Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Identifying, Selecting and Defining a Project ………. Note: This material has been produced by Raja from various text books and material information available in Internet. This is purely developed for academic purpose only as handouts for students of IT Project Management. Key books were prescribed to students either as text book or reference books and advised interested students to purchase any of these books as this would help further improving their knowledge. Main Text Book Referred for this Chapter is Information Technology Project Management 2nd Edition, by Schwalbe, course Technology. This is a very good textbook for IT Project Management. I strongly recommend the purchase of the book as an investment for your career development.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Initiation Organisation commits to the project through identification of key business functions that needs to be automated through or upgraded through new IT Project. It is important that the objective of the IT strategy aligns with the mission and vision of the organisation. Project initiation involves i) Project Identification and selection, ii) Development of Project Charter and iii) Conducting feasibility studies and validate the need to continue the project into further phases.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Identification Strategic Planning - Determining Long Term Objectives of an organisation by conducting SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats - SWOT - Analysis is used to aid the strategic planning. The experts in the business outside IT department needs to be involved in developing IT strategy to ensure that organisational strategies that require the supporting IT Strategy are properly identified.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Selection Identify potential projects Prepare a short list of potential projects that would benefit the company most by: * focusing on broad organisational needs * categorising information technology projects * performing net present value or other financial analysis * using a weighted scoring model * or the combination of the above

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Selecting a project Organisations, in most cases, have policies on return on investment, payback period etc. Therefore, it is important for the executive management to understand the limitations of financial estimates, especially, when it comes to IT projects. In the case of IT projects it is very difficult to develop good financial estimates. We will see more on this topic under the module - Project Cost management.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Selecting a project: Weighted Scoring Model A tool that provides a systematic process for selecting projects based on pre-determined criteria which could vary with company to company. This could include meeting broad organisational needs (big picture), addressing problems, opportunities or directives. Also could include time it will take to complete the project, overall priority and projected financial performance.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Selecting a project: Weighted Scoring Model - Some Possible Criteria for It Projects Supports key business objectives Has strong internal sponsor Has strong customer support Uses realistic level of technology Can be implemented in one year or less Provides positive net present value Has low risk in meeting scope, time and cost goals See Figure 1 supplied.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Selected a project: What now? Prepare a “Project Charter” Project charter is a document that formally recognises the existence of the project and provides direction on the project’s objectives and management. It documents * Title and date of authorisation to start project * Project Manager name and contact details * A brief scope statement * A summary of planned approach for managing project

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Selected a project: What now? * A roles and responsibilities matrix * A sign-off section for signatures of key stakeholders. *A comments section in which stakeholders can provide important comments related to the project.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Planning: Developing documents to provide the basis for future project decisions. Out put of scope planning is Scope Statement which provides supporting information and a scope management plan. Project Scope Statement: Document used to develop and confirm common understanding of the project scope. This statement includes justification for the project, brief description of project’s products, summary of all deliverable and success criteria.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: A clear scope definition is important to the success of project. A clear scope definition helps to improve the accuracy of time, cost and resource estimation. Acts as bench mark for performance management and project control. Helps to communicate to members of project team their work responsibilities clearly. Out put of scope definition is Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) ie. the structure that shows the break-up details of the project. Ie. Major problem broken into manageable smaller pieces.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS Foundation document for project management Outcome oriented analysis of work involved in the project Provides total scope of the project WBS is a task-oriented family tree of activities organised around project products or by phases. Help visualise the whole project and all of its main parts. See Figure 2 for WBS organised by Products to be developed during project. See Figure 3 for WBS for the same project organised by Phases of the project.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS Level 0 Level 2 Level 3 Level 1

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS The WBS details shown in Fig 3 are listed in the tabular form below: Intranet Project for Course Marketing Web: Main Modules 1.0 Concept Development 2.0 Web Site Design 3.0 Web Site Development 4.0 Deployment of new Web-based System 5.0 Evaluation and Close-down Of these 5 modules, details activity statement outlining the scope of work for concept development is provided in the next slide. You will notice that this module has been dived into further 2nd level and third level tasks to be undertaken. This provides clear understanding of work to be done and will allow scheduling and costing more accurate.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS 1.0 Concept Development 1.1 Evaluate current system 1.2. Define requirements Define user requirements Define current requirements Define system requirement Define Server Owner Requirements 1.3 Define specific functionality 1.4 Define risks and risk management approach 1.5 Develop Project Plan 1.6 Brief Web Development Team Note: Other modules also needs to be expanded this way before scheduling, costing and identifying human resource requirements.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS Methods for Creating WBS *Top-down approach * Bottom-up approach * Using guidelines (Dept of Defence Guidelines) * Analogy approach (Sharing the WBS format from another person / company with permission)

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS Advice on creating WBS * A unit of work should appear at only one place in the WBS * The work content of WBS item is sum of the WBS item below it. * A WBS item is the responsibility of only one individual, even though many people may be working on it. * The WBS must be consistent with the way in which work is actually going to be performed.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Definition: WBS Advice on creating WBS * WBS should serve the project team. * Project team members should be involved in developing the WBS to ensure consistency and buy-in. * Each WBS item must be documented to ensure accurate understanding of the scope of work included and not included in that item. * The WBS must be a flexible tool to accommodate inevitable changes while properly maintaining control of the work content in the project according the scope statement.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Verification It’s difficult to create a good scope statement and WBS especially for an IT project. Many IT projects suffer from Scope Creep- the tendency for project scope to keep getting bigger and bigger. Scope verification involves formal acceptance of the project scope by the stakeholders. For this purpose, it is important that the project team document clearly the project’s products and procedures for evaluating if they were completed correctly and satisfactorily.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Change Control Scope change control involves controlling changes to the project scope. Proper understanding of the project requirements and verification of scope at the time of acceptance would reduce the scope changes and there by scope change control would be made easy.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Project Scope Change Control According to CHAOS Study by Standish Group in 1995 the following factors cause problem to IT projects in the order in which they are listed: Lack of user input, incomplete requirements / specification, changing requirements / specifications, lack of executive support, technology incompetence, lack of resources, unrealistic expectations, unclear objectives, unrealistic time frames and new technology.

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Improving user input to the project requirements Develop a good project selection process Establish Project Monitoring committee comprising both user and developer Have regular review meeting Deliver something to project users and sponsors on regular basis Co-locate users with developers

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management How to reduce incomplete and changing requirements Determination of initial requirements properly Prototyping Use case modelling Joint application development Maintain requirement documentation Use requirement management tool (CASE Tool) Verify products / deliverable produced by the project against specifications. Change control board to monitor and review changes Set dead-line for completion

Lecturer -Raja Natarajan Jul Project Integration and Scope Management Need More Information Refer Chapter 4 Scope Management in the following book Main Text Book Referred for this Chapter is Information Technology Project Management 2nd Edition, by Schwalbe, course Technology.