Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul 2002 [email protected] 1 Project Integration and Scope Management Identifying, Selecting and Defining a Project ………

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul 2002 [email protected]

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Project Integration and Scope ManagementProject Integration and Scope Management

Identifying, Selecting and Defining a Project

……….Note: This material has been produced by Raja from various text books and material information available in Internet. This is purely developed for academic purpose only as handouts for students of IT Project Management. Key books were prescribed to students either as text book or reference books and advised interested students to purchase any of these books as this would help further improving their knowledge. Main Text Book Referred for this Chapter is Information Technology Project Management 2nd Edition, by Schwalbe, course Technology.

This is a very good textbook for IT Project Management. I strongly recommend the purchase of the book as an investment for your career development.


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Project Initiation • Organisation commits to the project through identification of key business functions that needs to be automated through or upgraded through new IT Project. • It is important that the objective of the IT strategy aligns with the mission and vision of the organisation.• Project initiation involves i) Project Identification and selection, ii) Development of Project Charter and iii) Conducting feasibility studies and validate the need to continue the project into further phases.


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Project Identification

• Strategic Planning - Determining Long Term Objectives of an organisation by conducting SWOT Analysis.

• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - SWOT - Analysis is used to aid the strategic planning. The experts in the business outside IT department needs to be involved in developing IT strategy to ensure that organisational strategies that require the supporting IT Strategy are properly identified.


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Project Selection

• Identify potential projects• Prepare a short list of potential projects that would benefit the company most by:

* focusing on broad organisational needs* categorising information technology projects* performing net present value or other financial analysis* using a weighted scoring model * or the combination of the above


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Selecting a project• Organisations, in most cases, have policies on return on investment, payback period etc. • Therefore, it is important for the executive management to understand the limitations of financial estimates, especially, when it comes to IT projects.• In the case of IT projects it is very difficult to develop good financial estimates.• We will see more on this topic under the module - Project Cost management.


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Selecting a project: Weighted Scoring Model• A tool that provides a systematic process for selecting projects based on pre-determined criteria which could vary with company to company.• This could include meeting broad organisational needs (big picture), addressing problems, opportunities or directives.• Also could include time it will take to complete the project, overall priority and projected financial performance.


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Selecting a project: Weighted Scoring Model - Some Possible Criteria for It Projects

• Supports key business objectives• Has strong internal sponsor• Has strong customer support• Uses realistic level of technology• Can be implemented in one year or less• Provides positive net present value• Has low risk in meeting scope, time and cost goals• See Figure 1 supplied.


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Selected a project: What now? • Prepare a “Project Charter”• Project charter is a document that formally recognises the existence of the project and provides direction on the project’s objectives and management.• It documents

* Title and date of authorisation to start project* Project Manager name and contact details* A brief scope statement* A summary of planned approach for managing project


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Selected a project: What now?

* A roles and responsibilities matrix* A sign-off section for signatures of key stakeholders.*A comments section in which stakeholders can provide important comments related to the project.


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Project Scope Planning:• Developing documents to provide the basis for future project decisions.• Out put of scope planning is Scope Statement which provides supporting information and a scope management plan.

Project Scope Statement:• Document used to develop and confirm common understanding of the project scope.• This statement includes justification for the project, brief description of project’s products, summary of all deliverable and success criteria.


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Project Scope Definition:• A clear scope definition is important to the success of project.• A clear scope definition helps to improve the accuracy of time, cost and resource estimation.• Acts as bench mark for performance management and project control.• Helps to communicate to members of project team their work responsibilities clearly.• Out put of scope definition is Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) ie. the structure that shows the break-up details of the project. Ie. Major problem broken into manageable smaller pieces.


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Project Scope Definition: WBS• Foundation document for project management• Outcome oriented analysis of work involved in the project• Provides total scope of the project• WBS is a task-oriented family tree of activities organised around project products or by phases.• Help visualise the whole project and all of its main parts. • See Figure 2 for WBS organised by Products to be developed during project.• See Figure 3 for WBS for the same project organised by Phases of the project.


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Project Scope Definition: WBSFigure 2: CourseM arketing Project: WBS organised by Product

1. Site M ap 3. Programs

2. Graphic Design

HomePage DesignType title here

1. Text 3. Hyper Links

2. Images

Course PagesType title here

1. Text 3. Hyper Links

2. Images

Fee Detail Pages

CourseM arketing Web on Intranet

Figure 3: CourseMarketing Project: WBS organised by Phase

Eval. Current System

Define User Requirem ents

Define content requirem ents

Def. Content Requi

Define Server Owner Req

Define Requirem ents

Define Specific Functionality

Define R isk/Mgm t

Dev. Proj. P lan

Breif Dev. Team

ConceptType title here

W eb Site DesignType title here

W eb Site Developm ent Deploym ent Evaluation /C losedown

CourseMarketing Web on Intranet

Level 0

Level 2

Level 3

Level 1


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Project Scope Definition: WBS• The WBS details shown in Fig 3 are listed in the tabular form below:Intranet Project for Course Marketing Web: Main Modules1.0 Concept Development2.0 Web Site Design3.0 Web Site Development4.0 Deployment of new Web-based System5.0 Evaluation and Close-down

Of these 5 modules, details activity statement outlining the scope of work for concept development is provided in the next slide.You will notice that this module has been dived into further 2nd level and third level tasks to be undertaken. This provides clear understanding of work to be done and will allow scheduling and costing more accurate.


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Project Scope Definition: WBS1.0 Concept Development

1.1 Evaluate current system1.2. Define requirements

1.2.1. Define user requirements1.2.2. Define current requirements1.2.3. Define system requirement1.2.4. Define Server Owner Requirements

1.3 Define specific functionality1.4 Define risks and risk management approach1.5 Develop Project Plan1.6 Brief Web Development Team

Note: Other modules also needs to be expanded this way before scheduling, costing and identifying human resource requirements.


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Project Scope Definition: WBS

• Methods for Creating WBS

*Top-down approach* Bottom-up approach* Using guidelines (Dept of Defence Guidelines)* Analogy approach (Sharing the WBS format from another person / company with permission)


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Project Scope Definition: WBS

• Advice on creating WBS

* A unit of work should appear at only one place in the WBS* The work content of WBS item is sum of the WBS item below it.* A WBS item is the responsibility of only one individual, even though many people may be working on it.* The WBS must be consistent with the way in which work is actually going to be performed.


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Project Scope Definition: WBS • Advice on creating WBS

* WBS should serve the project team.* Project team members should be involved in developing the WBS to ensure consistency and buy-in.* Each WBS item must be documented to ensure accurate understanding of the scope of work included and not included in that item.* The WBS must be a flexible tool to accommodate inevitable changes while properly maintaining control of the work content in the project according the scope statement.


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Project Scope Verification • It’s difficult to create a good scope statement and WBS especially for an IT project.• Many IT projects suffer from Scope Creep- the tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger and bigger.• Scope verification involves formal acceptance of the project scope by the stakeholders.• For this purpose, it is important that the project team document clearly the project’s products and procedures for evaluating if they were completed correctly and satisfactorily.


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Project Scope Change Control • Scope change control involves controlling changes to the project scope.

• Proper understanding of the project requirements and verification of scope at the time of acceptance would reduce the scope changes and there by scope change control would be made easy.


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Project Scope Change Control

•According to CHAOS Study by Standish Group in 1995 the following factors cause problem to IT projects in the order in which they are listed: Lack of user input, incomplete requirements / specification, changing requirements / specifications, lack of executive support, technology incompetence, lack of resources, unrealistic expectations, unclear objectives, unrealistic time frames and new technology.


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Improving user input to the project requirements

• Develop a good project selection process• Establish Project Monitoring committee comprising both user and developer• Have regular review meeting• Deliver something to project users and sponsors on regular basis• Co-locate users with developers


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How to reduce incomplete and changing requirements

• Determination of initial requirements properly• Prototyping• Use case modelling• Joint application development• Maintain requirement documentation• Use requirement management tool (CASE Tool)• Verify products / deliverable produced by the project against specifications.• Change control board to monitor and review changes•Set dead-line for completion


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Need More Information

Refer Chapter 4 Scope Management in the following book

Main Text Book Referred for this Chapter is Information Technology Project Management 2nd Edition, by Schwalbe, course Technology.

Documents

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul 2002 [email protected] 1 Project Integration and Scope Management Identifying, Selecting and Defining a Project ………