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Project Planning, Developing the Project Team
The main purpose of team…
Project Planning
Developing a Project Management Plan
- Document used to coordinate all project planning documents and help guide a project’s execution and control
Directing and Managing Project Work
- Involves managing and performing the work described in the project management plan
- The application area of the project directly affects project execution
- The project manager needs to focus on leading the project team and managing stakeholder relationships to execute the project management plan successfully
Using Guidelines to Create Project Management Plans
- Overview - Purpose, scope, and objectives; assumptions and constraints; project deliverables;
schedule and budget summary; evolution of the plan
- Project Organization - External interfaces; internal structure; roles and responsibilities
- Managerial Process Plan - Start-up plans; work plan; control plan; risk management plan; closeout plan
- Technical Process Plans - Process model; methods, tools, and techniques; infrastructure plan; product acceptance plan
- Supporting Process Plans - Configuration management plan; verification and validation plan; documentation plan; quality assurance plan; reviews and audits; problem resolution plan; subcontractor management plan; process improvement plan
Monitoring and Controlling Project Work
- Monitoring project work includes collecting, measuring, and disseminating performance information
- The project management plan provides the baseline for identifying and controlling project changes
Coordinating Planning and Execution
- Project planning and execution are intertwined and inseparable activities
- Those wo will do the work should help to plan the work
Providing Strong Leadership and a Supportive Culture
- Project managers must lead by example
- Organizational culture can help project execution (providing guidelines and tracking performance based on plans)
- Project managers may still need to break the rules to meet project goals
Capitalizing on Product, Business, and Application Area
Knowledge
- Small projects: the project manager may be required to perform some of the technical work or mentor team members to complete the projects
- Large projects: the project manager must understand the business and application area of the project
Closing Projects or Phases
- To close a project or phase, you must finalize all activities and transfer the completed or cancelled work to the appropriate people
Considerations for Agile/Adaptive Environments
- Iterative and agile approaches promote the engagement of team members
- Expectations of the project manager do not change in an adaptive environment, but control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team
- Project managers using any product life cycle should focus on creating a collaborative decision-making environment and providing opportunities for team members to develop additional skills
Using Software to Assist in Project Integration
Management
- Documents can be created with word processing software
- Presentations are created with presentation software
- Tracking can be done with spreadsheets or databases
- Communication software can facilitate communications
- Project management software can pull everything together and show detailed and summarized information
Project Cost Management
Project cost management includes the processes required to ensure that the project is completed within an approved budget
Basic Principles of Cost Management
- Most members of an executive board better understand and are more interested in financial terms than IT terms; they need to be able to present and discuss project information in both
Types of costs and benefits
- Tangible costs or benefits are those costs or benefits that an organization can easily measure in dollars
- Intangible costs or benefits are costs or benefits that are difficult to measure in monetary terms
- Direct costs are costs that can be directly related to producing the products and services of the project
- Indirect costs are costs that are not directly related to the products or services of the project, but are indirectly related to performing the project
- Sunk cost is money that has been spent in the past; when deciding what projects to invest in or continue, you should not include sunk costs
Additional concepts
- Learning curve theory states that when many items are produced repetitively, the unit cost of those items decreases in a regular pattern as more units are produced
- Reserves are dollars included in a cost estimate to mitigate cost risk by allowing for future situations that are difficult to predict
Planning Cost Management
Planning how the costs will be managed throughout the life of the project
Determining the policies, procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning, executing, and controlling project cost
Includes:
- Level of accuracy
- Units of measure
- Organisational procedure links
- Control thresholds
- Rules of performance measurement
- Reporting formats
- Process descriptions
Estimating Costs
Developing an approximation or estimate of the costs of the resources needed to complete a project
Type of estimates
Rough order of magnitude (ROM)
When: Very early in the project (3-5 years before completion Why: Provide estimate of cost for selecion decisions
Typical range: -50% to +100& (not accurate)
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Definitive
When: Later in the project, less than 1 year out
Why: Puts dollars in the budget plan
Typical range: -5% to +10%
- Number and type of cost estimates vary by application area
- 5 types of cost estimates for constructions projects: Order of magnitude conceptual, preliminary, definitive and control
- Estimates are usually done at various stages of a project, becomes more accurate over time
- Important to provide supporting details for estimates and updates to project documents
- Large percentage of total project costs are often labour costs
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Determining the budget
Allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring performance
- Involves allocating the project cost estimate to individual work items over time
- Material resources or work items are base don the activities in the WBS for the project
- Important goal is to produce a cost baseline
- Time-phased budget that project managers use to measure & monitor cost performance
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Earned Value Management (EVM)
Project performance measurement technique that integrates scope, time, and cost data
Given a baseline (original plan plus approved changes), can determine how well the project is meeting scope, time and cost goals
EVM involves calculating 3 values for each activity/summary activity from a project's WBS:
- Planned value
- Actual cost
- Earned value
Cost Variance (CV): Earned value - actual cost
Schedule variance (SV): Earned value - panned value
Cost performance index (CPI): Ratio of earned value to planned value
Schedule performance index (SPI): Ratio of earned value to planned value
Estimate at completion (EAC): Estimated cost of completing a project based performance to date
To-complete performanc eindex (TCPI): A measure of the cos tperformance that must be achieved with the remaining resources to meet a specific goal
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Project Resource Management
Making the best use of the human and physical resources involved in a project
- Planning resource management
- Estimating activity resources
- Acquiring resources
- Developing the project team
- Managing the project team
- Controlling resources
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Resource Assignment
- After determining resource requirements, project managers must work with other team members to assign or acquire extra human or physical resources.
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Return on Investment
Calculated by subtracting the project costs from the benefits and then dividing by the costs
ROI = (total discounted benefits - total discounted costs) / discounted costs
The higher the ROI, the better
Many organizations have a required rate of return
Minimum acceptable rate of return on investment for projects
Internal rate of return (IRR) can by calculated by finding the discount rate that makes the NPV equal to zero
Project Execution
Usually takes the most resources to perform
Project managers must use their leadership skills to handle the many challenges that occur during project execution
Many project sponsors and customers focus on deliverables related to providing the products, services, or results desired from the project
It is equally important to document change requests and update planning documents
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Categorizing IT Projects
Respond to a problem, opportunity, or directive
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Project Closing
Involves gaining stakeholder and customer acceptance of the final products and services
Even if projects are not completed, they should be closed out to learn from the past
Outputs may include project files and lessons-learned reports
Also may include a final report and presentation
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Developing the Project Team
- The main purpose of team development is to improve project performance.
Tuckman Model
- Forming
- Storming
- Norming
- Performing
- Adjourning
Training
- Professional development for individuals and teams is frequently recommended by project managers.
Team-building activities
- Physical challenges
- Psychological preference indicator tools
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Managing Project Team
- Project managers must guide their teams through numerous tasks.
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- Profits: revenues minus expenditures
- Profit margin: ratio of profits to revenues
- Life cycle costing: considers total cost of ownership, or development plus support costs, for a project
- Cash flow analysis: determines estimated annual costs and benefits for a project and resulting annual cash flow