Werabe University

Institute of Technology
Department of Information Technology
Information Technology Project Management
1. Introduction to IT Project
Management
• Learning Objective:
At the end of this chapter students will able to:
 Understand the growing need for PM, especially for IT
Explain what a project is, provide examples of IT projects, list various
attributes of project and describe the triple constraint
 Describe PM and key elements of PM framework
Understand the role of PM by describing what PM do, what skills they
need, what the career field like for IT PMs
Importance of project Management
Software Projects have failure record because of following reasons:
Most of IT and software projects failed or delayed costing billions of $
Many bugs/1000 lines of codes
Delivering the system over budget
Scope creeping (failure to fulfill all the tasks)
Less quality system
Higher cost of project than the planned one
Reasons for the failure:
✓ Lack of structured and organized methodologies
✓ Lack of good Project Management
Using Formal Project Management
has the following importance
✓ Better control of financial, physical, and human resources
✓ Improved customer relations
✓ Shorter development times
✓ Lower costs and improved productivity
✓ Higher quality and increased reliability
✓ Higher profit margins
✓ Better internal coordination
What is a project?
Organizations perform work.
Work generally involves either operations or projects, although the two
may overlap.
Operations and projects share many characteristics;
for example, they are:
Performed by people
Constrained by limited resources
Planned, executed, and controlled
What is a project? Cont…
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique
product or service
Projects are often implemented as a means of achieving an
organization’s strategic plan.
Operations and projects differ primarily in that operations are
ongoing and repetitive while projects are temporary and unique.
Temporary means that every project has a definite beginning and a
definite end.
Unique means that the product or service is different in some
distinguishing way from all other products or services.
Attributes of a project
Unique purpose
Temporary
Progressive Elaboration
A project requires resources, often from various areas
project should have a primary customer or sponsor
Example of IT projects
A new reservation system developed for airlines
Developing a new product or service
✓ Effecting a change in structure, staffing, or style of an organization
✓ Designing a new transportation vehicle
✓ Developing or acquiring a new or modified information system
Cafeteria management system and etc.
Problems with Software Projects
Every project is constrained in different ways, often by its scope, time,
and cost goals.
These limitations are sometimes referred to in project management
as the triple constraint.
To create a successful project, a project manager must consider
scope, time, and cost and balance these three often-competing goals.
Cont…
Scope: What work will be done as part of the project?
Time: How long should it take to complete the project?
 Cost: What should it cost to complete the project? What is the
project s budget?
It is the project manager’s duty to balance these three often
competing goals.
What is Project Management?
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and
techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
Project management is accomplished through the application and
integration of the project management processes of initiating,
planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing.
Cont…
• The project manager is the person responsible for accomplishing the
project objectives. Managing a project includes:
 Identifying requirements
 Establishing clear and achievable objectives
 Balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost
 Adapting the specifications, plans, and approach to the different
concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders.
Stages of Project
• The project management process groups include:-
Initiating processes
Planning processes
Executing processes
Controlling processes
Closing processes
The Stakeholder of a Project
Stakeholders are the people involved in or affected by project
activities, and include the project sponsor, project team, support staff,
customers, users, suppliers, and even opponents of the project.
These stakeholders often have very different needs and expectations.
Stakeholders’ needs and expectations are important in the beginning
and throughout the life of a project.
Successful project managers develop good relationships with project
stakeholders to understand and meet their needs and expectations.
Project Management Framework
The Project Management Framework, provides a basic structure for
understanding project management.
1. Project scope management: involves defining and managing all the
work required to complete the project successfully.
2. Project time management includes estimating how long it will take
to complete the work, developing an acceptable project schedule,
and ensuring timely completion of the project.
Cont…
3. Project cost management consists of preparing and managing the
budget for the project. It describes the processes involved in
planning, estimating, budgeting, and controlling costs so that the
project is completed within the approved budget.
4. Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy the
stated or implied needs for which it was undertaken. It describes
the processes involved in assuring that the project will satisfy the
objectives for which it was undertaken.
Cont…
5. Project human resource management is concerned with making
effective use of the people involved with the project. It describes
the processes that organize and manage the project team.
6. Project communications management it involves generating,
collecting, storage, distribution, performance reporting, and
manage stakeholders project management processes.
7. Project risk management includes identifying, analyzing, and
responding to risks related to the project.
Cont…
8. Project procurement management involves acquiring or procuring
goods and services for a project from outside the performing
organization.
9. Project stakeholder management includes identifying and analyzing
stakeholder needs while managing and controlling their
engagement throughout the life of the project.
10. Project integration management is an overarching function that
affects and is affected by all of the other knowledge areas. It
describes the processes and activities that integrate the various
elements of project management.
Tools for Project Management
Project management tools and techniques assist project managers
and their teams in various aspects of project management.
Some specific ones include
 Project Charter and WBS (scope)
 Gantt charts, network diagrams, critical path analysis, critical
chain scheduling (time)
Cost estimates and earned value management (cost)
 2 Project Planning

• learning objective:
At the end of the chapter students will able to:
know how project integration management affect and is affected by other
knowledge areas.
understand how project integration management coordinates all aspects of the
project.
Understand the essence of PI management for successful execution of the
project.
Describe the project plan development and performing stakeholder analysis to
help manage r/ships.
Project Integration Management
Project integration management includes the processes required to
ensure that the various elements of the project are properly
coordinate.
It is the processes and activities needed to integrate the various
elements of project management, which are identified, defined,
combined, unified, and coordinated within the Project Management
Process Groups.
Project Integration Management
Processes
Develop the project charter/project brief/ project initiation
document: Project definition document that describes the project
essential information like project name, location, project objective,
project vision and project stakeholders etc.
It is an official document that authorize the project formally. By
developing project charter, you will be able to establish a direct link
b/n the organization objective and the undertaken project.
The inputs for project charter development are business documents,
agreements, enterprise environmental factors and organizational
process assets.
Cont…
Direct and manage project execution: carrying out the project
management plan by performing the activities included in it.
 It is managing of the execution of the project work. Managing the
project work involves managing deliverables, directing the project
team, managing procurement activities.
The outputs of this process are deliverables, work performance
information, change requests, project management plan updates, and
project documents updates.
Cont…
Manage project knowledge: involves using the knowledge of the
team and creating additional knowledge to complete the project
successfully.
Transferring the gained knowledge to the organization is very
important for future projects.
Output is lessons learned, PMP updates, organization process asset
updates.
Cont…
Monitor and control the project work: overseeing project work to
meet the performance objectives of the project. Involves work
performance reporting and comparing the actual and planned values
to ensure that the project is on track.
 It all about controlling the scope, quality, schedule and stakeholder
engagement to the project.
The outputs of this process are change requests, project
management plan updates, and project documents updates.
Cont…
Perform integrated change control: coordinating changes that affect
the project’s deliverables and organizational process assets.
It insure that any change requests evaluate and either accepted or
rejected according to projects agreed up on goals and the
organizations objective.
The outputs of this process include change request status updates,
project management plan updates, and project documents updates.
Cont…
Close the project or phase: finalizing all project activities to formally
close the project or phase.
 Conduct a post project review to document the successes and
failures of the project and talk about how you can make integration
better next time.
Outputs of this process include final product, service, or result
transition and organizational process assets updates.
Project Plan Development
Developing the project management plan involves coordinating all
planning efforts to create a consistent, coherent document the
project management plan.
To coordinate and integrate information across project management
knowledge areas and across the organization, there must be a good
project management plan.
A project management plan is a document used to coordinate all
project planning documents and help guide a project’s execution and
control.
Attributes of Project Plans
• Just as projects are unique, so are project plans
✓ Plans should be dynamic
✓ Plans should be flexible
✓ Plans should be updated as changes occur
✓ Plans should first and foremost guide project execution
Common Elements of Project
Management Plan
Introduction or overview of the project
 History of the Business
 Description of the Business’s current facilities
 The descriptions of the problems that triggered the project

Description of how the project is organized

 Management and technical processes used on the project
Work to be done, Schedule, and Budget Information
Plan Execution
The project manager would also need to focus on leading the project
team and managing stakeholder relationships to execute the project
management plan successfully.
 Project plan execution involves managing and performing the work
described in the project plan The majority of time and money is
usually spent on execution.
The application area or the project directly affects project execution
because the products of the project are produced during execution.
Important Skills for Project
Execution
General management skills like leadership, communication, and
political skills
 Product skills and knowledge
Use of specialized tools and techniques
Tools and Techniques for Project
Execution
Work Authorization System: a method for ensuring that qualified
people do work at the right time and in the proper sequence
 Status Review Meetings: regularly scheduled meetings used to
exchange project information
 Project Management Software: special software to assist in
managing projects
Scope Management
Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the
project and the processes used to create them.
Project scope management includes the processes of required to
ensure that the project includes all the work required and only the
work required to complete the project successfully.
Managing the project scope is primarily concerned with defining and
controlling what is and what is not included in the project.
Project Scope Management
Processes
A) Plan scope management: a process of creating scope
management plan that documents how the project and the product
scope will be defined, validated and controlled.
B) 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.
Methods for Collecting
Requirements
Interviewing
Focus groups and facilitated workshops
 Questionnaires and surveys
Observation
 Prototyping
Software tools
Project Scope Management
Processes cont…
Defining scope: The next step in project scope management is to
provide a detailed definition of the work required for the project.
Reviewing the project charter, requirements documents, and
organizational process assets to create a scope statement.
Developing a detailed description of the product and project.
The main outputs of scope definition are the project scope statement
and project documents updates.
Project Scope Statement (PSS)
PSS is also called scope document or statement of work (SOW).
PSS is output of defining scope process that specifies what work will
be done and what work is excluded.
It is a primary tool for stakeholders and teams to refer back to and
use as a guideline to accurately measure project success.
Good scope definition is very important to project success because it
helps improve the accuracy of time, cost, and resource estimates, it
defines a baseline for performance measurement and project control,
and it aids in communicating clear work responsibilities.
Project Scope Management
Processes cont…
C) Creating the WBS:
subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more
manageable components.
After collecting requirements and defining scope, the next step in
project scope management is to create a work breakdown structure.
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a deliverable oriented grouping
of the work involved in a project that defines its total scope.
 Because most projects involve many people and many different
deliverables, it is important to organize and divide the work into
logical parts based on how the work will be performed.
Project Scope Management
Processes cont…
D) Validating scope/Verifying scope):
 formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables.
 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 verification involves formal acceptance of the completed project
scope by the stakeholders.
Acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off
on key deliverables.
This process is performed periodically throughout the project as needed.
Project Scope Management
Processes cont…
E) Controlling scope:
controlling changes to project scope throughout the life of the
project Scope control involves managing changes to the project scope
while keeping project goals and business strategy in mind.
Users often are not sure how they want screens to look or what
functionality they will need to improve business performance.
Developers are not exactly sure how to interpret user requirements,
and they also have to deal with constantly changing technologies.
Scope Statement
The project scope statement describes, in detail, the project’s
deliverables and the work required to create those deliverables.
The project scope statement also provides a common understanding
of the project scope among all project stakeholders and describes the
project’s major objectives.
Project Charter
After deciding what project to work on, it is important to let the rest of
the organization know.
A project charter is a document that formally recognizes the existence
of a project and provides direction on the project’s objectives and
management.
The following inputs are helpful in developing a project charter:
 A project statement of work
 A business case
 Agreements
 Enterprise environmental factors
 Organizational process assets
Project Charter Format:
The project’s title and date of authorization
A summary schedule, including the planned start and finish dates, it
should also be included or referenced
A summary of the project’s budget or reference to budgetary
documents
The project manager’s name and contact information
A brief description of the project objectives, including the business
need or other justification for authorizing the project
Project success criteria, including project approval requirements and
who signs off on the project.
Strategic planning
Strategic planning involves determining long-term objectives,
predicting future trends, and projecting the need for new products
and services
As part of strategic planning, organizations:
Identify potential projects
Use realistic methods to select which projects to work on
Formalize project initiation by issuing a project charter
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
The WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the
work to be executed by the project team, to accomplish the project
objectives and create the required deliverables.
The WBS organizes and defines the total scope of the project.
The WBS subdivides the project work into smaller, more manageable
pieces of work, with each descending level of the WBS representing
an increasingly detailed definition of the project work.
 3. Project Scheduling
Project time management, simply defined, involves the processes
required to ensure timely completion of a project.
 Achieving timely completion of a project, however, is by no means
Simple.
There are seven main processes involved in project time
management:
project time management cont…
Planning schedule management: involves 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
project time management cont…
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
Schedules and Activities
A) Schedule Project time management, involves the processes required
to ensure timely completion of a project.
Project scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be
done with specified order and within time slot assigned to each
activity
For scheduling a project, it is necessary to break down the project
tasks into smaller, manageable form (WBS), find out various task and
correlate them, estimate time frame required for each task,
divide time into work units, assign adequate number of work units for
each sub task, calculate total start to finish time.
Where Do Schedules Come From?
• Basic document that initiate a project schedule:
Project charter (includes start and end dates and budget information)
Scope statement and WBS helps to define what will be done in a
project.
After reviewing the project charter, enterprise environmental factors,
and organizational process assets, the project team uses expert
judgment, analytical techniques, and meetings to develop the
schedule management plan.
Schedule development
Schedule development uses the results of all the project time
management processes to determine the start and end dates of the
project and its activities.
The ultimate goal of developing a realistic project schedule is to
provide a basis for monitoring project progress for the time
dimension of the project.
Several tools and techniques
A Gantt chart is a common tool for displaying project schedule
information.
Critical path analysis is a very important tool for developing and
controlling project schedules.
Critical chain scheduling is a technique that focuses on limited
resources when creating a project schedule.
PERT analysis is a means for considering schedule risk on projects.
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 calendar form.
Gantt charts are sometimes referred to as bar charts because the
activities’ start and end dates are shown as horizontal bars.
Critical path analysis
Critical path method (CPM)—also called critical path analysis—is a
network diagramming technique used to predict total project
duration.
A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determine
the earliest time by which the project can be completed. It is the
longest path through the network diagram.
The longest path or the path that contains the critical tasks is what
drives the completion date for the project.
Calculating the Critical Path
To find the critical path for a project, you must first develop a good
network diagram, which in turn requires a good activity list based on
the WBS.
Once you create a network diagram, you must also estimate the
duration of each activity to determine the critical path.
Calculating the critical path involves adding the durations for all
activities on each path through the network diagram.
The longest path is the critical path.
Critical Chain Scheduling

Important concepts related to critical chain scheduling include

multitasking and time buffers.
Multitasking occurs when a resource works on more than one task at
a time.
This situation occurs frequently on projects. People are assigned to
multiple tasks within the same project or different tasks on multiple
projects.
Schedules and activities cont…
B) Defining Activities:
The goal of defining activities is to ensure that the project team
completely understands all the work it must do as part of the project
scope so the team can start scheduling the work.
An activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included on a project
schedule that includes:
The activity names
An activity identifier or number
A brief description of the activity
Sequencing and Scheduling Activity
After defining project activities, the next step in project time
management is sequencing them or determining their dependencies.
It Involves reviewing activities and determining dependencies.
The sequencing process involves evaluating the reasons for
dependencies and the different types of dependencies.
A dependency or relationship is the sequencing of project activities
or tasks.
The four types of Dependencies:
4. Project Cost Management

Project cost management includes the processes required to ensure

that a project team completes a project within an approved budget.
Project managers must make sure their projects are well defined,
have accurate schedule and cost estimates, and have a realistic
budget that they were involved in approving.
It is the project manager’s job to satisfy project stakeholders while
continuously striving to reduce and control costs.
processes for project cost
management:
Planning cost management involves determining the policies,
procedures, and documentation that will be used for planning,
executing, and controlling project cost.
Estimating costs involves developing an approximation or estimate of
the costs of the resources needed to complete a project.
Determining the budget involves allocating the overall cost estimate
to individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring
performance.
Controlling costs involves controlling changes to the project budget.
Resource Planning
The first step in project cost management is planning how the costs
will be managed throughout the life of the project.
Project costs, like project schedules, grow out of the basic documents
that initiate a project, like the project charter.
 The project manager and other stakeholders use expert judgment,
analytical techniques, and meetings to produce the cost management
plan.
Cost Estimating
Project managers must take cost estimates seriously if they want to
complete projects within budget constraints.
 After developing a good resource requirements list, project
managers and their project teams must develop several estimates of
the costs for these resources.
Types of Cost Estimates
1. A rough order of magnitude (ROM)
(ROM) estimate provides an estimate of what a project will cost.
A ROM estimate’s accuracy is typically actual costs could be 50
percent below the ROM estimate or 100 percent above.
Types of Cost Estimates cont…
2. A budgetary estimate
Is used to allocate money into an organization’s budget.
Many organizations develop budgets at least two years into the
future.
Budgetary estimates are made one to two years prior to project
completion.
The accuracy of budgetary estimates the actual costs could be 10
percent less or 25 percent more than the budgetary estimate
Types of Cost Estimates cont…
3. A definitive estimate
provides an accurate estimate of project costs.
Definitive estimates are used for making many purchasing decisions
for which accurate estimates are required and for estimating final
project costs.
A definitive estimate should be the most accurate of the three types
of estimates.
The accuracy of this type of estimate is actual costs could be 5
percent less or 10 percent more than the definitive estimate.
Typical Problems with Cost
Estimates
Estimates are done too quickly
Lack of estimating experience
Human beings are biased toward underestimation
Management desires accuracy
Cost Budgeting
Determining the budget involves allocating the project cost estimate
to individual material resources or work items over time.
These material resources or work items are based on the activities in
the WBS for the project.
The main goal of the cost budgeting process is to produce a cost
baseline for measuring project performance and to determine project
funding requirements.
Cost Control
Controlling project costs includes monitoring cost performance,
ensuring that only appropriate project changes are included in a
revised cost baseline, and informing project stakeholders of
authorized changes to the project that will affect costs.
Several tools and techniques assist in project cost control, including
expert judgment, data analysis, project management information
systems, and the to-complete performance index.
Earned Value Management
Earned value management (EVM) is a project performance
measurement technique that integrates scope, time, and cost data.
Given a cost performance baseline, project managers and their teams
can determine how well the project is meeting scope, time, and cost
goals by entering actual information and then comparing it to the
baseline.
Earned Value Management cont…
• Earned value management involves calculating three values for each
activity or summary activity from a project’s WBS.
1. The planned value (PV) is the authorized budget assigned to
scheduled work.
2. The actual cost (AC) is the realized cost incurred for the work
performed on an activity during a specific time period.
3. The earned value (EV) is the measure of work performed expressed
in terms of the budget authorized for that work.
Earned Value Management cont…
• earned value (EV) EV =PV of all completed work
• Cost variance (CV) CV =EV – AC
• Schedule variance(SV) SV= EV – PV
• Cost Performance Index(CPI) CPI= EV/AC
• Schedule Performance Index(SPI) SPI= EV/PV
Cont…
You can use the CPI and SPI to project how much it will cost and how long it
will take to finish the project based on performance to date.
Cost variance (CV) is the earned value minus the actual cost.
 If cost variance is a negative number, it means that performing the work cost
more than planned.
If cost variance is a positive number, performing the work cost less than
planned.
Schedule variance (SV) is the earned value minus the planned value.
A negative schedule variance means that it took longer than planned to
perform the work, and a positive schedule variance means that the work
took less time than planned.
Cont…
The cost performance index (CPI) is the ratio of earned value to
actual cost; it can be used to estimate the projected cost of
completing the project.
If the CPI is equal to one, or 100 percent, then the planned and actual
costs are equal—the costs are exactly as budgeted.
If the CPI is less than one or less than 100 percent, the project is over
budget.
If the CPI is greater than one or more than 100 percent, the project is
under budget.
Cont…
The schedule performance index (SPI) is the ratio of earned value to
planned value; it can be used to estimate the projected time to
complete the project.
Similar to the cost performance index, an SPI of one, or 100 percent,
means the project is on schedule.
If the SPI is greater than one or 100 percent, then the project is
ahead of schedule.
If the SPI is less than one or 100 percent, the project is behind
schedule.
Cont…
• Note that in general, negative numbers for cost and schedule
variance indicate problems in those areas.
Negative numbers mean the project is costing more than planned or
taking longer than planned.
Likewise, a CPI and an SPI of less than one or less than 100 percent
also indicate problems.