PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS

PROJECT MANAGEMENT – process of defining, planning, organizing, leading and

controlling the development of an information system.

PURPOSE: To deliver an information systems that is acceptable to users and is

developed on time and within budget.

HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL? The acceptability, deadline, and budget criteria all

must be met. To meet those requirements, you must manage the project carefully and
effectively.

PROJECT MANAGER/LEADER – a senior systems analyst or an IT department

manager if the project is large.

PROJECT COORDINATOR – handles administrative responsibilities for the

development team and negotiates with users who might have conflicting requirements
or want changes that would require additional time or expense.

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS:
P L O C

Planning Leading Organizing Controlling

Staffing, Includes
Includes includes monitoring
identifying Directing, selecting the the progress
and planning includes project team of the project,
project task guiding, and evaluating
and supervising, assigning results, and
estimating and specific tasks taking
completion coordinating to team corrective
times and the team’s members. action when
costs. workload. Requires necessary to
structuring stay on
and target.

PROJECT PLAN – provides an overall framework for managing costs and schedules.
The activity, project planning, usually takes place at the beginning and end of each
SDLC phase to develop a plan and schedule for the phases that follow.

ACTIVITY/TASK – is any work that has a beginning and an end, and requires the
use of company resources including people, time, and/or money.
 - is the basic unit of work that the project manager plans,
monitors and tracks, so tasks should be relatively small and
manageable.

EVENT/MILESTONE – is a reference point that marks a major occurrence.

- is used to monitor progress and manage the project.

Two Events of Activity:

a. Beginning
b. End

Characteristics of an Event:
o Recognizable
o Obtains User Approval
o Completes User Training
o Completes the tabulation of returned questionnaires

DEVELOPING TIME AND COST ESTIMATES

PROJECT SIZE AND SCOPE

Information Systems Characteristics:
o Relationships with other systems
o Boundaries
o Specialized Business Needs
o Size of the company
o Time required to complete each project phase

IT RESOURCES
o Web-based system

PRIOR EXPERIENCE
o PILOT SYSTEM – is a small system that is developed as a basis
for understanding a new environment.

CONSTRAINTS
o It is a condition, restriction, or requirement that the system must
satisfy. The project manager must define the system requirements
that can be achieved realistically within the required constraints. In
the absence of constraints, the project manager calculates the
resources needed. If constraints are present, the project manager
either must adjust other resources or change the scope of the
project.
PROJECT SCHEDULING – duration of each activity, the order in which the
activities will be performed, the start and end times for each activity, and who will be
assigned to each specific task.

DEPENDENT ACTIVITY – cannot be started until one or more other tasks are
completed. Example, you cannot tabulate questionnaires until they have been
developed, tested, approved, distributed and returned.

SCHEDULING TOOLS:

GANTT CHARTS – developed by Henry L. Gantt as a production control

technique. It is a horizontal bar chart that illustrates a schedule. The horizontal position
of the bar shows the start and end of the activity, and the length of the bar indicates its
duration.

• ACTIVITY GROUPS – each activity represents several tasks. A

master chart displays the major activity groups and is followed by
individual Gantt charts that show the tasks assigned to team
members.

PERT/CPM(Program Evaluation Review Technique/Critical Path

Method) – shows a project as a network diagram. The activities are shown as
vectors, and the events are displayed graphically as nodes. Dummy activity is shown
by a dashed vector line. It indicates an event dependency, but does not require any
resources or completion time.

• DEPENDENT/SERIAL ACTIVITIES – when tasks must be

completed in sequence.
• CONCURRENT/PARALLEL – when activities can be completed at
the same time.

PROJECT REPORTING
o Project Status Meetings
o Project Status Reports

SOFTWARE CHANGE CONTROL – process of managing and controlling changes

requested after the system requirements document has been submitted and accepted.
It can be a real problem because the development process involves many
compromises, and users are never entirely satisfied with the results.

FOUR(4) STEPS IN REQUEST FOR CHANGE:

1. Complete a change request form

2. Take initial action on the request
3. Analyze the impact of the requested change
4. Determine the disposition of the requested change