Geog 469 GIS Workshop Project Management

Outline Why review information needs and system requirements? What are three popular activities that can assist with project management?

Why review information needs and system requirements? Scope of the system What are four scopes for a project? Critical success factors What is important?

Scope Statement Scope statement consists of two parts containing four core elements; each element builds from previous Information Need 1) Goals What your project is going to accomplish? 2) Objectives or need-to-know questions How is your project accomplishing that goal? 3) Deliverables or information products Specific items or services that must be produced in order to fulfill the goals of the project produced in completion of an objective Systems Requirements 4) Resources Identify the GIS resources (data, software, hardware, people) used to produce the deliverables Requirements are the lowest common denominator and cannot be broken down further Requirements are the specifications of the deliverables or project goals System requirement report serves as a baseline for the project

Critical success factors Understanding of and consensus on project goals/objectives by key stakeholders Well-defined scope statement Clearly defined requirements derived from goals and deliverables Involvement from the stakeholders Communication plan Well-defined project plan Project schedule, risk management plan The use of established project management practices

What are three popular activities that can assist with project management? Applying project management activities to project implementation plan: Assigning roles and responsibility to personnel - Work Breakdown Structure content used to develop Responsibility Assignment Matrix Understanding dependencies between tasks - Program Evaluation and Review Technique Estimating the duration of project activities - Critical Path Method

Work breakdown structure (WBS) Graphically display the deliverables of the project in a hierarchical fashion, i.e. levels of detail Organizes the work of the project into logical groupings Helps assign resources and estimate time and costs

Organizing the WBS levels Level 1: the name of the project e.g. annual conference project Level 2: deliverables or major milestones of the project or project phases e.g. PCs set up Level 3: tasks or grouping of tasks e.g. Obtain PCs, Set up PCs … Lowest level: work packages e.g. Arrange delivery, Load software

Organizing the WBS levels - tree form - From Heldman 2005 Project management jumpstart

Organizing the WBS levels - outline form -

Task list Deliverable is a “noun” while task is “verb” action Tasks are single activities, or units of related work, completed to satisfy a project deliverable or the requirement of a deliverable

Organizing the WBS levels Where to stop? Keep adding levels of the WBS until you’ve broken the work out to the point where responsibility for each unit of work can be assigned to a specific person or to a team work packages: the lowest level of a WBS where resource assignments and time/cost estimates are established Why identification codes? allows you to uniquely identify each element of the WBS serves as convenient reference numbers to other planning information Link to scope statement? Make sure all deliverables in scope statement are included in WBS

Constructing the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) Similar to personnel requirement in Stage 2 report Assign roles and responsibilities to available resources (staff) Row: types of resources needed Column: WBS work packages For resource assignments, use expert judgment and historical information

Estimating activity durations Similar to timing requirements of Stage 2 Determine the number of work periods needed to complete the tasks defined in the WBS Use PERT to determine the duration of project and critical path tasks, which we address next

Program Evaluation & Review Technique (PERT) uses a network diagram Tasks are dependent on one another, thus one task cannot start or finish until the previous task has finished or started Network diagram shows the tasks of the project in sequential order Visualizes the progress of the project, and determines how the work of the project must be performed Critical path: longest (duration) full path on the project

PERT PERT: Program Evaluation and Review Technique; developed to estimate the project schedule and forecast it with a high degree of reliability; well-applied to large-scale project We will focus on critical path method that allows us to determine project duration Each box is a project task. Arrows show dependencies between tasks. The tasks in red are on the critical path. If any tasks on the critical path take longer than planned, the whole project will slip unless something is done. Source: Tom Nolan’s lecture note

Critical path method (CPM) Used to calculate the duration of the project Critical path is the longest full path on the project; when you change the duration of a critical path task, it always changes the project duration Float time: the amount of time you can delay the early start of a task without delaying the finish date of the project All tasks with zero float time are considered critical path tasks

Critical path method 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 List the tasks on the worksheet, WBS number, and task description List the dependencies of each task Record the duration of each task Calculate the early start date and early finish date for each task, beginning with i = min (task #) { Early finish date of the ith task = early start date + duration Early start date of the (i+1)th task if dependent on other task i = (the early finish date of task i) + 1 Set i = i + 1} Calculate the late start date and late finish date for each task, beginning with i = max (task #) { Late start date of the ith task = late finish date – duration Late finish date of the (i-1)th task if the ith task depends on the (i-1)th task = (the late start date of task i) – 1 Set i = i – 1} Calculate float for each task where float = late start date – early start date Determine the critical path for the project by adding up the duration of every task with zero float Task # 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the critical path task and their durations total 144 days