Strategic management

Topic #4

Scope and Time Management

Reference: Chapter 5 & 6, Information Technology Project Management

Learning Objectives •  Understand the importance of scope management •  Describe the process of planning scope management •  Discuss methods for collecting and documenting requirements to meet stakeholder needs and expectations

•  Explain the scope definition process and describe the contents of a project scope statement

•  Discuss the process for creating a work breakdown structure using the analogy, top-down, bottom-up, and mind-mapping approaches

•  Explain the importance of validating scope and how it relates to defining and controlling scope

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Learning Objectives •  Understand the importance of controlling scope and approaches for preventing scope-related problems on information technology (IT) projects

•  Understand the importance of good project time management and discuss the process of planning schedule management

•  Define activities as the basis for developing project schedules and describe how project managers use network diagrams and dependencies to assist in activity sequencing

•  Understand the relationship between estimating resources and project schedules

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What is Scope Management? •  Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them

•  A deliverable is a product produced as part of a project, such as hardware or software, planning documents, or meeting minutes

•  Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and controlling what is or is not included in a project

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Scope Management Processes for an initiative •  Planning scope: determining how the scope and requirements will be

managed •  Collecting requirements: defining and documenting the features and

functions of the products produced during the project as well as the processes used for creating them

•  Defining scope: reviewing the project charter, requirements documents, and organizational process assets to create a scope statement

•  Creating the WBS: subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components

•  Validating scope: formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables •  Controlling scope: controlling changes to the overall scope

throughout the lifecycle of the project/initiatives

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Project Scope Management Summary

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Scope Management Plan Contents •  The IT team uses expert judgment and meetings to develop two important outputs: the scope management plan and the requirements management plan

•  The scope management plan is a subsidiary part of the project management plan

•  How to prepare a detailed project scope statement •  How to create a WBS •  How to maintain and approve the WBS •  How to obtain formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables

•  How to control requests for changes to the project scope

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Collecting Requirements •  The requirements management plan documents how project requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed

•  For some IT projects, it is helpful to divide requirements development into categories called elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation

•  It is important to use an iterative approach to defining requirements since they are often unclear early in a project

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Relative Cost to Correct a Software Requirement Defect

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Methods for Collecting Requirements •  Interviewing •  Focus groups and facilitated workshops •  Using group creativity and decision-making techniques

•  Questionnaires and surveys •  Observation •  Prototyping •  Benchmarking, or generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing organization, can also be used to collect requirements

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Requirements Traceability Matrix •  A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a table that lists

requirements, various attributes of each requirement, and the status of the requirements to ensure that all requirements are addressed

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Defining Scope •  Project scope statements should include at least a product scope description, product user acceptance criteria, and detailed information on all project deliverables. It is also helpful to document other scope-related information, such as the project boundaries, constraints, and assumptions. The project scope statement should also reference supporting documents, such as product specifications

•  As time progresses, the scope of a project should become more clear and specific

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Sample Project Charter (partial)

Information Technology Project Management, Seventh Edition 13

Further Defining Project Scope

Information Technology Project Management, Seventh Edition 14

Creating the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

•  A WBS is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project

•  WBS is a foundation document that provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources, and changes

•  Decomposition is subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces

•  A work package is a task at the lowest level of the WBS •  The scope baseline includes the approved project scope statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary

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Sample Intranet WBS Organized by Phase

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Intranet WBS and Gantt Chart in Microsoft Project

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Intranet Gantt Chart Organized by Project Management Process Groups

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Approaches to Developing WBSs •  Using guidelines: Some organizations, like the DOD, provide guidelines for preparing WBSs

•  The analogy approach: Review WBSs of similar projects and tailor to your project

•  The top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the project and break them down

•  The bottom-up approach: Start with the specific tasks and roll them up

•  Mind-mapping approach: Mind mapping is a technique that uses branches radiating out from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas

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The WBS Dictionary and Scope Baseline

•  Many WBS tasks are vague and must be explained more so people know what to do and can estimate how long it will take and what it will cost to do the work

•  A WBS dictionary is a document that describes detailed information about each WBS item

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Sample WBS Dictionary Entry

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Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS Dictionary

•  A unit of work should appear at only one place in the WBS.

•  The work content of a WBS item is the sum of the WBS items 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; it should serve the project team first, and other purposes only if practical

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Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS Dictionary (cont’d)

•  Project team members should be involved in developing the WBS to ensure consistency and buy-in

•  Each WBS item must be documented in a WBS dictionary 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 to the scope statement

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Validating Scope •  It is very difficult to create a good scope statement and WBS for a project

•  It is even more difficult to verify project scope and minimize scope changes

•  Scope validation involves formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables

•  Acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key deliverables

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Controlling Scope •  Global Issue in a project!! •  Scope control involves controlling changes to the project scope

•  Goals of scope control are to –  influence the factors that cause scope changes – assure changes are processed according to procedures developed as part of integrated change control, and

– manage changes when they occur •  Variance is the difference between planned and actual performance

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Best Practices for Avoiding Scope Problems

1. Keep the scope realistic. Don’t make projects so large that they can’t be completed. Break large projects down into a series of smaller ones

2. Involve users in project scope management. Assign key users to the project team and give them ownership of requirements definition and scope verification

3. Use off-the-shelf hardware and software whenever possible. Many IT people enjoy using the latest and greatest technology, but business needs, not technology trends, must take priority

4. Follow good project management processes. As described in this chapter and others, there are well-defined processes for managing project scope and others aspects of projects

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Suggestions for Improving User Input •  Develop a good project selection process and insist that sponsors are from the user organization

•  Have users on the project team in important roles •  Have regular meetings with defined agendas, and have users sign off on key deliverables presented at meetings

•  Deliver something to users and sponsors on a regular basis

•  Don’t promise to deliver when you know you can’t

•  Co-locate users with developers

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Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and Changing Requirements

•  Develop and follow a requirements management process

•  Use techniques such as prototyping, use case modeling, and JAD to get more user involvement

•  Put requirements in writing and keep them current

•  Create a requirements management database for documenting and controlling requirements

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Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and Changing Requirements (cont’d)

•  Provide adequate testing and conduct testing throughout the project life cycle

•  Review changes from a systems perspective •  Emphasize completion dates to help focus on what’s most important

•  Allocate resources specifically for handling change requests/enhancements like NWA did with ResNet

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Time Management Processes •  Planning schedule management: determining the policies,

procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning, executing, and controlling the project schedule

•  Defining activities: identifying the specific activities that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables

•  Sequencing activities: identifying and documenting the relationships between project activities

•  Estimating activity resources: estimating how many resources a project team should use to perform project activities

•  Estimating activity durations: estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities

•  Developing the schedule: analyzing activity sequences, activity resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the project schedule

•  Controlling the schedule: controlling and managing changes to the project schedule 30

Project Time Management Summary

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Planning Schedule Management •  The project team uses expert judgment, analytical techniques, and meetings to develop the schedule management plan

•  A schedule management plan includes: – Project schedule model development – The scheduling methodology – Level of accuracy and units of measure – Control thresholds – Rules of performance measurement – Reporting formats – Process descriptions

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Defining Activities •  An activity or task is an element of work normally found on the work breakdown structure (WBS) that has an expected duration, a cost, and resource requirements

•  Activity definition involves developing a more detailed WBS and supporting explanations to understand all the work to be done so you can develop realistic cost and duration estimates

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Activity Lists and Attributes

•  An activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included on a project schedule that includes –  the activity name – an activity identifier or number – a brief description of the activity

•  Activity attributes provide more information such as predecessors, successors, logical relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements, constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions related to the activity

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Milestones

•  A milestone is a significant event that normally has no duration

•  It often takes several activities and a lot of work to complete a milestone

•  They’re useful tools for setting schedule goals and monitoring progress

•  Examples include obtaining customer sign-off on key documents or completion of specific products

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Sequencing Activities •  Involves reviewing activities and determining dependencies

•  A dependency or relationship is the sequencing of project activities or tasks

•  You must determine dependencies in order to use critical path analysis

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Three types of Dependencies •  Mandatory dependencies: inherent in the nature of the work being performed on a project, sometimes referred to as hard logic

•  Discretionary dependencies: defined by the project team., sometimes referred to as soft logic and should be used with care since they may limit later scheduling options

•  External dependencies: involve relationships between project and non-project activities

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Network Diagrams

•  Network diagrams are the preferred technique for showing activity sequencing

•  A network diagram is a schematic display of the logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project activities

•  Two main formats are the arrow and precedence diagramming methods

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Activity Duration Estimating •  Duration includes the actual amount of time worked on an activity plus elapsed time

•  Effort is the number of workdays or work hours required to complete a task

•  Effort does not normally equal duration •  People doing the work should help create estimates, and an expert should review them

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Gantt Charts •  Gantt charts provide a standard format for displaying project schedule information by listing project activities and their corresponding start and finish dates in a calendar format

•  Symbols include: – A black diamond: a milestones – Thick black bars: summary tasks – Lighter horizontal bars: durations of tasks – Arrows: dependencies between tasks

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Adding Milestones to Gantt Charts

•  Many people like to focus on meeting milestones, especially for large projects

•  Milestones emphasize important events or accomplishments on projects

•  Normally create milestone by entering tasks with a zero duration, or you can mark any task as a milestone

•  Milestones should be Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-framed

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Sample Tracking Gantt Chart

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Gantt Chart for Software Launch Project

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Critical Path Method (CPM) •  CPM is a network diagramming technique used to predict total project duration

•  A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determines the earliest time by which the project can be completed

•  The critical path is the longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount of slack or float

•  Slack or float is the amount of time an activity may be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or the project finish date

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Using the Critical Path to Shorten a Project Schedule

•  Three main techniques for shortening schedules – Shortening durations of critical activities/tasks by adding more resources or changing their scope

– Crashing activities by obtaining the greatest amount of schedule compression for the least incremental cost

– Fast tracking activities by doing them in parallel or overlapping them

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Summary •  Project scope management

includes the processes required to ensure that the project addresses all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully

•  Main processes include –  Define scope management –  Collect requirements –  Define scope –  Create WBS –  Validate scope –  Control scope

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•  Time management is often cited as the main source of conflict on projects/initiatives.

•  Main processes include – Plan schedule management

– Define activities – Sequence activities – Estimate activity resources

– Estimate activity durations

– Develop schedule – Control schedule

Reference Details

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