
 Planning
 Execution
 Closedown
 Gantt Charts and Network Diagrams
 Commercial PM Software

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