Fundamentals of Project Management William B' Miller Nov 1978

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Fundamentals of Project ManagementWilliam B.
MillerNov 1978

• EEL6887 Software Engineering
• Chi-Hwa Marcos
• Feb 8, 2006

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Reference Sources

• William B. Miller, Fundamentals of Project
  Management, J. System Management, Vol29, No. 11,
  Nov. 1978, pp. 22-29
• Nick Jenkins, A Project Management Primer or a
  guide on how to make projects work, San
  Francisco, Creative Commons, 2005
• Margo Visitacion, Project Management Best
  Practices Key Process and Common Sense, Giga
  Information Group, 2003, www.gigaweb.com

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Overview

• Project Planning
• Planning Responsibilities
• Planning Process
• Fundamentals of Planning
• Planning Documentation
• Plan Approvals
• Execution of the Plan
• Control Responsibilities
• Control Process
• Fundamentals for Status Reporting and Recovery
  Planning
• Plan Execution Documentation

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Project Planning

• Purpose Establish a foundation for execution of
  the plan leading to successful project
  completion.
• Outputs
• Definition of project activities and require
  results.
• Estimation of work content of project activities
  in terms of resources used. (Ex. man month or
  processing hours)
• Activity schedules, with milestones and
  checkpoints for progress reviews.
• Specific assignments for personnel and resources.
• Resource loading estimates or budgets for
  personnel, equipment and other resources.

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Planning Responsibilities

• People with the most knowledge of the activities
  to be performed and resources to be used should
  provide the most input.
• Ultimately, the project management is responsible
  for the plan and should direct its preparation to
  reflect the managements perspective. Often,
  those who are most knowledgeable about the
  activities and resources suffer from the
  forest-and-trees perspective problem. They lack
  the big picture.

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Planning Process

• Select Project management, supervisor and key
  workers. Their planning responsibilities should
  be well defined.
• Develop a general plan containing the planning
  output outlined in Project Planning slide.
• Obtain general plan approval.
• Develop detail project plan. Eliminate all
  inconsistencies/conflicts and ensure plan is
  accurate.
• Revise general plan to be consistent with detail
  plan.
• Obtain approval for detail and general plans.

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Fundamentals of Planning

• Divide the project into smaller activities, each
  with its own end project.
• Each activity must be scheduled.
• Guidelines
• Scheduling method should only be as complex as
  required for the project.
• Back scheduling is preferred to forward
  scheduling. (Back scheduling is scheduling based
  on start dates of subsequent activities. Forward
  scheduling is scheduling based on when resources
  are available.)

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Fundamentals of Planning Cont.

• Guidelines Cont.
• Minimize activity completion time and avoid
  parallel assignments of personnel and resources.
• Insert milestones or status points to track
  activity completion and progress.
• Assign a person in charge of each activity.
• Schedule recovery time.
• Calculate resource loading. (people, equipment,
  money, etc)

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Fundamentals of Planning Cont.

• The general plan should be a summary of the
  detail plan.
• The purpose of the detail plan is control.
  Control is achieved by subdividing the activities
  such that recovery will be easy when a activity
  cannot be accomplished as schedule.
• Rule of thumb is an activity should not consume
  more than 40 man hours or 5 work days.
• Resources should also be subdivided and monitored
  to such that excessive consumption can be
  identified while recovery was still possible.

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Fundamentals of Planning Cont.

• The detail plan should extend as far into the
  future as possible, typically 1-3 months.
• For large projects, detail plan will occur
  several times throughout the project.

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Planning Documentation

• Documentation should not be and end to itself,
  except for audit and archival purposes.
• Primary goal of documentation is to communicate.
• Easy to understand. (example, charts and visual
  aids)
• Documentation should follow a standard format
  when possible.
• Documentation may be an integral part of the
  planning activity. Some planning tools may be
  able to generate the required documentation form
  the plan.
• Documentation should be useful during execution
  to track project progress.

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Plan Approvals

• Approval is the commitment to the plan and should
  be obtain from two groups of people.
• People who must accept the schedule and provide
  the resources.
• People who can cause the project to fail.

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Plan Approvals Cont.

• If the plan is not approved, some options are to
• Modify format of presentation to make plan easier
  to understand.
• Alter completion dates by changing resource
  allocation.
• Modify completion dates to alter resource usage.
• Change project scope to modify completion dates.
• Present the plan as being necessary for
  successful completion of the project.

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Execution of the Plan

• The execution of the plan is the exercise of
  control over the project.
• Monitoring progress of project activities.
• Monitoring resource usage.
• Monitoring overall project status.
• Analysis of the variance from the plan.
• Recovery planning.
• Reporting of project status and recovery plan.

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Control Responsibilities

• Project Management has the overall responsibility
  for the project.
• Responsible for collecting status reports and
  corrective action plans.
• Participate in the analysis of exceptions and
  recovery plans.
• Ensure approved recovery plans are place under
  formal control.
• Prepare overall project reports.
• Communicate project information to other
  management.

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Control Responsibilities Cont.

• The person in charge of an activity has the
  day-to-day responsibility for task completion.
• Monitoring activity progress.
• Reports status of activity.
• Develop corrective action plan.
• First line of responsibility for getting activity
  out of trouble.

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Control Process

• 3 Steps in control process that repeats
  throughout the life of the project.
• Collect project status information
• Activities and resource consumption information
  should be collected at points in the project.
• Information should be collected informally
  through a grapevine or ear to ground process.
• Develop and approve recovery plans for
  exceptions.
• Should be performed by those responsible for the
  activity.
• Publish status and recovery plans.

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Fundamentals for Status Reporting and Recovery
Planning

• Project will not proceed as planned.
• Identify exception to the plan as soon as
  possible.
• Quick response to exceptions to define and
  establish recovery plan.
• Reduce likelihood of exception reoccurrence.
• Thorough recovery plan with all the necessary
  detail to track plan progress.

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Plan Execution Documentation

• Planning documentation is the foundation of
  execution documentation.
• Both planning and execution documentation may be
  in the same format for ease of communication.
• Summary documentation should parallel the general
  plan.
• Document exception.
• Plan description.
• Actual description.
• Analysis of the problem and impact.
• Corrective action.

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Plan Execution Documentation Cont.

• Document recovery plan.
• As detail as detail planning.
• More stringent tracking of recovery timeliness.
• Should be added to detail plan but not replace
  original plan. It is important to show that
  re-planning was necessary rather than trying to
  hide it.

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Summary

• A fundamental to project management is the
  development and execution of a project plan. The
  manager must have a clear vision of what the
  project is trying to produce and how it can be
  accomplished. To achieve this the manager must
  develop a project plan and follow the plan during
  project execution.

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Conclusions

• Project planning can be done using the common
  Microsoft Office Suite or specialized software.
  The advantage of using specialize software is
  that documentation can be automatically generated
  by the tools. Some links to project management
  tools are provided below
• Project KickStart - http//www.projectkickstart.co
  m/html/pkswin3.htm
• Lean Project Manager - http//www.leanprojectmanag
  er.com/demomain.asp
• System2Win - http//systems2win.com/solutions/proj
  ect_management.htm

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Conclusions Cont.

• Project management can be applied to CMM Level 2
  or higher. But in order to develop an effective
  project plan CMM Level 4 is required. The plan is
  only effective if activity time and resource
  usage can be accurately estimated. CMM Level 4
  provides metrics which is essential for software
  estimates.