INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CMP 411

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
REFERENCE TEXTBOOK
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information Technology Project Management. 9th Edition.
Cengage, Boston, USA.
 A SCENARIO OF INTEREST
❑Anne Roberts, the director of the Project Management Office for a large retail chain, stood
in front of 500 people in the large corporate auditorium to explain the company’s new
strategies during a monthly all-hands meeting.
❑She was also streaming live video to thousands of other employees at other locations,
suppliers, and stockholders throughout the world.
❑The company had come a long way in implementing new information systems to improve
inventory control, sell products online, streamline the sales and distribution processes, and
improve customer service.
❑However, a recent security breach had alarmed investors and the stock price plummeted.
People were anxious to hear about the company’s new strategies.
 A SCENARIO OF INTEREST
❑Anne began to address the audience,
❑“Good morning. As many of you know, we have completed many projects successfully,
including the advanced data networks project.
❑That project enabled us to provide persistent broadband between headquarters and
our retail stores throughout the world, allowing us to make timely decisions and continue
our growth strategy.
❑Our customers love that they can return items to any store, and any sales clerk can look
up past sales information. Local store managers can make timely decisions using up-to-
date information.
❑Of course, we’ve had some failures, and we need to continually assess our portfolio of
projects to meet business needs.
 A SCENARIO OF INTEREST
❑Two big IT initiatives this coming year include providing the best computer security
possible and providing enhanced online collaboration tools for our employees, suppliers,
and customers.
❑Our challenge is to work even smarter to decide what projects will most benefit the
company, how we can continue to leverage the power of information technology to
support our business, and how we can exploit our human capital to successfully plan and
execute those projects.
❑If we succeed, we’ll continue to be a world-class corporation.”
❑“And if we fail?” someone asked from the audience.
ANNE REPLY
?
 WHAT WENT WRONG?
❑In 1995, the Standish Group published an often-quoted study titled “The CHAOS Report.”
❑This consulting firm surveyed 365 IT executive managers in the United States who managed more
than 8,380 IT application projects.
❑The projects were in a state of chaos. U.S. companies spent more than $250 billion each year
❑In the early 1990s on approximately 175,000 IT application development projects.
❑Examples of these projects included creating a new database for a state department of motor
vehicles, developing a new system for car rental and hotel reservations, and implementing a
client-server architecture for the banking industry.
❑Overall success rate of IT projects was only 16.2 percent.
❑Success is meeting project goals on time and on budget.
❑More than 31 percent of IT projects were canceled before completion, costing U.S. companies and
government agencies more than $81 billion.
 WHAT WENT WRONG?
❑The study authors were adamant about the need for better project management in the
IT industry.
❑“Software development projects are in chaos, and we can no longer imitate the three
monkeys—hear no failures, see no failures, speak no failures.”
❑Senior executives have to pay attention to the importance of IT project management.
❑In another large study, PricewaterhouseCoopers surveyed 200 companies from 30
different countries about their project management maturity and found that over half of
all projects fail.
❑Only 2.5 percent of corporations consistently meet their targets for scope, time, and cost
goals for all types of projects
WHAT IS A PROJECT
❑To discuss project management, it is important to understand the concept of a
project.
❑A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product,
service, or result.”
❑Operations, on the other hand, is work done in organizations to sustain the
business.
❑Projects are different from operations in that they end when their objectives
have been reached or the project has been terminated.
 THE REALITY OF THE DAY
❑One of Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2012 included application stores and
marketplaces for smartphones and tablets.
❑They predicted that by 2014 there would be more than 70 billion mobile application
downloads every year, but the actual number was almost double!
❑Facebook is by far the most downloaded app, and the most popular category of all
apps continues to be games.
❑There are over 1.3 million apps in Apple’s App store and another 1.3 million in Google’s
Play Store.
❑Of course, business professionals use phone applications for productive purposes. The
challenge is to develop useful apps and get workers to focus on them instead of the many
distracting options available.
❑Business Insider, Forbes, PC Magazine, and website Lifehacker.com provide lists of top
productivity apps “to keep you focused and get things done.”
PROJECT ATTRIBUTES
A project has a unique purpose. Every project should have a well-defined objective. For example,
Anne Roberts, the director of the Project Management Office in the chapter’s opening case, might
sponsor an IT collaboration project to develop a list and initial analysis of potential IT projects that
might improve operations for the company.
• A project is temporary. A project has a definite beginning and end. In the IT collaboration project,
Anne might form a team of people to work immediately on the project, and then expect a report
and an executive presentation of the results in one month.
• A project drives change and enables value creation. A project is initiated to bring about a change
in meeting a need or desire. Its purpose is to achieve a specific objective which changes the context
from a current state to a more desired or valued future state.
• A project is developed using progressive elaboration. Projects are often defined broadly when
they begin, and as time passes, the specific details of the project become clearer. Therefore, projects
should be developed in increments. A project team should develop initial plans and then update
them with more detail based on new information.
PROJECT ATTRIBUTES CONTD.
Requires resources, often from various areas: Resources include people,
hardware, software, and other assets. Many projects are cross departmental
or not boundary restricted.
Should have a primary customer or sponsor: For a project to succeed
someone must take the primary role of sponsorship who usually provides the
direction and funding. Anne Roberts would be the sponsor for the IT
collaboration project.
Involves uncertainty: Every project is unique, it is sometimes difficult to define
its objectives clearly, estimate how long it will take to complete, or determine
how much it will cost and the uncertainties that external factors can cause.
PROJECT CONSTRAINTS
Every project is constrained in different ways, often by its scope, time, and cost
goals. These limitations are sometimes referred to in project management as the
triple constraint. To create a successful project, a project manager must consider
scope, time, and cost and balance these three often-competing goals:
• Scope: What work will be done as part of the project? What unique product,
service, or result does the customer or sponsor expect from the project? How will
the scope be verified?
• Time: How long should it take to complete the project? What is the project’s
schedule? How will the team track actual schedule performance? Who can
approve changes to the schedule?
• Cost: What should it cost to complete the project? What is the project’s budget?
How will costs be tracked? Who can authorize changes to the budget?
 WHAT IS PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
❑Project Management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools,
and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.”
❑Project managers must strive not only to meet
❑specific scope, time, cost, and quality goals of projects,
❑They must also facilitate the entire process to meet
❑the needs and
❑expectations of people involved in project activities or affected by them.
IT’S IMPORTANCE
❑It entails the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to
meet project requirements:
❑Focuses on identifying and responding appropriately to risks that can impact project
❑Identifies the project phases and activities while estimating, sequencing and assigning
resources
❑Focuses on coordinating the project plans, development, execution and control of
changes
❑Provides assurance that the project work is defined accurately and completed as
planned
❑Provides technical solutions to organizational problem and may include system analyst,
network specialists or programmers
❑Responsible for ensuring that all management and technical processes are in place and
carried out
PROJECT TEAM MANAGEMENT
❑BEING ABLE TO COORDIATE A GROUP TO PERFORM A TASK
❑Activity allowing the tracking of performance of team members,
❑feedback,
❑resolution of strategic and operational issues, and
❑managing changes for purpose of optimizing project performance
❑The difference between Leadership and Management
 THE INTERPERSONAL SKILL FOR A MANAGER
❑Leadership is a critical skill for teambuilding and teamwork management.
❑High level leadership allows the project manager to communicate project vision and organize team members
to achieve high performance.

❑Influencing is critical for bearing influence on project stakeholders and their decisions.
❑The project manager needs to develop this to reach mutual agreements with project team members and
address critical issues.

❑Effective decision making is an ability to undertake the decision-making process.

Conducting negotiations with stakeholders and project team for the purpose of
❑Studying environment factors,
❑Developing personal quality of team members,
❑Stimulating team creativity, and
❑Managing risks and opportunities.
COMMUNICATION AND SUPERVISION
❑Track current work and attitudes of project team members.
❑By means of live conversation and observation, the project manager
communicates with team members and
❑You will thus be able to review their achievements in the context of:
❑Deliverables,
❑Accomplishments and
❑Interpersonal issues.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS
❑Allows measuring performance of project team members to
clarify:
❑Project team roles and responsibilities,
❑Review constructive feedback,
❑Discover unresolved issues,
❑Develop individual training programs, and
❑Outline specific goals for future project activities.
 CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
❑Allows handling conflicts in a team environment to achieve higher productivity and
positive working relationships among team members.
❑The following characteristics of conflict should be considered while perfuming the conflict
management process:
❑Nature of conflict: a conflict may be a team issue or an individual issue,
❑Openness to conflicts,
❑Time: a resolution of conflict should focus on the present, not the past.

❑Consider the following factors when deciding on a resolution style:

❑Conflict intensity and importance
❑Available time for resolving conflict
❑Players involved in conflict and their position to conflict
❑Motivation to resolve conflict
 ISSUE LOGGING
❑Allows making records on all issues occurred during the project course to create issue logging
documents (the issue logs).
❑Helps monitor persons responsible for issues and
❑Addresses obstacles that block project team members from implementing objectives and goals.

❑BENEFITS OF ISSUE LOGGING

❑Change requests are generated during the course of the process and submitted to the
project management team.
❑Reducing the probability or issue occurrence and mitigate a negative impact on project activities.
❑Ensure development of preventive actions to reduce team member absence,
❑Achieve appropriate role clarification, and
❑Avoid gaps in project schedules and timelines.
BENEFITS OF ISSUE LOGGING
❑Project management plan updates generally include changes to team member
roles, responsibilities and authorities which all together are parts of the staff
management plan.
❑Project management organization assets include lessons learns documentations,
historical records, various templates, and standards. All this information can be
collected and then used later in future projects.
 IF IT WERE YOU?
❑Your project team gets stuck in a rut with lots of unproductive conflict, there are a
number of things you can try
❑Get your team together to clarify and agree the "ground rules" that govern the
team's behavior.
❑Your "ground rules" should consider these five key areas of team operation:
❑team meetings
❑team working
❑team communication
❑team member relationships
❑team decision-making
 PROJECT SCHEDULING
❑Managers often cite project delivery time as biggest challenges of Scope, Time and Cost
Constraints
❑You can debate every other constraints but not time
❑So project scheduling is about time management
❑Project time management involves the processes required to ensure timely completion of a
project.
❑Timely completion is by no means a simple get; it involves:
❑Defining activities
❑Sequencing activities
❑Estimating activity resources
❑Estimating activity duration
❑Developing the schedule
❑Controlling the schedule
 PLANNING PROJECT TIME
❑Define the activities: identifying specific activities that team members and stakeholders
will embark on to produce the project deliverable.
❑Activity list: tabulation of activities in a schedule. It includes name, identifier and brief description
❑Activity attributes: schedule related info about each activity
❑Milestone list: significant event that normally has no duration and takes severally activities to accomplish
 SEQUENCING ACTIVITIES
❑Identify and document the relationships between project activities. What level
of dependencies exist between activities. Team and project stakeholders have to
work together to define activities dependencies that exist on the project
❑Network diagrams: schematic display of the logical relationships among project activities
❑Arrow Diagramming Method or Precedence diagramming Method
❑Four types of relationships from one activity to the other
❑Finish-to-start: predecessor activity finishes before successor activity can start: user training starts after software
installed
❑Start-to-start: successor activity starts only when predecessor activity starts: group of tasks when a system foes live
❑Finish-to-finish: predecessor activity must finish before successor activity can be finished. Quality control finishes when
production finishes
❑Start-to-finish: predecessor activity must start before successor activity can be finished. Stock raw materials for
manufacturing to begin
 HOW DO YOU SHOW DEPENDENCIES
IN A PROJECT PLAN?
Finish-to-start (FS)
 Successor venture cannot start until a predecessor activity has finished: Development after
Design

Start-to-start (SS)
 Successor activity cannot start until a predecessor activity has started: marketing brochure
preparation cannot start until user documentation has begun

Finish-to-finish (FF)
 Successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor activity has finished: broadcast of a
football match cannot finish until the match is finished

Start-to-finish (SF)
 Successor activity cannot finish until a predecessor activity has started: initial security guard
shift cannot finish until the second security guard shift starts
PRECEDENCE DIAGRAMMING
METHOD (PDM)
what does FS mean in project management?

Finish-to-start (FS) Start-to-start (SS)

Start-to-finish (SF)
 STEPS TO DEVELOPING A
PROJECT SCHEDULE
•Step 1: Create a work breakdown structure.
•Step 2: Estimate durations.
•Step 3: Determine resources.
•Step 4: Identify predecessors.
•Step 5: Determine milestones.
•Step 6: Identify dependencies.
ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES
❑How many resources (people; equipment; and materials) a team requires to
perform activities
❑Activity resources requirements; resource breakdown structure; project document updates
❑Have good idea of the quantity and type of resources that will be assigned to each project
❑How difficult to do specific activities on this project
❑Any unique thing in project scope that will affect the resources
❑What’s organizational history in doing similar activities
❑Are their organizational policies that might affect the availability of the resources
❑Does the organisation have resources capable of performing the work
❑Does the organisation have to acquire more resources
❑Will it make sense to outsource some of the work
❑Brainstorm, seek ideas from different people and evaluate alternatives
❑Develop a resource breakdown structure: hierarchy of resources by category and type
ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES CONTD.

▪Review Resource Availability

As a project needs relevant and quality resources, it’s essential for the team to
consider the availability of the resources as planned during the estimate activity
resources process and outsource the required resource

▪Review WBS and Activity List

Since activity resources will be evaluated for the project activities which are a
part of the WBS and activity list, thus, WBS and activity list must also be
audited

▪Identify Potentially Available Resources

If it is possible to allot who will complete a specific project activity, these must
be recognized during the estimate activity resources process
 ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES CONTD.
▪Review Historical Data about Reuse of Resources
If there had been a project that is similar to the one in the organization, that would be
extremely valuable for you to check what sort of resources have been utilized. Since,
most likely, you will use similar resources in your project
▪Reviewing Organizational Policies on Resource Usage
There may be policies and rules on the best way to ask for a resource, how to assign a
project, how to monitor, and so on. Utilizing relevant tools that help to monitor project
phases, assign activities to project team members and time reporting are the types of
hierarchical approaches on resource usage that must be pursued during the estimate
activity resources process
▪Expert Judgment on What Resources are Needed and Available
Based on the activities of the project, what sort of skills and experience must be looked
at in the candidates to be a part of the project team can be acquired from subject
matter experts. Furthermore, the outputs of the experts will direct you to the most
proficient method to form a project team
ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES CONTD.
Make or Buy Decisions During The Process
As a project team might need specific resources for a particular project and is not utilized for
any other projects within the organization, then it would be wise to lease the particular
resource

Breaking Down the Complex Activity to Estimate

Although WBS is made and an activity list is created, a few tasks may be still large to
estimate. For this situation, a further breakdown of a task should be possible amid the whole
estimation process

Quantify Resource Requirements By Activity

If you are dealing with projects and you realize that you will require analysts, engineers,
testers, and so forth. Do you know the exact number of resources for different job roles you
will need? The process will evaluate resource necessities by activity

Update Project Documents

As in numerous different processes, activities done in the estimate activity resources process
require an update of project archives too
ESTIMATING ACTIVITY DURATION
❑Estimate of work periods needed to complete individual tasks:
❑Duration includes actual amount of time (not effort) worked on an activity plus elapsed time
❑Resources attach to a task affects task duration estimate
❑Team must document assumptions during estimation and update estimates as work progresses
❑Changes in scopes should be reflected in duration estimates and constant review essential
❑Several inputs like activity list, resource requirements, calendars, scope statements
❑Outputs are Activity duration estimate; project document updates
 DEVELOPING THE SCHEDULE
❑Analyzing the previous three tasks to produce a schedule to create a realistic project
schedule that provide monitoring project progress in time dimension.
❑Project schedule; schedule baseline; schedule data; project document updates
❑Gantt chart a tool for displaying project schedule information
❑Critical path analysis for developing and controlling project schedules
❑Critical chain scheduling for limited resources when creating project schedules
❑PERT analysis for considering schedule risk on projects.
CONTROLLING THE SCHEDULE
❑Control and management of changes in the schedule
❑Work Performance measurement; organizational process assets updates; change requests

❑The goal here is:

❑Know the status of the schedule
❑Influence the factors that cause schedule changes
❑Determine that the schedule has changed
❑Manage changes when they occur

❑Key important things to ensure:

❑That project schedules are realistic
❑The use of discipline and emphasis on the importance of following and meeting project schedules
❑Project managers with required soft skills to control schedule changes, should be handy to handle
several people-related issues to keep project on tracks and perform several reality checks
 TOP 7 CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULING
METHODS FOR PROJECTS
•Critical Path Method (CPM)
•Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
•Line of Balance (LOB)
•Q Scheduling.
•Resource Oriented Scheduling.
•Last Planner System® (LPS)
•Gantt Chart.