Project Management

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Project Management

• ISM3011

2
What Were Going to do Today

• Announcements
• News miscellany
• Alphabet soup
• MIS in the professions
• Q A from text
• Project management
• Making the business case

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Alphabet Soup

• ISP
• Internet Service Provider
• Company that gives an individual or organization
  access to the Internet
• PMI
• Project Management Institute
• Project Management Institute (PMI) has more than
  200,000 members in over 150 countries.
• According to the PMI Website, PMI is the
  worlds foremost advocate for the project
  management profession.

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Alphabet Soup (part 2) Podcast

• EVM
• Earned Value Management
• Provides an objective measurement of how much
  work has been accomplished on a project.
• Essential features of any EVM implementation
  include
• a project plan that identifies work to be
  accomplished,
• a valuation of planned work, called planned value
  (PV),
• pre-defined earning rules that quantify the
  accomplishment of work.

Earned Value (EV)
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Earned Value Example
Source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_
management
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MIS in the Professions Marketing Project
Management

• Robohead is a Web-based project management system
  specifically designed for marketing and creative
  organizations.
• Heres an online demo.(9 minutes)

http//www.robohead.net/info/index.html
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Project Management
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Your Education as a Project

• How do you plan the project of getting your
  degree?

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What is Project Management?

• Project
• Temporary endeavor undertaken to produce a
  unique product or service (Source PM-BOK)
• Project management
• application of knowledge, skills, tools, and
  techniques to project activities in order to meet
  or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations
  (Source PM-BOK)

Definite beginning and end
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Project Triangle
Tradeoffs among these three constraints
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Project Activities
This is one view of PM activities, there are
others.
Source PMBOK
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Project Management Activities

• Initiating
• Selecting a project
• Business case development/analysis
• Committing to a project
• Planning
• (See next slide)
• Executing
• Controlling
• Closing

Important, but outside our scope
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Project Planning
Our focus
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Project Management

• Elements of project management
• Project manager
• has the responsibility to integrate the efforts
  of people from various functional areas to
  achieve specific project goals
• Project team
• a group of people that often represents different
  functional areas or organizations
• Project management system
• consists of an organizational structure
  (functional or matrix) and an information system
  (network planning system)

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Network Planning Methods

• PERT/CPM
• Describing the project
• shows all activities required to complete the
  project
• describes (through a network diagram) the order
  of activities, demonstrating predecessors

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Network Planning Methods

• PERT/CPM
• Benefits
• forces managers to organize data and express
  critical relationships
• managers can estimate the completion time of a
  project
• reports highlight the activities that are crucial
  to the completion of the project on time
• managers can analyze the time/cost implications
  of resource trade-offs

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Network Planning Methods

• Estimating time of completion in a network plan
• probabilistic (uncertain)
• deterministic (certain)
• critical path
• sequence of activities between a projects start
  and finish that takes the longest

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Network Planning Methods

• Estimating time of completion in a network plan
• Earliest start and finish times
• Earliest Finish time (EF)
• Earliest Start time (ES)
• EF ESt
• where t the time required to complete the
  activity
• ES EF from the preceding activity

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Network Planning Methods

• Estimating time of completion in a network plan
• Latest start and finish times
• Latest Start time (LS)
• Latest Finish time (LF)
• LS LF - t
• where t the time required to complete the
  activity
• LF LS from the immediately following activity

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Network Planning Methods

• Estimating time of completion in a network plan
• Activity Slack
• maximum time an activity can be delayed without
  delaying the entire project
• there is zero slack in the sequence of activities
  in the critical path

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Uncertain Time Estimates

• Probabilistic Time Estimates
• Optimistic time
• shortest time an activity can be completed
• Most likely time
• best estimate of average time for an activity
• Pessimistic time
• longest time an activity can take

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Uncertain Time Estimates

• Probabilistic Time Estimates
• Activitys mean time (te) and variance (?2) with
  beta distribution
• te a 4m b
• 6
• 2
• ?2 (b-a/6)
• Analyzing probabilities
• Z values due date of project - earliest
  expected date square root of the variances
• determines probability that a project will be
  done by a specified date

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Work Breakdown Structure

• Divides a project into tasks/activities.
• ID major tasks
• Break down into subtasks
• Well defined
• Can be estimated and tracked
• Identify task dependencies
• E.g. Task B requires completion of Task A
• Assign responsibility for each (sub)task
• Results are measured in terms of
  progress/completion of tasks.

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WBS Process

• Familiarize yourself with the project.
• ID all major tasks required to achieve goals.
• Break into subtasks (repeat until you have
  manageable granularity)
• ID responsibility for each lower level task.
• Determine resource (time personnel)
  requirements for each lowest level task.
• This can serve as the basis for an estimate.

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Work Breakdown Structure Spreadsheet
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WBS Diagram Example
Task
Sub-Tasks
Source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdow
n_structure
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Making the Business Case
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What is a business case?

• Provides management with the information required
  for making an informed decision regarding a
  project.
• Analysis of
• Organizational value
• Feasibility
• Costs
• Benefits
• Risks
• Several alternatives

Source for much of this presentation is Marchewka
(2006). Information Technology Project
Management, Wiley.
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Business Case Development Process

• Define measurable organizational value
• Identify alternatives
• Assess feasibility
• Assess risk
• Define total cost of ownership
• Define total benefits of ownership
• Compare alternatives
• Make recommendation

Our focus
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What are the benefits?

• Focus on measurable benefits.
• Must provide value to the organization.
• What areas of the organization are impacted?
• Sources of value Better, faster, cheaper, do
  more.
• Measure in terms of , , numeric value.
• Must be verifiable.
• Time frame achieving the value.

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What are the alternatives?

• Include a range of alternatives
• Base case alternative
• What happens if we dont do anything?
• Do nothing is a valid alternative in most
  cases.

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Is the project feasible?

• Economic feasibility
• Technical feasibility
• Organizational feasibility
• Legal feasibility
• Ethical feasibility

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Cost/benefit analysis Costs

• TCO Total cost of ownership
• Direct costs
• Hardware, software, consultants
• Indirect costs
• Productivity loss during project/changeover
• Quality assurance
• Ongoing costs
• Training, maintenance, upgrades, etc.

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Cost/benefit analysis Benefits

• TBO Total benefits of ownership
• Tangible benefits
• Costs savings
• Increased accuracy (reduced errors)
• Improved workflow
• Improved decision making
• Intangible benefits
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Reputation

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Risk analysis

• Identify risks
• What can go wrong?
• Impact
• What is the organizational impact of each risk?
• Probability
• How likely is each risk?
• Response
• What can be done to avoid or minimize the risk?

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Comparing Alternatives

• Financial analysis
• Payback period
• ROI
• NPV
• Weight factors
• Rate alternatives
• Score Sum (weights scores)
• Other approaches exist