INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECTS

Initiating the Project
 Project initiation is the official launch of the project.
 Initiation is based on identified business needs that
justify the expense, risk, and allotment of resources for
the project to exist.
 It’s important for IT project managers to keep the idea
of the business need in mind throughout the project.

Cont….
 The project charter is the official document that
authorizes the project manager and the project to exist
within the organization.
 The project stakeholders are all the people and
organizations that are affected by the existence of the
project and the project’s outcome

Cont…..
 The initiating stage should include a plan that
encompasses the following areas:
i. Analyzing the business needs/requirements in
measurable goals.
ii. Reviewing of the current operations.
iii. Financial analysis of the costs and benefits
including a budget.

Cont…..
iv. stakeholder analysis, including users, and support
personnel for the project
v. project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables,
and schedule

Planning the Project
 Good projects need good plans.
 You, the project team, and many of your stakeholders
will need to know where your project is going and how
you plan on getting there.
 Planning is an iterative project process group that
communicates the intent of the project manager.

Cont…
 It shows which processes will be used in the project,
how the project work will be executed, how you’ll
control the project work, and finally, how you’ll close
down phases and the project at its end.
 Planning requires time, resources, and often a budget
for testing, experimenting, and learning.

Cont…
 The primary result of the planning process group is the
project management plan.
 This document is actually a collection of smaller plans
that address different areas of the project.

Executing the Project
 Presented with your approved project, your project
team goes about the business of getting the project
work done and creating key results.
 Project execution is unique to each discipline and is led
and directed by the project manager.

Cont….
 This is also the area of the project where members of
your project team will spend the bulk of their time and
effort and where the project will spend the bulk of
your budget.
 Project execution includes the quality assurance
process, as the project team must create the project
work correctly.

Cont…..
 It is also in the project execution process group that
you’ll acquire, develop, and manage the project team.
It’s a fine line between managing your project team
and leading the project team.

Monitoring and Controlling the
Project
 This set of processes ensures that the project work
team is doing and being completed accurately and
according to plan.
 If there are problems, issues, or risks, then the project
shifts back to project planning to figure the stuff out
before moving back into execution.

Cont…
 Monitoring and controlling the project is based on
your project plans, the work of the project team, and
shifting conditions within the project.
 Monitoring and controlling also provides
communication for reporting the overall performance
of the project, the performance of key project
deliverables, and information on project specifics,
such as the time, cost, and risk portions of the project.

Establishing the Project
Requirements
 Before the actual project work can begin, the project
manager must establish the project requirements with
the project stakeholders.
 Stakeholders are any individuals, groups, or
communities that have a vested interest in the
outcome of the project.
 On some projects, the stakeholders may be just one
department.

Cont….
 On others, when projects may affect every department,
the stakeholders may be throughout the entire
organization.
 Identifying stakeholders is important because their
input to the project requirements early in the project
initiation can ensure the project’s success.

Cont…..
 Stakeholders include:
i. Customers and users. These are often called the end
users, clients, or recipients of the project deliverables.
These stakeholders could be internal to your
organization or quite literally customers that purchase
the deliverable your project creates.

Cont….
ii. Project sponsor. This is a person in the organization
that has the authority to grant the project manager
power over the project resources, assign a project
budget, and support the existence of the project.
-This person also signs the project charter to officially
launch the project and assigns the project manager to
the project.

Cont…
iii. Portfolio review board.
- This group of stakeholders is responsible for
determining which projects are worthy of the
company’s capital.
-They define the governance of projects and programs
within an organization and oversee the selection of the
projects, while considering a number of factors such as
return on investment, project value, risk to reward of
proposed projects, and predicted financial outcomes
of launching a new project.

Cont…
iv. Program managers.
-A program is a collection of projects working together
to realize benefits that the company could not realize
if the projects were managed independently of one
another.
-The program manager oversees all of these
orchestrated projects in her program.

Cont…
v. Project team
-These are the people that work on planning and
executing the project plan.
-Depending on the organization, the project team may
work full-time or part-time on the project, and they
can come and go as the project work warrants or stick
around for the duration of the project.

Cont….
vi. Functional management
-Functional management consists of managers of the
administrative functions of a company; consider
finance, human resources, and accounting.
-Functional management has their own staff and their
own day-to-day duties to keep the operations stable.

Cont….
vii. Business partners.
-These are the sellers, vendors, and contractors that may
be involved in a project through a contractual
relationship.
- Business partners can provide goods and services such
as hardware, software, and subject matter experts like
developers, technical writers, and software testers that
you might need on your project.

Reasons for initiating a project
- problem-driven: competition, crisis
-change-driven: new needs, growth, change in
business, change in environment
- opportunity-driven: new technology
-part of a previous plan

Tools Used to Monitor and Control
Projects
 Having accurate project estimates and a robust project
budget is necessary to deliver within the project
budget.
 There are several techniques used to monitor and
control the project:

Cont….
i. Earned Value Management or Analysis
-Earned Value Management (EVM) is a mathematical
method by which you can measure the actual
performance of a project.
-You will use EVM to monitor your project in terms of
schedule and cost.

Cont….
ii. Forecasting.
-The forecast is based on the current actual
performance.
-As a project manager, having the ability to tell whether
your project will be delivered on-time and on-budget is
critical.

iii. Variance Analysis
-Variance analysis is the comparison of expected
project performance to the actual cost performance.
- This analysis helps you understand the causes of
variance, if any. Preventative and corrective actions are
determined based on the variance analysis

Cont….
iv. Performance Review.
-Performance reviews in projects are required to check
the health of a project.
-This usually involves Cost and Schedule as the main
parameters to assess.
- However, other parameters, such as Scope, Quality,
Team Morale, may be used.
-Reviews may include the client, Product Owner, other
Project Managers

INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECTS

More Related Content

INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECTS