Introduction

What is Project Management?

List of tasks?
A specialist process?
Only engineers are involved?
Work related?
Something other people do?
Class Activity: Share your project
management experience.
What is involved?
 Components of Project Management

1. Selecting the Project Team

2. Defining the Roles and Responsibilities
3. Coordinating Team Meetings
4. Scheduling and Outlining Project
5. Assigning Resources
6. Estimating Costs
7. Controlling Risks
8. Managing Changes
1. Selecting the Project Team
• Understand the overall needs and objective of project.
• Identify critical skill-sets required for success.
• Secure management approval for resources.
• If not available internally, planned to acquire skills through training or
seeking external expertise.
• Ensure that each team member understand the project’s goals,
timeframe, etc.
1. Selecting the Project Team
• Identify the main sponsor of the project.
• Involved all key members in the strategic planning process as early as
possible.
• Assume role of primary contact for executive decision making
• Seek approval for project’s final scope, goals, schedule, budget,
planned changes as early as possible.
2. Roles and Responsibilities
• Identify key role and responsibilities for each individual team member
(task ownership).
• Develop and document roles though key performance indicators
(KPI).
• Seek full commitment from each individual towards the project.
• Load balance workload in view of any other competing requirements.
• Seek supervisory approval for each member.
2. Roles and Responsibilities
• Identify a project manager if it is not assigned.
• Act as liaison between project team and management.
• Establish communication channels and basic mode of operations.
• Cater for planned absence
especially if member is required
to go for training.
2. Roles and Responsibilities
• Prepare the Requirement Document (RD):
• Overview of project
• Problem Summary
• Project Objectives
• Major Mandatory Features
• Environmental Considerations
• Integration and Migration
• Documentation
• Training and Maintenance
3. Coordinating Meetings
• Meeting are essential for the smooth planning and execution of the
project.

• 3 key meetings during the project are:

• The Kick-off Meeting
• The Brainstorming Meeting
• The continuous Structured /
Update Meetings
The Kick-off Meeting
• Critical to convey a proper Kick-off Meeting.

• Objectives to be attained include:

• Introduction to all members of the team
• Sharing of project vision and objectives
• Confirming individual roles in the project
• Presenting the Requirement Document (RD)
• Conduct comprehensive Q&A session
• Share future schedules, tasks, agenda, etc
The Brainstorming Meeting
• Purpose is to allow feedback and suggestions from team member
after reviewing the RD.

• Important points to cover include:

• Everyone understanding the scope of project
• Everyone knowing his role and responsibility
• Confirm primary and secondary goals
• Agreed on basic project assumptions
• Identify all resources required / budget
• Agree upon the finalized project schedule
Structured / Update Meetings
• Objective: to break down project into parts for ease of monitoring
and evaluation:
• Identify project phases and milestones
• Assign members and resources to phases
• Estimate task durations
• Finalized KPI to measure completion of phase
4. Scheduling and Outlining
▪ Use commercial software tools to track schedule eg. Microsoft
Project.

▪ Identify official start-date of the project

▪ Breakdown tasks using - Gantt Tables
- Gantt Charts
▪ Estimate task duration
▪ Finalized milestones in each phase
▪ Outline all tasks within each phase
5. Assigning Resources
• Estimate accurately the resources needed for the project.

• Some possible sources of resource information are:

• History of similar past projects
• Use project estimation tools
• Seek member estimates of tasks
• Use metrics software tools
Similar past projects
• Most project have similarity to past internal or external projects.
• Study past projects historical information
• Identify areas that are useful, missed out, etc
• Past projects may include summary of lesson learnt and mistakes
made
• Look for problems encountered in the past
• Remember to factor in changes due to time lag eg. inflation, new
methods, etc
Project estimation tools
• Numerous tools available in the market
• Cost Xpert
• Allow you to estimate the cost of your project by using a large database of past real-
world costing information.
• Relevant information can be imported directly into Microsoft Project
• Strategy Xpert
• Allow you to prioritize tasks and decisions towards project objectives.
• Optimize use of limited resources eg. time
Member estimates
• Members having their respective field of expertise are generally
familiar with their resource needs
• Allow member to share and inputs their views
• Measure projected resource needs against other historical or external
sources
• Adjust resource allocation when appropriate
• Top-down approach
• Bottom-up approach
Metrics software tools
• Various tools are available in the market based on the following
approaches:
• Function-Points Analysis Approach
• Assign points to all your objects like inputs, outputs, forms, interface, etc.
• Multiply each object by a point that represent the resource required.
• Can make use of historical data points
• Allocate resources as required.
Metrics software tools
• User-Interface Metrics Approach
• Estimate resource based on project interface with users like views, icons, dialog, menus,
etc
• Useful for project that depend on users inputs
• Allocate resources based on UI requirements
• Object Metrics Approach
• Useful for project involving objects like in OODB
• Count all objects that encompass the project
• Reuse any objects available from the past
• Allocate resources based on needed objects
6. Estimating Costs
• Based on the project resource requirements, applied to all tasks and
phases, calculate the cost of the resources allocated.
• Apply information obtained in the project budgeting phase into the
resource cost estimation.
• Ensure that all cost are apply
to the correct cost center as
approved by management.
Project Budgeting
• The finalized budget for the project should cover the following areas:
• Salaries and benefits
• Projected overtime cost
• Third party engagements
• Cost of hardware and software (dev tools), etc
• Cost of utilizing facilities, equipment
• Cost of documentation (internal, external)
• Cost of testing incl. using external test partners
• Training and courseware needed
7. Controlling Risks

• Develop overview of project with models

• Ensure clarity of references with catalogs

• Develop test plan for each phase of project

Clarity of references
• Ensure that all terms of reference are defined.
• Identify the change process allow for any modification of references.
• Clearly state the approval points and who can authorize changes as
needed.
• Structure a regular change
timeframe vs ad-hoc changes
as project progress
Develop test plan
• Essential to ensure that the project is progressing as planned and
against stated objectives.

• Can be divided into:

• Beta-test plan
• Quality Assurance plan
Beta-test plan
• Use when project has achieve major milestone.
• Ensure that project is stable and tested.
• Test plan will include:
• Who to do the test
• How to score the test result
• Testing agreement eg. confidentiality
• Documentation
• Test support needed
• Result reporting and schedule
Quality Assurance plan
• Use to ensure that required project quality is attained.
• Test plan will include:
• Functions and features to be tested
• Hardware, software and data requirements
• Control of test setup
• Entrance and exit criteria
• How the test to be conducted
• Defect reporting procedure
• Defect resolution procedure
8. Managing Changes
• Changes are inevitable as project progress.
• Use commercial tools to track and make changes including change
documentation.
• Develop a Change Management Plan (CMP).
• Identify source of change such as objective, design, market, technology, staff,
etc
• Assess the need for change
• Assess the impact of change on staff, schedule, cost, deliverables, other tasks,
etc
• Monitor the change to ensure correctness