Your Role and Triple Constraint

IT 328 Milestone Two Guidelines and Rubric Your Role and the Triple Constraint

Overview: In Milestone One, you began your progress toward successful completion of your final project, the risk analysis and mitigation memo. You will now continue this preparatory work in Milestone Two by focusing on a technical role. You will consider how the tasks assigned to the role fit into an integrated schedule found in a Gantt chart. You will then work with the triple constraint, showing how changes to it may impact the project, while proposing a new project element that will enhance user experience with the student degree progress tool. It is important to note that this milestone addresses Section I, Parts C and D of your final project. For purposes of this activity, these items have been further broken down than they are in the final version of your project; this will help guide you through all the aspects of this point in your learning experience. As you are beginning to see, working within project budgets and staying on schedule typically requires a team effort, as work tasks must be completed efficiently and often in the correct order for the project to stay on track. Additions to the project and changes to the triple constraint may present opportunities or potential obstacles. As a project team member, you need to adjust to changes to the project or to the triple constraint, identify and mitigate risks, and accurately interpret or provide project information. While you will not engage with project risk and risk mitigation until your next milestone, this milestone presents an opportunity to practice key skills related to understanding the project schedule and the triple constraint relationship in relation to the project’s scope, schedule, and budget that will lay the foundations for the next steps in your final project. Remember, as you go through these documents, you should be thinking of yourself as a member of this team. At this point, you have reviewed the project charter (in its own separate Word document). You have reviewed the project scenario and RACI and WBS charts, which are included in the Excel workbook that you used in Milestone One. To complete Milestone Two, you will need to examine an additional key piece of project information: the Gantt Chart file. As you will see, the Gantt chart provides a thorough schedule that integrates the tasks assigned to project team members. Such a synchronization of tasks is typical in an IT project, and part of the work of any team member is interpreting this schedule and performing tasks in the correct order. You will continue to refer back to these documents throughout your work on the milestones leading to your final submission. You may reference aspects of these documents to support your answers, using text and screenshots as needed. Prompt: The project charter and RACI chart have been approved by the Regatta University administration. Using the project Gantt chart, your team has started working on the project schedule based on these documents. The team needs to make sure that each member understands his or her responsibilities based on the schedule. There are three technical roles for this project:

 Systems analyst—Shila Cole

 Application developer—Ana Fischer

 Backend systems analyst—John Jones

First, select one of the above roles as your own. Next, consider that you and your team have been thrown a curveball and were informed of the following by your manager: The team has one more item it needs your help to complete. The project has been given an extra $10,000 to add a new element that enhances the project to the student degree progress widget. With this $10,000 comes an additional week of time added to the schedule. (The distribution of tasks among the team during that week does not impact the budget.)

Based on your understanding of the Gantt chart and how to read it, your submission for Milestone Two should address the following critical elements:

I. Your Technical Role in the Project Schedule: This section should be approximately 2 paragraphs in length. In this area, you will discuss your selected role, responsibilities, and important predecessor tasks:

 Select and identify a technical role from the approved list.

 Summarize the responsibilities of this role.

 Using specific information from the project’s Gantt chart, list where in the project schedule these responsibilities are assigned.

 Explain why it is important that predecessor tasks are completed before your tasks are performed, citing specific information from the project’s Gantt chart to support your explanation.

II. The Triple Constraint Matrix: This section should be approximately 2 to 3 paragraphs in length. In this area, you will refer to the new directive you have been given by your manager. Provide a brief explanation of the new project element that you want to implement. Examples include live animation on the progress bar or a callout box that opens when students hover on a hot spot and that provides more detailed information to the students. You will use this experience to inform your understanding of the triple-constraint relationship between the project’s scope, schedule, and budget.

 Clearly describe the additional element you propose, including how your feature alters the project timeline. For instance, will this addition to the project add more testing time or increase development time?

 Use the Gantt chart and the Microsoft Project Tutorial document to appropriately place the new tasks for your feature. These additional tasks should be inserted during the execution process steps (such as close to the development tasks or increasing the testing time). Be sure to update any predecessors that may have changed with the newest addition and to assign each new task to the appropriate team member. In the Gantt chart, highlight the task that you have added to make it easy for your instructor to find. Refer to the tutorials and resources provided to you in this module to help you with this task. You will submit this element as a separate Microsoft Project file.

 Explain how the addition of this new element may alter the project timeline.

 Explain how a change in the triple constraint of schedule, cost, and scope allows for this project addition to occur based on your experience in this activity.

Rubric

Guidelines for Submission: Milestone Two should be submitted as a Word document with double spacing, one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, and adherence to the latest edition of APA formatting. Also submit your updated Microsoft Project file.

Critical Element Attempted With Minimal or No Functional

Issues (100%) Attempted With Significant Functional

Issues (75%) Not Evident in Submission (0%) Value

Technical Role Selects and identifies a technical role from the approved list

Selects a role, but role is not clearly identified or may not be on the approved list

Does not select or identify a project role 12.86

Responsibilities Summarizes with minimal or no errors the responsibilities assigned to the selected technical role

Summarizes the responsibilities, but summary has major errors related to accuracy, completeness, or clarity

Does not summarize the responsibilities assigned to the selected technical role

12.86

Project Schedule Lists with minimal or no errors the areas of the project schedule assigned to the technical role’s responsibilities

Lists the areas of the schedule assigned to the designated responsibilities but has major errors related to accuracy or completion

Does not list the areas of the schedule assigned to the designated responsibilities

12.86

Predecessor Tasks

Explains with minimal or no errors why it is important that predecessor tasks are completed before own tasks are performed, citing specific information from the project’s Gantt chart

Explains the importance of predecessor task completion, citing specific information from the project’s Gantt chart, but has major issues related to accuracy, completion, or clarity

Does not explain the importance of predecessor task

12.86

Additional Element

Clearly describes with minimal or no errors an additional project element, including how the feature alters the project timeline

Describes an additional project element and how the feature alters timeline, but description has major issues related to accuracy, completion, or clarity

Does not describe an additional project element and how the feature alters timeline

12.86

Place New Tasks Places the new tasks for feature with minimal or no errors

Places the new tasks for feature but has major issues related to accuracy, completion, or clarity

Does not place the new tasks for feature 6

Project Timeline Explains with minimal or no errors how the addition of this new element may alter the project timeline

Explains how the addition of this new element may alter the project timeline but has major issues related to accuracy, completion, or clarity

Does not explain how the addition of the new element may alter the project timeline

12.86

Project Addition Explains with minimal or no errors how a change in the triple constraint allows for this project addition to occur based on own experience in this activity

Explains how a change in the triple constraint allows for this project addition to occur based on own experience in this activity but has major issues related to accuracy, completion, or clarity

Does not explain how a change in the triple constraint allowed for the project addition

12.86

Articulation of Response

Submission has no major errors related to grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization

Submission has major errors related to grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that negatively impact readability and articulation of main ideas

Submission has critical errors related to grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that prevent understanding of ideas

3.98

Total 100%