Projects and Their Management - Essay Example

Projects and their Management Projects and their Management Project Aims and Objectives Overall, the SEC Placement Team (STP) project aims at supporting students who use their PCs to seek for placement in various industries. The specific objectives of the project are: To provide students pursuing sandwich degrees with web pages constituting varied form fields that will allow them supply their personal details and create CVs in a bid to reach their prospective jobs or companies. To provide a web utility that is able to distinguish between design and content in the students-created CVs To provide a back end database system that will be useful in the storage of the contents needed in populating the student CVs whenever a need arises like a request by a potential employer to view a CV in Microsoft word document, PDF or HTML format. To use the keywords in the job specifications resident in the database in recognizing CV contents that match the job in question followed by delivery of CVs found to be matching. To provide authenticated students with a “edit” link to allow them tailor their CV contents to match the jobs they are interested in. To present different CV design choices to students whilst allowing them to choose, edit and save the design type that they find appealing. To enhance students’ CV creation capabilities by allowing them to borrow ideas from a forum that is meant for different individuals to share their views regarding the design and writing of CV contents. To allow students to use their respective account profiles in storing details or URLs that pertain to any job specification that they find interesting. Project Strategy and Methods The organization has a team of 3 staff members charged with the duty to place students in a year in the job market that can contribute to the professional development of the students. This service makes the existence of SEC placement team more relevant in the face of the employers’ increasing demand for experience both for old and new graduates. To better its services, SPT could take advantage of the increasing use of web tools among students to make the placement services more efficient and convenient. Even though this would be a costly endeavor for a start-up placement enterprise, SPT longstanding existence can allow it use the revenue that it has accumulated in the past to build this web product intended to make placement exercises efficient and convenient and efficient for students and for SPT itself. Work Breakdown and Project Plan SPT project will follow the conventional software process that is typical of all IT projects. The phases will include: business specification, system design, product development, testing, system implementation and maintenance and evaluation. Business specification will entail elicitation and assessment of the user and system requirements. Design will entail translation of the defined requirements into a set of design models, out of which the involve team will choose the best design. Development will entail translation of the design model that the developers settle on into program codes whose operation will follow the user requirements without compromising on the system requirements. Testing will involve assessment of whether the developed product functions as per the user-supplied requirements. Implementation will involve use of the developed system in the production environment, where students and other intended end-users will try executing their routinely duties to satisfy their respective needs. Maintenance and evaluation will involve caring for the system while it is in its operation environment. Some of the concerns to be addressed at this phase will include taking care of the hosting costs and advocating for redesign in case the final deliverable is breeding discontentment among the targeted users. Risk Analysis and Contingency Plans The SPT project will be no exemption to risks that often befall other software projects. Some of the risks likely to befall this project include cost, technology, quality and staff-related risks. Cost risks will arise of the organization runs short of funds needed to aid the project to the end, and possibly leading to a premature termination or a low-quality deliverable. To address this, the involved team needs engage in a thorough feasibility study that pertains to the software cost then check whether the organization has funds that can sufficiently cater for the identified cost (Oshana & Kraeling, 2013). Technology risk has basis of the possibility of the developers of the application write program codes that cater for computers whilst disregarding the growing use of mobile devices in accessing web utilities. An immediate solution to this would be for the involved team to intensively research and project the end-users devices likely to be in pace during the system’s post-implementation phase. Quality risks has basis on poor understanding of the system requirements during requirement elicitation or improper interpretation of the requirements during the design stage. Either case is likely to lead to a deliverable whose performance is subordinate to the prior expectations. A better mitigation technique towards this would be to intensify end-user involvement in addition to embracing prototyping. Staff risk has basis on choice of under qualified staff or involving fellows who cannot embrace teamwork. Choice of under qualified staff can be alleviated by the management’s involvement in the properly planned and transparent recruitment process whereas choice of personnel with incompatible personalities can be alleviated by use of Belbin’s Model in selecting project staff. Project Revision The project is so far at the requirement elicitation phase. A number of issues have been recognized at this stage and the identified issues could bring about changes in project scope and assumptions as well as the business specifications that pertain to the project. Adventuring in technological risk analysis has already informed the decision of the requirement engineers to plan for an application that will be accommodative of the growing use of mobile devices thus introducing project scope redefinition. Such redefinitions will be manifested in scenes like the need to structure separate URI for mobile devices. On the same note, this discovery has done away with the assumption that the client systems would only be accessed via PCs. Of all issues that have surfaced, the need to deliver a high quality product regardless of the end-user device employed in accessing the system. The priorities for future work will be centered on use of proper team selection strategies like Beelbin’s Model on project team selection and emphasizing on both soft and hard skills when hiring fellows to involve in the project. Further, the project plans associated with the six project phases will have to be revised in order to be more reflective of the identified changes while driving the project closer to the overall goal. To be considered successful, the SPT project will need to end in a product that meets the predefined quality, and the product must be produced within the estimated budget and schedule. However, this is less likely to be the case for the reason that the involved team is likely to exceed the estimated time and budget. Scrum can help in solving this problem. End-user involvement will help in ensuring that the system interface, design and functionality meets end-user needs thus minimizing rework at later stages of the project cycle. In essence, this would keep the difference between the planned cost and the actual cost very insignificant. Scrum approach will allow experts from varied phases to sit together in a team. Scrum will particularly help in recognition and mitigation of risks that are likely to befall the project. The overall budget of the SPC project is expected to tune to $160. The table shown here below is a financial analysis of the utilities that are to be implemented within the system. Utility Estimated storypoints Completed storypoints Actual cost in terms of 1000 dollars Home page 10 10 10 Login screen 5 5 20 Employers catalogue 20 20 15 CV editor 5 5 CSV reader 5 Database system 25 Search by keyword text field 5 CV template list 5 Forum 10 Bookmark 10 Totals 100 40 45 From the above data, we obtain actual percent complete by dividing the number of story points already completed by the estimated story points. This is given by: 40/100=40% complete We obtain earned value through multiplication of the Total Budget by the Actual Percent Complete. This is given by: 0.4 * 160000=$64,000 Gantt chart The above Gantt chart shows the project processes along with the resources needed for the SEC placement team application. As per the Gantt chart, the project runs from 1st May 2014 to 17th November 2014.The sections shown in the Gantt Chart are the routinely processes of business specification, system analysis and design, product development, testing, implementation followed by evaluation. The Prioritized Objectives The prioritized objectives include ensuring total compliance with the prior business specification during all stages of development, delivery of a system that will remain technologically conscious and capable of remaining as scalable as possible to end user needs. However, the involved team risks missing an opportunity to have all that it takes to make these objectives a reality. It is for this reason that Moscow prioritization technique comes in handy. The technique fits the aforementioned objectives by classifying the desires that the involved team will raise into a must have, should have, can have and would have. Following this manner of classification, the technique will classify possible concerns raised by the team members in the following ways. First, the presence of web developers capable of writing program codes that will be accommodative of the anticipated growth in the users of mobile devices is a must have as far as the project success is concerned. Second, the system analyst should be present at all project phases to ensure compliance with the business specification. Third, the project manager can increase the number of staff involved at each stage in order to improve the quality of output. Finally, the project manager would resort to a free database system like MYSQL or PostgreSQL in order to reduce the project cost. Bibliography OSHANA, R., & KRAELING, M. (2013). Software engineering for embedded systems methods, practical techniques, and applications. Amsterdam, Newnes. Read More