Project Management Workshop

Nick Cook  Citigroup Corporate and Investment Bank  European Technology Business Office Manager Edinburgh University April 2002

Introduction Who am I? What are we here to do?

Goals of the workshop understand the nature of projects have a feel for the key activities involved in project management understand how effective management can help provide an effective solution to the final year project NOT TO TURN YOU ALL INTO EXPERT PROJECT MANAGERS

Agenda Overview Project lifecycle SLDC and project lifecycle Project roles Project planning Project tracking and control Reporting progress Project risk

Overview What is a project? How do we manage projects and why is project management important? Why is project management important? Much of project management is common sense - but procedures and tools can help

Project Lifecycle  start up establishes the need for the project and agrees the main tasks  plan agrees what is to be produced sets up the plans and schedules that will be used to track project activities and  execute main activities of the project against plans to make sure the project meets its goals  close down bring project to a close in a orderly fashion

IT Development SDLC SDLC = Software Development Life Cycle This cycle is different from the project lifecycle - most of the SDLC activities will be completed during the Project Execute phase What are the typical IT development SLDC phases?

SDLC Phases initiation definition technical design construction validation implementation review

Project Roles Projects typically involve the interaction of a number of people in different roles -  eg project sponsor, project manager, team leader, team member Concentrating on the project manager - what are the key responsibilities?

Project Manager - Responsibilities manage the production of the required goods plan and monitor direct and motivate the team manage project risk initiate corrective action where needed provide progress reports agree and ensure quality is achieved on occasion - terminate the project when necessary

Project planning How do you plan the project  determine and agree the project goals - what are you going to produce  Break the project down and identify the main project tasks - and estimate the time it will take to perform each task  Record the tasks in a logical order  Develop target start and end dates/times for each task  Use a GANNT chart to show how the tasks will run in logical sequences  Identify project risks and build additional time into task duration to take account of these

Project planning (2) Task breakdown - example

Project planning (3) Scheduling Gantt chart examples using MS Project

Project planning (4) Resource planning  who will be doing what and when  consider the skills you have available in the project team - don’t ask the plumber to do the plastering!!!  Pay particular attention to scarce resource - can only 1 person in the project team complete a particular task?

Project planning (4) Risk management - planning projects without considering risk is a common mistake generic risk  eg resource risk - right people not available at the right time. Use you project plan to find alternative solutions project-specific risk  these will be peculiar to your project and you need to identify them and have ideas/solutions in case the problems occur

Project control Murphy’s law - “if everything seems to be going well, you obviously don’t know what’s going on …..”

Project tracking and controls What should you monitor  time you Gantt chart should have milestones - are you meeting these?  cost are you spending more than you planned - is each task taking more effort then you estimated  quality harder to measure, but is the quality of the product you are developing in line with the original goals

Project monitoring - corrective action if the project starts to go off track against the plan - what can you do?  Assess the situation  analyse the problems  implement solutions and monitor  refine the project schedule in the light of changes

Project monitoring - corrective action (2) 5 choices of action brainstorm an alternative approach - eg code something in a different way put in place contingency plans or change the key project parameters - cost, time, quality  apply more resource - but will cost more  move the end date - but will deliver late  provide less functionality than planned - but will dilute quality

Reporting progress communication during the project is vital consider the following types of communication activities:  project meetings  project status reports  informal reviews and discussions

Project risk planning risk mitigation is key - see above consider the following  scale of the risk  probability of the risk  significance of the risk try brainstorming to identify risks and solutions

Summary Key aspects Planning  ‘those who fail to plan, plan to fail’ Monitoring and control  ‘you can’t control what you can’t measure’