summary chapter 1-6

chapter 1-Introduction to Project Management

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. A project can be small or large and take a short or long time to complete. Projects also require resources, stakeholders, and involved uncertainty which is risks. There are triple constraints that project management need to face which are scope, time and cost measurement of the project.

Then, another important part in this chapter is the involvement of project management. The project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project manager and project management play a vital role and need to have in a project because they are engage in making decision, to observe the project and to make sure that the project is finish on time. Then, there are stakeholders who are the people involved in or affected by project activities for instance the project sponsor, the project manager, customer, and others. Furthermore, there are knowledge areas which is describe the key competencies that project mangers must develop. The nine project management knowledge areas are project integration management, human resources, communication, risk, procurement management, scope, cost, time and quality. Moreover, there are project management tools and techniques which are to assist project managers and their teams in various aspects of project management.

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. A program manager provides leadership and direction for the managers heading the projects within the program. Project portfolio management involves organizing and managing projects and programs as a portfolio of investment that contributes to entire enterprise’s success. Portfolio management emphasizes meeting strategic goals while project management focuses on tactical goals.

The successful projects and organizations are led by experiences project managers who can often help influence success factors. Therefore, they need to be well prepared in various jobs of duties and responsibilities, like planning, scheduling, coordinating and working with people to achieve project goals. They also need to have soft skills like leadership, listening etc and skills in project management, general management and their application such as information technology.

The profession of project management is growing and having potential to be widened in the future. Then, now there are also hundreds of different project management software products are born to assist performance of project management. Therefore, we know that project management is widely used and vital in each of projects that came out today.

Chapter 2- The Project Management and Information Technology Context

There are three sphere models for systems management which are business, technology and organizations. All these models are important in developing the system management and each of them are relating to each others which is based on the ‘WH’ question. Then, in the organizations have four different frames which are structural, human resources, political and symbolic. The structural frame focuses on roles and responsibilities which is to meet the objectives and goal of the project set by top management. The human resources frame stress on producing harmony between needs of the organization and the needs of people. After that, political frame addresses organizational and personal politics. Then the symbolic frame focuses on symbols and meaning.

There are an also organizational structure that is influences and affect projects which are functional, project and matrix. The organizational culture also contributed towards a project which is a set of shared assumptions, values and behaviors that characterize the functioning of organizations. A strong member identity, high risk tolerance, performance-based rewards and an open system focuses are some of characteristics organizational culture in a project that leads to the successful of a project.

In a project, there is a project stakeholder who is an individual or organization that actively involved whose interests may be positively or negatively affected because of project execution or successful project completion. Project managers need to identify and understand the different need of the stakeholders on their project.

Organizational standard is needed in a project in order to ensure the project succeeded. Then, a senior management or top management will assist and guides project manager be more effective and help them if they are to do a good job of project integration.

There are project phases that need to be followed in order to accomplish a project. Basically a project life cycle is a collection of project phases. Phases of a traditional project life cycle include concept, development, implementation and close-out. A project manager must understand and take in-charge in each phase of its products that they are providing on. It is because to ensure that the project manager knows what exactly happened in its works.

What is important of project phase and management review?
A project should successfully pass through each of the project phases in order to continue on to the next phase. Management reviews or phase exits or kill points, should occur after each phase to evaluate the project’s progress likely success, and continued compatibility with organizational goals.


Chapter 3 - The Project Management process Groups: A Case Study.

The five of project management process is initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. The project phase is inter-related with these processes. It is because everything that happens in the phase will reflect the management process groups. Basically, each of the process will produce different outcome and therefore project manager is important person to in-charge and lead the project. Moreover, during the executing process it will need more a time and resources followed by planning process.

Mapping is important in the activities of the process groups because it leads to the knowledge areas provides a big picture of what activities are involved in project management. For example, a case study which is involved in the five of project management process is JWD Consulting’s. This case study show that how a project is begin and end with appropriate methods in another word how it manages their own information technologies in order to meet their own particular needs. Furthermore, this case study also provides some templates or sample of outputs produced initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing such as business card, project charter, team contract, Gantt chart and others.

Therefore, this group processes is important and play a vital roles in finishing a products of project. Everything is inter-related and when the beginning of a project having a problem or project manager cannot control the problem it will affect the rest of the project. In short, the project manager must know everything that will happens and what had happened in order to complete the project and get succeed.


Chapter 4- Project Integration Management

Project Integration Management involves coordinating all other project management knowledge areas throughout a project’s life cycle. This integration ensures that all the elements of a project come together at the right times to complete a project successfully. There are seven main processes that involved in a Project Integration Management which are:

• Develop the project charter
• Develop the preliminary project scope management
• Develop project management plan
• Direct and mange project execution
• Monitor and control the project work
• Perform integrated change controls
• Close the project


Chapter 5 – Project Scope Management

What is a project scope management?
On of the most important and most difficult aspect of project, management is defining the scope of a project. Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the process to create them. Project scope management includes the process involved in defining and controlling what is or is not included in a project and it ensures that project team and stakeholders have the same understanding towards the work required in order to complete the project successfully.

There are five main process involved in project scope management:
• Scope planning: it is first step where scope management plan is created.
This stage should include description of how the team will prepare detailed
scope statement, create WBS, verify completion of the project deliverables
and handle the requests for changes to the project scope.
• Scope definition: in this stage includes a preliminary scope statement which
is a project justification, project charter, a brief description of the
project’s product, a summary of all project deliverables, and a statement to
keep scope information up-to-date.
• Creating WBS: it is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in
a project that defines the total scope of the project. It is also a
foundation document that provides the basis for planning and managing
project schedules, costs, resources, and changes. There are several
approaches for developing a WBS, including using guidelines, the analogy
approach, the top-down approach, the bottom-up approach and mind mapping.
• Scope verification: It is involves formal acceptance of the scope by
the stakeholders.
• Scope control: It will control the changes towards the project scope.

Why projects fail?
One of the reasons is a weak and poor of the project scope management. For information technology projects, it is essential for good project scope management to have strong user involvement, a clear statement of requirements, and a process for managing scope changes. There are also methods that can assist the project scope management which is by using a software like word-processing, spreadsheets, communication software like e-mail, and software in creating WBS.

Chapter 6 – Project Time Management

Project Time Management is one of the biggest challenges that face by managers to cite delivering projects on time and main cause of conflict.

There six processes involved in project time management which are:

• Activity definition: it involves identifying the specific activities that
must be done to produce the project deliverables. Later, it will result in a
detailed WBS.

• Activity sequencing: it involves reviewing activities and determining
dependencies. Dependencies or relationship is the sequencing of project
activities. Dependencies must be determined in order to use critical path
analysis. There are three of dependencies which are mandatory dependencies,
discretionary, and external dependencies. Network diagrams are a schematic
display of logical relationship among, or sequencing of, project activities.
It is the preferred technique for showing activity sequencing. There are two
methods that used to create a diagram which are arrow diagram method (ADM)
and the precedence diagramming method. There are also four methods of
dependency: finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start and start-
to-finish.

• Activity resources estimating: it involves determining the quantity and type
of resources like, tools, people and material that will be assigned to each
activity.

• Activity duration estimating: it creates estimates for the amount of time in
order to complete each activity. These time estimates include the actual
amount of time worked plus elapsed time.

• Schedule development:
In this stage it will be resulted from all of the other project time
management process to determine the start and end dates for the project.
Important tools and techniques include Gantt charts, critical path
analysis, critical chain scheduling, and PERT analysis.
Project manager usually use Gantt chart to display the project schedule.
The critical path method predicts total project duration. The critical path
for project is the series of activities that determines the earliest
completion date for the project. It is the longest path through a network
diagram. If any activity on the critical path is slips, it will affect the
whole projects unless the project manager takes corrective action.
Crashing and fast tracking are two techniques for shortening project
schedules. Critical chain scheduling is an application of the Theory of
Constrains, and buffers to help meet the project completion dates. The
Program Evaluation and Review Techniques (PERT) is a network analysis
techniques used to estimate project duration when there is a high degree of
uncertainty about the individual activity duration estimates.

• Schedule control: project managers must hold progress meetings with
stakeholders and be clear and honest in communicating schedules issues. It is
realistic to know the project schedule and use discipline to meet the schedule
goal. Then if there are any problem that occur, let the top management know
about it in order to handle and solve the problem.

Project management software can assist in project scheduling if used properly. By using it, it will avoid the need to perform cumbersome calculation manually and perform ‘what if’ analysis activity duration estimation or dependencies change. Many people misuse project management software because they do not understand the concepts in creating a network diagrams, determining critical path, and setting schedule baseline. Therefore, people must also avoid over-relying on sample files or templates when creating their unique project schedule.

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Three-Sphere Model

1) There is Three-Sphere Model for systems management which is important in Project Management. This Three-Sphere Model of systems management is business, organization, and technology. These models are giving big impact towards the system management in projects which it can be succeed or failed. Everything is depends on this model and how we handle it. Basically, it relate to WH question which is what, why, how etc… In business, it requires long term planning and will need to obtain business requirements from stakeholders, whether that sponsors, sales, or even shareholders as well as to achieve the objectives. It also needs to understand the market, competitors and other external forces. Then, the technology; we need to know how each and every tool and technology work, and we need to know the strengths, benefits, limitations and costs of it. Then, the organization; which important because here we can see the top management of the project and how the project manager will in charge the whole project with his team member. Therefore, we can see also the system management is systematic or not, is there are problem among them and how the project manager distributes the task. Then, if everything is fine, so that the project will be excellent and succeeds.

2) http://www.htcinc.com/admin/files/Gov-KJSBMalaysia-SPEKS.pdf

It is a website that has been succeeds in the IT project which is based on the web based application named SPEKS using oracle. The title of this project is Successful Global Delivery Model: Malaysian Government Project. Basically, this project is to computerize the financial accounting of Federal Government of Malaysia in order to maintain their leadership in e-Governance. There are some issued that can be addressed based on this project in terms of the three-sphere model which is:


Business
a) What will the project of web based application named SPEKS using oracle cost the

Federal Government of Malaysia?
b) What will the impact be on enrollment?

Organization
a) Who will train the staffs?
b) Who will administer and support training?

Technology
a) What applications software will be loaded?
b) What will the hardware specifications be?


3) I think, everything is important because all of this three-sphere model were implement each other, so that the project will be succeeds. However, there is a question which is the most important for the project? I think it is the organization which has a project management. It is because every project begins with a top of management, a team member who has it owns specifications or skills. Therefore it needs to be building up first then, get understand to each other, so that it will come out with a best management. Thus, the project will achieve the objectives and be succeeds.


4) http://www.projectperfect.com.au/info_it_projects_fail.php

The best documented IT project failures are the ones involving public money. The most recent example is the Virtual Case File project for the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The FBI had admitted the Virtual Case File Technology had failed to meet the bureau’s requirements and that; Five years of development and $US 170 million in cost had been lost (Friden, 2005).
The Virtual Case File had been delivered by Science Application International and it was aimed at facilitating case file management by integrating data from older system, including the Automated Case support system, and eventually replacing them (National Research Council, 2004).
The National Research Council (2004) saw no evidence that backup and contingency plans had been formalized. The transition plan did not include the availability of the Automated Case Support system after the cutover to the Virtual Case File (National Research Council, 2004).
Science Application International Corporation said it delivered the first phase of the project ahead of schedule and under budget, but the requirements for the software changed more than one time after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the USA (Gross, 2005). The office of the inspector general found that FBI was still defining the requirements after two years since the start of the project (Fine, Glenn, 2002). Science Application International Corporation also said that the communication with FBI was difficult because of the high turn over of top IT managers (Gross, 2005).
National Research Council (2004) also found that the requirements for the FBI mission were not included in the Virtual Case File design.
The example of Virtual Case File gives a high level overview of the difficulties to successful completion of complex IT projects. The example has shown that the difficulties are related more to the people than the technology itself (Tilmann and Weinberger, 2004), even though technology may increase complexity.
Why it failed? It is because the project team, the suppliers, the customers and other stakeholders can all provide a source of failure, but the most common reasons for project failure are rooted in the project management process itself and the aligning of IT with organizational cultures. Another reasons for project failure because of the poor planning, Objectives changing during the project, failure to communicate and act as a team, Unrealistic time or resource estimates and inappropriate skills.


5)
(1) Functional organizational structure

Small and Medium Industry (SMIs)

2) Project organizational structure

6)
(a) Top management commitment is very importance in order to get the successful project management. Top-level managers, or top managers, are also called senior management or executives. These individuals are at the top one or two levels in an organization, and hold titles such as: Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operational Officer (COO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), and Chairperson of the Board, President, Vice president, and corporate head.
Frequently, a set of these managers will comprise the top management team, which is composed of the CEO, the COO, and other department heads. Then, top managers also make decisions which affecting the whole of the firm. Top managers do not direct the day-to-day activities of the firm; rather, they set goals for the organization and through the company to achieve them. Top managers are finally responsible for the performance of the organization, and often, these managers have very visible jobs.
Top managers in most organizations have a great deal of managerial experience and have moved up through the ranks of management within the company or in another firm. An exception to this is a top manager who is also an entrepreneur; such an individual may start a small company and manage it until it grows enough to support several levels of management. Some CEOs are hired in from other top management positions in other companies. On the other hand, they may be promoted from within and groomed for top management with management development activities, coaching, and mentoring. They may be tagged for promotion through succession planning, which identifies high potential managers.