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Foundations of Project Managment Ch. 1-2

Terms in this set (52)

Project
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.
Project Manager
the person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives.
Project Attributes
*Time Frame: Definite beginning an end. Work backwards from end date
*Purpose: Create something unique and measurable
*Ownership: A project can have many stakeholders that include people, groups, or other organizations that have a vested interest in the project's success or failure.
*Resources: Resources include time, money, people, facilities, and technology.
*Project Roles
*Risks & Assumptions: Internal & External Risks, Assumptions
*Interdependent Tasks
*Organizational Change
*Organizational Environment
Project Roles
▪Project Manager or Leader
▪Project Sponsor
▪Subject Matter Experts (SME)
▪Technical Experts(TE)
Project Manager or Leader
The project manager or team leader is responsible for ensuring that all the project management processes and processes associated with the creation of the product, service, or system are in place and carried out efficiently and effectively.
Project Sponsor
The project sponsor may be the client, customer, or high-level executive who plays the role of champion for the project by providing resources, making project-related decisions, giving direction, and publicly supporting the project when needed.
Subject Matter Expert
A subject matter expert may be a user or a person who has specific knowledge, expertise, or insight in a specific functional area needed to support the project.
Technical Experts
Technical expertise is needed when engineering or building a product, service, or system. Technical experts may include database analysts, network specialists, engineers, programmers, graphic artists, and so forth.
Internal Risks
Risks may arise from the way the project work is estimated to cost or the time to be completed.
External Risks
Risks that could arise from dependencies on other contractors, project teams, or suppliers.
Assumptions
Different forms of risk that are introduced to the project as a result of forecasts or predictions.
Progressive Elaboration
The details of a project become clearer as more information becomes available
Project Management
Application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
Project Portfolio
Collection of diverse projects for an organization
Program
Projects are managed where the projects' activities are coordinated so that the benefits of the program are greater than the sum benefits of the individual projects
Why Projects Fail
*People
*Process
*Technology
*Organization
Improving Likelihood of Success
*Value-Driven Approach
*Socio-Technical Approach
*Project Management Approach
*Resources
*Expectation
*Competition
*Efficiency and Effectiveness
*Knowledge Management Approach
Project Methodologies
Provide a systematic way to plan, manage, and execute the work to be completed by prescribing phases, processes, tools, and techniques to be followed.
Benefits of Following a Project Management Methodology
▪A project team can focus on the product or system without having to debate how the work is to be done.
▪Stakeholders understand their role, and these roles can be applied to future projects.
▪Experiences can be documented in terms of lessons learned and integrated into the methodology as best practices.
▪Past, present, and future projects can be compared with confidence in terms of planning and progress reporting. ▪Valuable time can be saved because approaches, tools, techniques, and templates can be reused across projects. ▪Following a methodology provides a useful template for planning the project work and associated tasks.
Phase exits, stage gates, or kill points
Phase-end reviews that allow the organization to evaluate the project's performance and to take immediate action to correct any problems or even cancel the project..
Fast tracking
Starting the next phase before the current phase is complete to reduce the project's schedule, but the overlapping of phases can be risky.
Project Life Cycle
*Define Project Goal
*Plan Project-Objectives, Resources, Controls
*Execute Project Plan
*Close and Evaluate Project
*
Project Management Knowledge Areas(PMBOK)
▪Project integration management—Integration focuses on coordinating the project plan's development, execution, and control of changes.
▪Project scope management—A project's scope is the work to be completed by the project team. This may include specific requirements, features, functionality, or standards for the product or system to be delivered, or it could include project-related deliverables like the project's schedule and budget.
▪Project time management—Time management is important for developing, monitoring, and managing the project's schedule. It includes identifying the project's phases and activities and then estimating, sequencing, and assigning resources for each activity to ensure that the project's scope and objectives are met.
▪Project cost management—Cost management assures that the project's budget is developed and completed as approved.
▪Project quality management—Quality management focuses on planning, developing, and managing a quality environment that allows the project to meet stakeholder needs or expectations.
▪Project human resource management—People are the most important resource on a project. Human resource management focuses on creating and developing the project team as well as understanding and responding appropriately to the behavioral side of project management.
▪Project communications management—Communication management entails communicating timely and accurate information about the project to the project's stakeholders. ▪Project risk management—All projects face a certain amount of risk. Project risk management is concerned with identifying and responding appropriately to risks that can impact the project.
▪Project procurement management—Projects often require resources (people, hardware, software, etc.) that are outside the organization. Procurement management makes certain that these resources are acquired properly.
▪Project stakeholder management—Stakeholders are people and include individuals, organizations, or business units that have a vested interest in the success (or failure) of a project.
Process
A set of interrelated actions and activities performed to achieve a pre-specified product, result, or service
Project Management Process Groups
▪Initiating—The initiating process group signals the beginning of the project or a phase.
▪Planning—The planning process group supports planning of the entire project and each individual phase.
▪Executing—Once a project phase has been approved and planned, the executing process group focuses on integrating people and resources to carry out the planned activities of the project plan or phase.
▪Monitoring and Controlling—The monitoring and controlling process group allows for managing and measuring progress toward the project's goal and scope, schedule, budget, and quality objectives.
▪Closing—The closing process group provides a set of processes for formally accepting the project's product, service, or system so that the project or phase can be brought to an orderly close.
PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE2 ®)
A nonproprietary project management methodology that was developed originally for government projects in the United Kingdom. The aim of PRINCE2 ® is to ensure that projects are well-thought out in the beginning, well-managed throughout, and organized until the end.
Project Board
Managing, monitoring, and controlling the project activities to ensure that the project achieves the value envisioned in the business case. The Project Board may have up to eight people and includes three important roles: a customer, a senior user, and a senior supplier.
Customer
A customer, client, or executive sponsor who represents the business interests of the organization. (PRINCE2)
Senior User
Senior user represents the interests of the users or stakeholders who will use the project's product in order to bring the expected value or benefits to the organization.(PRINCE2)
Senior Supplier
The senior supplier represents the suppliers or specialists who provide the skills or resources needed to deliver the project's product. (PRINCE2)
PRINCE 2 Processes
*Start Project: Focused on developing a project brief or document that provides business justification for the project. The Project Board is created and determines whether the project should be commissioned to continue to the next stage.
▪Initiate Project—The main focus of this process is to develop the project brief into a more detailed business case, which is a key document that lays a foundation for all important project decisions.
▪Direct Project—The Project Board's overall activities are defined so that it can direct the project successfully throughout each stage up through the project's closure.
▪Control Stage—During this process, the project manager's day-to-day activities are defined as well as how the project tasks will be controlled and monitored.
▪Manage Product Delivery—The project manager plans each stage as a set of work packages to be delivered.
▪Manage Stage Boundaries—This includes the reporting mechanisms the project manager will give to the Project Board to review the status of the project and to determine whether continued business justification for the project exists.
▪Close Project—This ensures that the project is completed in a controlled manner if the project work is completed as planned or if it is no longer viable.
Work Packages (PRINCE2)
Products to delivered, the people authorized to do the work, constraints, tolerances, as well as the resources and time line for completing the work. This process ensures that the work packages are developed, delivered, and approved as planned.
PRINCE2 Themes
▪Business Case: "Why should this project be funded?" and "Why should this project continue to be funded?"
▪Organization—"Who is involved with the project?" Under this theme, roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities are defined.
▪Quality: Ensure that the project is not only completed on time and within budget, but that it also is completed within standard.
▪Planning—"Who does what?" and "When will it get done?" Plans also provide control for the delivery of the project's product and to determine whether the cost, time, quality, risk, work performance targets are achievable.
▪Change: Requests for changes can come from any of the project stakeholders, so a systematic way to document, manage, and decide whether proposed changes are necessary is warranted.
▪Progress—Measure a project's achievement and forecast whether the project's progress. The progress theme attempts to answer the questions, "Where is the project now?" and "Where will it end up?"
PRINCE2 Principles
▪Business Case Driven—The business case is a key document that is developed at the beginning of the project and must be continually justified throughout(funding) ▪Product Focus—Projects are undertaken to produce a product. PRINCE2 ® projects emphasize the design and delivery of a quality product.
▪Lessons Learned—PRINCE2 ® is based on proven best practices. Documented lessons learned are an important component for the PRINCE2 ® methodology
▪Manage the Stage—At each stage of the project, the Project Board reviews the project's progress in comparison to the business case. Each stage is planned, monitored, and controlled.
▪Adapt to the Project—. The methodology can be scaled to the size of the project and should be flexible in terms of the risks and environment unique to the project.
▪Manage by Exception—Tolerances are defined and used to empower project stakeholders by allowing them to make decisions without having to ask for approval from the next higher level of authority.
▪Accountability—PRINCE2 ® projects should have clear roles and responsibilities. Stakeholders need to know their role as well as everyone else's. The Project Board includes executive sponsorship that defines the project's objectives and ensures that the project remains viable. Internal or external suppliers provide resources, skills, or the knowledge to deliver the project's products, while users represent those stakeholders who will benefit from the delivery of the final product.
Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
▪Planning: Identifying and responding to a problem or opportunity and incorporates the project management and system development processes and activities. Ensures that the goal, scope, budget, schedule, technology, and system development processes, methods, and tools are in place.
▪Analysis: The analysis phase attempts to delve into the problem or opportunity more fully. I identify and document any problems or bottlenecks associated with the current system. Here the specific needs and requirements for the new system are identified and documented.
▪Design: During the design phase, the project team uses the requirements and "to be" logical models as input for designing the architecture to support the new information system.
This architecture includes designing the network, hardware configuration, databases, user interface, and application programs.
▪Implementation: Implementation includes the development or construction of the system, testing, and installation. In addition, training, support, and documentation must be in place.
▪Maintenance and Support: Once the system has been implemented, it is said to be in production. Changes to the system, in the form of maintenance and enhancements, are often requested to fix any discovered errors (i.e., bugs) within the system, to add any features that were not incorporated into the original design, or to adjust to a changing business environment. Support, in terms of a call center or help desk, may also be in place to help users on an as-needed basis.
PLC v. SDLC
Project life cycle (PLC) focuses on the phases, processes, tools, knowledge, and skills for managing a project.

Systems development life cycle (SDLC) focuses on creating and implementing the project's product—the information system.
Waterfall Model
The waterfall model is a sequential (non-iterative) design process, used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, production/implementation and maintenance. Despite the development of new software development process models, the Waterfall method is still the dominant process model with over a third of software developers still using it.[1]

The waterfall development model originates in the manufacturing and construction industries: highly structured physical environments in which after-the-fact changes are prohibitively costly, if not impossible. Because no formal software development methodologies existed at the time, this hardware-oriented model was simply adapted for software development.[2]
Agile Systems Development-Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan
12 Principles of Agile Software
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
eXtreme Programming
The system is transferred to the users in a series of versions called releases. A release may be developed using several iterations that are developed and tested within a few weeks or months. Each release is a working system that includes only one or several functions that are part of the full system specifications.
User Story
Activities where the user requirements are first documented
Class Diagram
Illustration of the relationships and source code dependencies among classes in the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In this context, a class defines the methods and variables in an object, which is a specific entity in a program or the unit of code representing that entity.
Scrum
Scrum is an agile software development model based on multiple small teams working in an intensive and interdependent manner.
Scrum Master
A scrum master is the facilitator for an agile development team. Scrum is a methodology that allows a team to self-organize and make changes quickly, in accordance with agile principles. The scrum master manages the process for how information is exchanged.
Product Manager
The Scrum product owner is typically a project's key stakeholder. Part of the product owner responsibilities is to have a vision of what he or she wishes to build, and convey that vision to the scrum team. This is key to successfully starting any agile software development project.


Build and manage the product backlog
Closely partner with the business and the team to ensure everyone understands the work items in the product backlog
Give the team clear guidance on which features to deliver next
Decide when to ship the product with the predisposition towards more frequent delivery
Development Team
The Development Team is responsible for delivering potentially shippable increments (PSIs) of product at the end of each Sprint (the Sprint goal). A team is made up of 3-9 individuals who do the actual work (analyse, design, develop, test, technical communication, document, etc.). Development Teams are cross-functional, with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a Product Increment. The Development Team in Scrum is self-organizing, even though there may be some interaction with a project management office (PMOs).
Product Backlog
Backlog refinement (once called backlog grooming) is the ongoing process of reviewing Product Backlog Items and checking that they are appropriately prioritised and prepared in a way that makes them clear and executable for teams once they enter Sprints via the Sprint Planning activity. Product Backlog Items may be broken into multiple smaller ones; acceptance criteria may be clarified; and dependencies, investigation, and preparatory work may be identified and agreed as technical spikes.
Sprint
Each sprint generally takes a few weeks, and a completed product is delivered. Additional features and functionality are planned for the next sprint until all of the features in the product backlog are delivered.
Daily Scrum
Each day, the Scrum master, product owner, and development team have a short, stand-up meeting called the daily Scrum during which information and the project's progress are shared.
Learning Cycle and Lessons Learned
*Understand and frame the problem—It is important that a project team not accept the issues and challenges presented to them at face value.
*Plan—To help teams understand and reframe the problem, teams should create a shared understanding of the problem or opportunity. This understanding includes defining what team members are trying to accomplish and how they are going to go about it. The team can brainstorm what it knows (the facts), what it thinks it knows (assumptions), and what it doesn't know (questions to be answered).
*Act—Once the project team identifies what it knows, what it thinks it knows, and what it needs to find out, it can create a plan of action. Team members can volunteer or be assigned to specific tasks that require testing assumptions or learning answers to questions. Documenting who does what by when also provides a tool for accountability.
*Reflect and learn—After the team has had a chance to carry out the action items in the action-learning plan, the team should meet to share its findings and reflect upon what everyone has learned.
Learning Cycle and Lessons Learned Post Mortem Questions
▪What do we know now that we didn't know before?
▪Have we encountered any surprises? Have we gained any new insights? If so, what were they?
▪What previous assumptions have been supported or refuted by what we have learned so far?
▪How does the team feel the project is progressing at this point?
▪How effective has the team been so far?
Three Dimensions to Team Learning
▪Speed—First, a team should follow a learning cycle approach rather than a traditional, linear approach. Second, speed refers to the number of learning cycles completed.
▪Depth—Depth of learning refers to the degree to which a team can deepen its understanding of the project from cycle to cycle. This learning includes challenging the framing of the problem and various assumptions.
▪Breadth—The breadth of learning refers to the impact the project has on the organization. It also focuses on whether the learning that has taken place within the team stays within the team or is shared and used throughout the organization.
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