IT Project Plan Outline

·      By Raul Bernardino

     

           Project Plan Outline

1.0 Goals and Objectives

This section presents a general description of the project along with any general or technical constraints and/or considerations. Please include the sub-sections below.

1.    Project name

2.    Business goals and project goals

3.    Scope

4.    Time and budget constraints

5.    General and technical requirements

6.    Training and documentation

7.    Installation

2.0 Project Estimates

This section presents a set of estimates for the completion of the project, including people, hardware and software. Please include the following sub-sections.

1. People costs

a. Historical or researched data used for estimates (Requires annotation listing where you got this information)

b. Salary requirements

2. Equipment costs (Requires costs for all hardware and software used. It is assumed that all hardware and software will be new).

a. Hardware

b. Software

3. Estimation techniques and results

a. Process-based (use the format shown in section 1.2.1 of the lecture)

b. Second method

c. Triangulation results

3.0 Project Schedule

This section presents an overview of project tasks and the output of a project scheduling tool. The following sub-sections should be included:

3.1 Project task list

The tasks that have been selected for the project are presented in this section.

3.2 Task network

Project tasks and their dependencies are noted in this diagrammatic form.

3.3 Timeline chart

A project timeline chart (Gantt chart) is presented. Please embed the Gantt chart in the document as this is the way end-users would see it.

4.0 Staff Organization

The manner in which staff are organized and the mechanisms for reporting are noted.

4.1 Team structure

The team structure for the project is identified. Roles are defined. Include an organization chart.

4.2 Management reporting and communication

Mechanisms for progress reporting and inter/intra team communication are identified

5.0 Risk Management

This section discusses project risks and the approach to managing them. Please include the following sub-sections.

5.1 Project Risks

Each project risk is described.

5.2 Risk Table

The complete risk table is presented. Name of risk, category, probability, and impact are provided.

5.3 Risk Mitigation, Monitoring, Management Strategy

Discuss a strategy to deal with each risk.

6.0 Tracking and Control Mechanisms

Techniques to be used for project tracking and control are identified. The following sub-sections should be included:

6.1 Quality assurance and control

An overview of SQA activities is provided. Note that an SQA Plan is developed for a moderate to large project and may be a separate document or included as an appendix. Use this section to list your business and technology metrics.

6.2 Change management and control

An overview of software configuration management (SCM) activities is provided. Note that an SCM Plan is developed for a moderate to large project and may be a separate document or included as an appendix. Use this section to describe your procedures for handling change to the specification while in development and the system after the system has been implemented.

Reference:

     Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition

Software Failure

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Nowadays, we can easily find software applications in everywhere such as on the internet, market, from reseller agents, from developers, and etc. Those software applications are implementing in the various industries, in the companies, in the institutions, in the government, and in the organizations. The aim of the software is to automate manual functions such as increasing the reliabilities and accuracies, cost saving for the labor, paperless, and green environment, and etc. Although, these software applications are helping the human being in order to have a quick and efficient results and to have reliable and accuracy calculations or measurements. It is also including to store and to retrieve information for the decision making processes or for another purposes; this software has also had a limitation in which might caused the system failure or system halt during execution of the tasks or it services, for instance virgin blue system error. Even, it might cause the life of the human being such as therac-25. 

According to the Hall and Fernandez-Ramil, “the software applications have not returned the benefit to the economy, if anything to expend on larger software and hardware will lead to decreasing national productivities,” Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007, p.16).

Let’s start with two examples of the virgin blue airline that using the IT services. First, the virgin blue system was sending an error email of upgrading customer’s membership rewards from “velocity member to gold member” which was well known as “Friday the 13^th strikes”. The velocity customers were getting emails as it shows in below picture:

This caused the velocity website crashed, lot of customers tried to visit the site to ensure the truth. An hour later sent an apology email to the velocity customers as it shows in below picture:

Second, the virgin blue IT system failure caused around fifty thousand passengers can’t board including canceling hundreds of the virgin blue flights in Australia. The Navitaire was contracted with virgin blue to give IT service. In the service agreement that was established is very clear stated that in any critical mission, the remedies have to be in the period of the short time in the outages. The hardware faulty from ‘Navitaire’ had made an additional cost to the virgin blue. The virgin blue has to pay passengers accommodations that were not able to broad at that time.

With two examples above, the first IT system error whereas incidentally upgrade the not entitled velocity members to rewards the Gold member, was a confusing information. The second issue of hardware failure had cost extra to the virgin blue.

On the therac-25 issue was identified as bugs that upgraded from therac-20 as in the following text box:

Possible Thearac-25 Failures:

• There were no proper assessment and testing of the new created machine
• Error detection massage are not well design
• Not proper action after first error detected
• The safety glitch is not proper installed
• There were not have a proper communication among hospital who using the machine with government and manufactory 

 In conclusion: Any software development, has to be in-line with the business needs, designed in the scope of requirements, and tested the application for several time of period before going to be real in production, and including to establish the back system in which to anticipate the failures.

References:

Grubb, B. (13 November 2009), Virgin Blue "error" upgrades passengers to gold

status, [Online].  Available from:  http://www.itnews.com.au/News/160494,virgin-blue-error-upgrades-passengers-to-gold-status.aspx  (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Australia Association Press, (27 September 2010), Australian airline grounded by

IT failure, [Online].  Available from: 

http://www.information-age.com/channels/it-services/news/1286558/australian-airline-grounded-by-it-failure.thtml

 (Accessed: 7 October 201).

An Investigation of the Therac-25 Incident, [Online]. Available from:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html (Accessed: 7 October  2011)

Case Analysis Module: Therac-25, [Online]. Available from:

          http://cnx.org/content/m13765/latest/ (Accessed: 7 October 2011)

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.

Information Technology and Social Issues

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Today era of the globalization needs more communication infrastructure in order to be able to communicate from time to time without any limitation. For instance the cross border information, culture interaction, and people interaction at anytime and anywhere. The Information Communication and Technology have played a vital role on today communication.

In other hand the rapid of technology innovation and software development has contributed positive and negative impact in the communities.

The positive parts as follows:

a)     People easy to interact:  People can easily interact with the rest of world even it is from very remote area. As far as there is a tool of communication and electricity such as mobile connectivity, Vsat communication, solar panels, generator, and etc., they will able to establish a communication with their relatives, friends, and make new friends

b)    No difficult in distance and time: Today distance and time are not a big deal. We can easily interact via virtual media such through audio and video conferences, web streaming, email communication, browsing internet, and etc. without have to travel to purpose destination to get same information.

c)     Effective, efficient, reliable, and accuracy: With the technology innovation, human works becomes efficient and effective. And those works can be accessible at anytime with different entities or groups because it is stored digitally.

d)    Human health improvement: The innovation of the technology has helped lot medical person to identify diseases in the hospitals and clinics, such robot surgeries, x-rays, etc.

e)     More exploration on the space: The technology helps to identify objects on the space; it is including shipping the astronaut to the space for direct observation.

f)      More job creation: the technology innovation also bring new field of knowledge area and job creation.

The negative parts as follows:

a)     Too much dependency on the technology: Today human has been invading by technology. Without the technology people just cannot deliver the works or services. For instance the system that they use to use for daily operation had hardware defected or power fails. They can’t deliver a job until it fixed. In order to overcome the situation we have to do a backup plan for generator and manual system if the automatic fail.

b)    Unpredictable hardware and software failure: The prediction on the hardware and software failures are unexpected, therefore we have to have backup system, have proper design and have to meet the criteria or requirements, modeling and testing the applications.

c)     Privacy invasion: Today social networks have also invaded the privacies of the users. To overcome this privacy issue, the ethical and awareness as an important part of the sharing information.

d)    Culture shock: The indigenous and modern people will shock with the other culture; the way to overcome the situation is to adjust and adapt some positive values from the other cultures.

In conclusion: The creations of any systems have to be in-line with existing law in the country or in-line with ethical computing, social entities needs, market, and use available technology or architecture.

References:

Baruh, L. & Soysal, L. (2010), Public Intimacy and the New Face (Book) of

Surveillance—The Role of Social Media in Shaping Contemporary Dataveillance, [Online].  Available from:  http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=171979.0 (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

West, A. (2009), NASA Study on Flight Software Complexity, [Online]. Available

from:  http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/418878main_FSWC_Final_Report.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Gordon, A. (2009), Jobs of the future, Science and Technology enable employment

 

for 2020-2030, [Online]. Available

http://futuresavvy.net/2009/08/jobs-of-the-future-technology-enabled-employment-for-2020-2030/ (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional

issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.

Enterprise and Conventional Project Management

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Nowadays, the Information Technology Project Management becomes more intense of using the project management knowledge in order to overcome the failures in the Information Technology projects in the past experience as a lesson learned and prepare for the better of the Information Technology projects management planning in the future. 

What is the Project? There are several attributes of the project can define more as follows:

1. A project has a unique purpose or idea whereas it has a clear define the objective of the project.
2. A project is temporary, whereas it has start and end time, e.g. less than two years (one month or two months of the project period).
3. A project is elaborated and developed by using progressive mode, whereas it has to adjust to the need when move along with the project, e.g. at the very beginning it may has more broad definition or objective however when move along the project it might find the tone and has more specifics and clear of the details.
4. A project requires the resources, whereas it has from various resources such as human resources (people), cost, other means like hardware and software, etc.
5. A project has to have sponsor or primary customer, stakeholders etc., for instance the sponsorship has to give a direction to the project manager on how the project output would be.
6. A project involves uncertainly as well, whereas it has uniqueness and it is difficult to predict the life time of the project.

The project manager has to be effective in managing those attributes above including managing a project team and follow the direction or guidance from project sponsor in order to meet the of project goal.

Project Management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements” (Schwalbe, 2010, p. 10)

In order to manage the project to be success, she or he, the project manager has to be dealing with a specific project and focusing on project goals whereas it is short term goals and it is relating to a particular project and not to mix with the other project activities.  It has to be concentrate in the trip constraint of the project.

The triple constrains as follows:

1. Scope:  What activities or works are need to be done in the project, what results that are expected to have, and how those activities are verify the need of customers or sponsor
2. Time: How long the period of the project to be completed, how team delivery tasks in the schedule, and who can approve  changes is if schedule time is not meet
3. Cost: How much the cost for the project to be completed, how cost will be analyzed, who can approve the budget if there is a change; 

The Enterprise Project Management is a systematic approach, in order to achieve the organization goals via the continuation of one basis of the project whereas involving the organizational strategies, transforming business activities, improving the operation to be effective, including the developing a project traditionally.

The Enterprise Project Management is a tool to enable the organizations or companies have better management in managing the resources, like as technology, people and processes and also have an efficient collaboration and consistent of project reporting to the managerial lines in the organization or company.

This tool also helps to have better performance and understanding in the project planning whereas fit with system development life cycle (SDLC).

The traditional project management has four main stage of project life time. They are:

• Concept: in which is coming from system analyst, end user or some one’s idea as a base to develop the system application for instance.
• Development: in which is system analyst, business analyst, designer, coder, and tester have to develop and prototype the application.
• Implementation: in which is the end users will confirm the features and developer doing maintenance for the changing or new version etc., including the project teams are responsible for the implementation starting from prototype, testing mode and production mode.
• Closeout: There are many issues are involving in the closing out of the project. For instance regulation changed, requirement changed, new technology etc.

In conclusion: Lot of agency or companies now is using the enterprise project management to minimize the project cost.

Annexes:

References list:

1. Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition
2. Microsoft Leadership in Enterprise Project Management Microsoft Office EPM Solution Customer Research Report [online]. Available from: http://www.epmsolutions.net/assets/solutions/epm_customer_research.pdf  (Accessed Date: May 6, 2011)
3. Enterprise Project Management [online]. Available from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35561435/Enterprise-Project-Management-EPM (Accessed Date: May 6, 2011)

Information Technology Project Manger Skill

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

The best practice is that the manager has to optimize the organization resources to achieve the goal and objective of the project. He or she can use his or her own experience by dealing with the variety on the projects. Of course he or she has to have basic management background knowledge. For instance Project management Body of Knowledge.

In other part Robert Buttrick suggested the following basic principles on how to manage the projects which are follows:

1.     Be sure that projects are driven by strategy and it is in line with company or organization business strategies

2.     Involving all stakeholders in all phases of the project

3.     Encourage team-work to work as the team, all the time

4.     Communicate clearly all issues (good and bad) to all entities that involve the project

In my own opinion, the project managers are managing the processes that come with projects management. This means that project managers are not work alone. He or she works as a team to make a project successful. He or she has to manage team or people to helping him or her in developing the project, define the clear objectives and goal of the project, mitigate the risk of the project, managing the scope, and work plan. Once the project is lunch project managers have to manage all project activities and control the processes, including have to manage the communication.

Therefore I do suggest the information technology project manager have to have variety skills as follows:

Ø Project management process skills

Ø Communication skills (written and verbal)

Ø Business or technology skills

Ø Problem solving and critical thinking skills

Ø Negotiation, conflict resolution skill

Ø Leadership skills

Ø Strong team builder skills

Ø Strong in the delegation tasks or build trust to the team members skills

Ø Consistent and ethical behavior 

However, not all of the listed skills above are mandatory for project managers to have. Basically project managers have to manage all resources that needed in the project within time line and cost efficiency.

Overall the project managers have to use their skills in every situation because certain skills are use in certain situation only. In other words different situation needs different skills.  

Another example larger project needs a strong leadership, has relevant experiences in the past, has a good team lead and player, has communication skills, has planning skill, and has people skills. For the uncertainty project needs person that has risk management, has expectation management, has people skills, has leadership, and has planning skill.

The leaders have to have a big picture of the project and motivate the team all the time in order to achieve the goal; while the managers have to have a details to meet the specific objectives. Most important is that the project manager has to lead by example.

Conclusion:

Not all skills for the project managers are needed in certain situation of the project management; they are all depends on the nature on the project itself.

The project managers are managing the projects with the leadership and manager role at the same time.

References list:

·        Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition

·        Lecture note, PM_WK1_Lecture_notes University Of Liverpool/ Laureate Online Education (2010), Lecture Notes from Information technology Project Management Module Seminar 1 [Online]. Available from: University of Liverpool/Laureat Online Education VLE (Accessed 7^th May 2011)

·        Besner, C., and Hobb, B. (Feb. 26, 2008) Project Management Practice, generic or contextual: A Realty check [online]. Available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pmj.20033/abstract  (Accessed Date: May 6, 2011)

·        The 7 most important communication skills an IT leader should have [online]. Available from: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/the-7-most-important-communication-skills-an-it-leader-should-have/622# (Accessed Date: May 6, 2011)