Software Project Management Homework

We have received a new project to build a software for Wells Fargo Accounts Department. Wells Fargo is the largest Home Mortgage Bank in USA and they have both Financial and Mortgage Department. Here below are the business requirements from the accounting department.

Business Requirements:

The new system should be an end-to-end enterprise financial management solution designed to meet the needs of the most complex, multinational organizations. The ERP solution should be comprised of a robust set of applications that support all aspects of financial business activities and are listed below:

· Financial and management accounting: Financials provides core accounting and reporting capabilities with scalability to support the requirements of large multinational companies. Key features and functions include the following:

· Fixed asset, accrual, bank, cash journal, inventory, and tax accounting

· General ledger

· Accounts receivable and accounts payable AR/AP

· Fast close functions

· Financial statements

· Parallel valuations

· Financial supply chain management: The module should be a set of applications to help streamline receivables and collections management processes. These integrated solutions should help reduce operating costs and improve cash flow and reduce days' sales outstanding. The application should include the following application functionality:

· Credit management

· Biller direct

· Dispute management

· Collections management

· Treasury applications: The treasury applications should provide robust cash, liquidity, and financial risk management capabilities that enable you to more precisely manage cash, mitigate financial risks, and streamline bank interactions and payment processes. This application should contain the following application functionality:

· Cash and Liquidity Management

· Helps you monitor and manage cash flow and liquidity

· Generates comprehensive and timely cash forecasts and plans

· In-House Cash

· Enables centralized control of banking balances, cash management, and payments

· Reduces costs of inter unit payments, transfers, and bank fees

· Treasury and Risk Management

· Models risk scenarios and executes mitigation strategies

· Reduces your organization's financial risk levels and ensures regulatory compliance

· Bank Communication Management

· Streamlines and optimizes corporate-to-bank communications

· Provides straight-through processing, improved payment control, and lower processing costs

Agile Scrum Methodology:

The Agile is nothing but a movement proposes alternatives to Traditional Project Management. This methodology often called as Incremental model. In the Agile methodology, work is divided into chunk and developed in incremental and rapid cycles. The Agile team is usually small and consists of ten to fifteen people team. Daily they do have a meeting which is called scrum meeting where they discuss what they have done yesterday what they are going to do today, any issues or any road blocks. Each release has to be done within the sprint time frame. Agile team consists of Developers, Scrum Master, Project manager, Product Manager, Business Analyst and Quality Assurance Team. First Agile methodology starts with Sprint planning and they pull the tasks from the backlog. From Sprint planning, developers code the tasks in Development and then deploy into QA servers to test their code. After peer review from the QA team scrum master submit release and ISS team deploy to the production servers and at the end Product owner give a demo to the client.

Diagram Of Agile Model:

Advantages of Agile Methodology:

Here below are the advantages of using Agile methodology.

- Meets the customer or client satisfaction by giving continuous them delivery of useful software.

- Users and team interactions are emphasized rather than process and tools. The whole team including managers, scrum master, Developers team and QA team interact with each other on daily basis.

- Each component or functionality is delivered within weeks rather than months.

- Since the whole team interacts with each other so the communication is the key to success.

- Daily communications between developers and business users.

- Good attention to the software design and technical excellence.

- Change of business requirements are welcome at the last moment.

Disadvantages Of Agile Methodology:

- When new changes needs to be implement in the software. The freedom agile gives to change is very important. New changes can be made implemented at very little cost because of the frequency of new increments that are produced.

- When new changes needs to be made then developers and Quality Assurance team has very little time to code and release it. Sometime, they only have few hours to make changes and implement the changes.

- Unlike the waterfall or any other methodology, in agile model team has very little time to do sprint planning.

- Suddenly changes of the business requirements can effect testing and software can be released with a bug.

References:

http://istqbexamcertification.com/what-is-agile-model-advantages-disadvantages-and-when-to-use-it/

http://agilemethodology.org/

https://www.cprime.com/resources/what-is-agile-what-is-scrum/

During the plan development, Well Fargo Accounts Department should meet the standards of ISO. Direct control is to be enhanced to ensure that the plan is developed in a transparent manner. The success of the plan can be achieved if the process of implementation and maintenance of the plan is designed to improve the performance of the department address all the needs of the department (Futrell, 2002). The plan should mainly focus on achieving the goals and needs that the Well Fargo Accounting Department needs to address. The software should be in a position to meet the organization’s financial requirements. The software should offer the department the major capabilities of accounting and reporting in order to meet the requirements of the Well Fargo Accounting Department. The software should contain all the features that may help the department to carry out their financial activities effectively and accurately (Ahmed, 2012). The features may aid the accounting department t to calculate the assets, creation of financial statement, creation of the general ledger and parallel valuations.

The software should help Well Fargo to reduce the cost of operations by ensuring g that the receivable and collections in the process of management are streamlined. Functionality of application should be enhanced to ensure that the system works to meet the needs of the Well Fargo accounting department. Implementation of the software should be done in a way that will minimize the risks that arise in the treasury for easier management of risks. The software should also provide the department alternatives that could be used to mitigate financial risks that are most likely to arise. The software should be flexible and easier to use by all members of the Well Fargo accounting department to enhance effectiveness and efficiency. Implementation process cheap in all aspects. Compliance with regulations that govern financial accounting in the organization is a standard that the software should meet. It is to ensure that the activities in the accounting department in Well Fargo meet the standards that are set. It is important for accurate records of all financial transactions that take place in the organization.

Ethical standards should be enhanced by the software. The management team in the organization should be able to view accounting activities that take place to ensure there is transparency. The software should be developed in a way that enhances communication between all departments. It will make it easier for accountants to access to information they need for calculation of financial transactions that take place in the organization on a daily basis. It will also ensure that accountants are able to develop their financial records like the legers and journals with the information that is made available to them in the software.

The standard of the software should ensure it is capable of meeting future changes in the accounting department. It can be developed in a way that will make it easier for department to adjust for future changes that may arise. The software design should enhance easier accessibility of the records and safety. All information that relates to financial matters of the organization should be kept protected to ensure that no unauthorized persons are able to access it. The software should have passwords that will limit the number of people that access financial records of the organization.

The software is associated with numerous risks that could result in inaccurate data within the organization. The software should therefore have manual guides that show the users the steps to solve the complications that arise to reduce cases of inefficiency for the system. Alternative ways to mitigate the risk factors associated with the software should be developed by the software developers to enhance efficiency in case the software.

References:

Ahmed, A. (2012). Software project management a process-driven approach. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.

Futrell, R. T., Shafer, D. F., & Shafer, L. (2002). Quality software project management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

The software is associated with various risks that need mitigations to prevent huge losses and inaccurate financial records in the Well Fargo department of accounting. The software may fail to comply with financial regulation policies increasing the level of financial risks in the company. Noncompliance with the regulations that govern financial matters in the Well Fargo Accounting Department may result to frauds and financial losing future. It may also lead to inaccurate financial data that may cost the company heavily. The software is also associated with the risk of failure to fully meet the requirements of the department. It may create confusion that makes it ineffective to the accounting department. The software may also be complicated hence difficult to be used by those in the accounting department. It may as a result need additional costs for training them on how to use of it. As a result, the software may be costly to the Well Fargo organization.

Implementations of the software require human resource to take different responsibilities. Some of those in the project human resource team include project management to monitor the process of development and implementation of the software, technical team responsible for technical work in the process of implementation, Software developers who are to design the software and plan how the software will work to meet the needs of the Well Fargo accounting department and training team that will train the employees in the department on the use the software for their activities. The stakeholders involved in the process of development and implementation of the software include the management team of the entire organization, accounting management team in the Well Fargo organization, a team of supervisors and employee representatives (Wysocki, 2006). The company in charge of the implementation process was also represented by a team of five members that involved management, technical bench representatives and a representative of the training team.

Each team of stakeholders was given responsibilities to ensure that the process of I development and implementation of the software was effective. The management team was to evaluate the cost of the project and the resources that developers needed to develop the software in the Well Fargo organization. They also managed the project to ensure that all activities scheduled to take place were done within the set time limit. The management team also ensured that developers of the software had adequate resources. On the other hand, the management team in accounting department gave their recommendations to ensure that the software was developed to meet all the needs of accounting department and the organization as a whole. They also gave their views on changes that needed to be made during the process of implementation for effective functionality of the software. The team also came with a plan of all activities and features that were to be done using the software in relation to financial accounting and storage of accounting records in the organization (Thompson, 2005). They also ensured that the software that was developed would fit all the employees in the accounting department for accuracy and effectiveness.

The technical team was responsible for implementing of the software by installing the hardware and connecting them. They also connected the software in all the hardware’s to ensure that all the departments in the organization were able to have access to the information from the accounting department. The technical team also installed the software in the accounting department and gave advice on how the features of the software were to be used and their functions. Developers of the software designed the features and operations of each feature of the software. These were the main stakeholders in the whole process of implementation for the software as they gave technical advice to the technical team and Well Fargo organization management team on matters relating to the functions and effective use of the software. The team of developers liaises with the management team of Well Fargo organizations to get the resources that were needed for implementation of the software.

The training team was composed of developers and technical members in order to train the accountants in the Well Fargo accounting department how the software operate and its features. The training was offered as the developers mostly explained to the employees on the features and functionality of the software and the technical team was involved in practical training. The stakeholders’ cooperation enabled successful plan and development of the software in the Well Fargo accounting department.

Work Breakdown structures are used to design and give a structure to the project. By using this structure we can estimate the time frame for each iteration and this can also help to estimate the budget of the project. Managers and stakeholders will review this structure and manager their schedule work.

( WORK BREAKDOWN SCHEDULE )

( TESTING ) ( INSTALLATION ) ( DEVELOPMENT ) ( DESIGN ) ( MANAGEMENT )

( NTEGRATE AND COMPLETE SOFTWARE ) ( PREPARE PRELIMINARY DESIGN ) ( TEST PLAN ) ( PLAN PROJECT ) ( DEVELOP INSTALLATION PLAN )

( DEVELOP SOFTWARE MODULES ) ( PROCURE SOFTWARE DESIGN ) ( PROCURE SOFTWARE PACKAGE ) ( DEVELOP REPORT ) ( CLIENT FEEDBACK ) ( ACCEPTANCETESTING ) ( INTEGRATION TESTING ) ( MODULE TESTING ) ( REVIEW DESIGN ) ( DOCUMENT DESIGN ) ( PERFORM CM ) ( TRACK PROJECT ) ( INSTALL AT LOCATION ) ( SITE PREPARATION ) ( PREPARE DETAILED DESIGN ) ( PERFORM QUALITY )

Risk Management:

As software’s are very unpredictable and that includes a potential high risk so managers needs to control and plan for the potential risks. By making a plan, managers can resolve the issues and minimize the potential risk during the development process.

Here below are some Risk assessments:

· Identify the potential risk that will arise during the development process.

· Identify what systems can be affected.

· Identify the risk and plan the precautions that can be use.

· Identify the issues and come up with a better idea to resolve them.

· Review the assessment done and make sure they are mitigated.

· Update the plan and continue to find risks.

Diagram of Risk Assessment:

We need to decide and resolve issues and categorize each issues in 3 different levels of severity. This will help to prioritize each task and easier to manager and trace issues.

· High: When the risk is high and very likely to occur..

· Medium: There is a fifty fifty chance to occur.

· Low: When there is a less chance to occur specific issue.

Risks can arise in the development lifecycle due to the implanting of new technologies, non- functional system, software system requirements, and sometime implementation of tools.

Here below are the list of the Risks that will arise during the lifecycle of this project.

· Purchase of resources, tools, and software’s can be delayed.

· Project delivery can be delayed.

· Team members of the project are not at work when required.

· Human resources can be an issue.

· Client side support staff may not be present to discuss issues.

· Complete funds are not available and this can be an issue.

As we discussed the risks may arise during the lifecycle of the project so we also have to come up with the ideas how can we resolve or minimize those risks.

1 – When working together with big teams so we will need to schedule meetings and increase communication between the teams so they all understand the product and requirements of the project.

2 – This is very important to design the document and each team (Quality Assurance, Developers, and Business Analysts etc.) will develop documents and plan ahead what they will need to do. Team lead will review the documents and stamp them and approved.

3 – If issue arises at late night then we should have a member from the team so we can resolve specific issue ASAP.

References:

Thompson, G. W. (2005). Corporate software project management. Hingham, Mass.: Charles River Media.

Wysocki, R. K. (2006). Effective software project management. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Pub..

Risk Mitigation Planning, Implementation, and Progress Monitoring. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mitre.org/publications/systems-engineering-guide/acquisition-systems-engineering/risk-management/risk-mitigation-planning-implementation-and-progress-monitoring