Download Unit 9: IT Project Management - Assignment 1 (Learning Aim A) (All Criterias Met) and more Exams Nursing in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Unit 9: IT Project Management - Assignment 1 (Learning Aim A) (All Criterias Met) Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 Unit 9 – IT Project Management (Learning Aim A) Explaining the different methodologies applied in IT projects Unit introduction: In this unit, I will be investigating the principles of different project management methodologies, as used in the IT industry. Secondly, I will be delivering a successful IT project by using and discovering at least three different project methodologies and by knowing the five main stages of a project. Lastly, I will be initiating this IT project to go further by researching a problem and then using my creative skills to generate extensive range of solutions. PRINCE2 Definition PRINCE2 may be a variety of process-based technique for effective project management and is employed extensively by the United Kingdom government. Prince2 is additionally extremely recognized and utilized in the non-public sector that covers each United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Internationally. The term ‘PRINCE2’ is within the property right and offers non-proprietorial best apply steerage on project management. PRINCE2 History The history of PRINCE2 is that it was essentially been established for quite a while since 1989 by the Central laptop and Telecommunications (CCTA). In 2010, the work of state Commerce Best observe Management functions were stimulated into the cabinet work. The basement of PRINCE2 was on PROMPT (project management methodology created by Simpact Systems Ltd in 1975 and adopted by CCTA in 1979 as a result of the traditional to be used for all government information system comes. When PRINCE was initial launched in 1989, it became very effective and had obsolete PROMPT among government. This methodology remains inside the ownership and is copyright owned by the Crown. PRINCE2 defines the following • Starting up a project (SU) – This is designed to confirm the key investors for it to be a reasonable and rewarding undertaking. Furthermore, the trigger for the project startup is the project mandate which provides a document from the commissioning organization to explain the reasons and aims for the project along with high-level estimations of time and cost. The main process is carried out once per project and is oriented towards gaining the authorization necessary for initiating the project. There are six main activities that would be taken when starting up a project and these include: Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 pg. 1 - Appointing executives and project managers - Capturing earlier lessons - Designing and appointing project management teams - Preparing outline business cases - Selecting project approaches and assembling project briefs - Planning initiation stages • Initiating a project (IP) – This process is considered to make sure the following points are clear and relevant to the project management team and the external stakeholders/investors. The project tasks consist of: - What will be done - Why it should be done and what advantages it offers - How this will be done - How problems or issues will be resolved - How expected qualities are achieved - How progressing project is monitored and controlled - Who has to be connected or communicated with by whom, once and in what type These are all the activities involved in the Initiation process and is all related to the progress of product management that provide information about the points outlined above. From this, this would allow the project board to evaluate the project’s feasibility. Project direction (DP) - This method permits the project board to delegate regular responsibility to a project manager while addressing necessary selections and training final management over the project. This can be as a result of the project board that may grant formal approval to a baseline document, authorize commitment resources or answer an exception scenario. Controlling a stage (CS) – This method would describe the activities of the project manager among every management stage of a project that additionally includes authorizing project work, reviewing stage progress and submitting the suitable reports to the project board. Managing product delivery (MP) – This method would describe responsibilities and duties of the group manager in their function as dealer. This role’s purpose is to accomplish the aim of a work package deal. There are three steps that involves MP manner to carry out each work packages and they are: Acceptance of work package: it's far critical that each team and mission managers reach a consent approximately contents of the work package deal. For instance, programs that could be introduced by using pg. 2 2 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 5 Importance of the roles in PRINCE2 methodology: Project manager – This is known as a person that is in overall charge of planning and executing a project for their own experience which will enlarge its organization once the popularity rate increases slowly during the year or two. Project managers are also responsible of procurement of a project from its inception to execution providing management for people, resources and scope to finalize the project and succeeding the initiation. Lead Developer – This role is a sequence of sessions and meetups which is designed with its needs and pain points of technical team leads in mind. Each conference is made around three key common key themes and they are Team, Tech and Tools. These key themes are designed and have been in existence to help with every common practical problems in these areas. Quality assurance – This role is cogitated as a solution to avoid mistakes/accidents and faults in manufactured products as well as avoiding issues when sending and delivering products or services to customers. This is partly defined as quality management which brings the attention of providing confidence for quality requirements to be met. IT Technician – This role is also necessary as every person taking part with this would be repairing and maintaining computers and servers. The technician’s responsibilities could be extended for building and configuring new hardware, installing and providing software packages up-to-date, and finally creation and maintenance of computer networks. QA Tester – This would be the last role that is also considered to be essential and QA analysts are testers and problem solvers. Job duties include testing websites and software for problems, recording any issues and making sure that those errors are fixed in a correct way. RAD Project management: RAD follows a cyclical process that includes 4 steps: • Planning requirements – This is the first step and the requirements are always the top priority when it comes to building pieces of software or application. Furthermore, this project methodology (RAD) is needed to start and focus on figuring out what the project is supposed to accomplish and if it will be achieved after it has been developed. During this stage, developers and software users will always communicate to determine the aims and expectations for the project as well as current and potential issues that would need to be addressed while building. pg. 5 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 6 • User design – During this phase, clients work as hard as they could with intuitive developers to make sure their wishes are a success at every step in the manner of designing. further, it's miles like software program improvement customization wherein customers can test every prototype of the product in line with level to make certain it fulfils their expectations. Furthermore, builders design a prototype, clients will test whether the software or any others work or not via testing it. eventually, they'll communicate altogether on what went well and what did not go well • Construction - After finalizing all the commitments done by designing and planning, developers would construct the final working model in a rapid way which is followed by a traditional project management approach. The four steps of construction contain the following: ❖ Instruction for speedy creation ❖ Software and application improvement ❖ Coding ❖ Unit, integration and gadget trying out Programmer teams, coders, testers and creators are all combined to work as a team throughout the stage to ensure everything is working fluently as well as receiving outstanding results that would improve client’s satisfaction. This third phase is important because clients can still give input during the process such as recommending alterations, amendments and new ideas that may reduce or stop any problems from arising. • Live deployment – This will be its final step that comes to an end with finishing products and starting to reveal it. This would include converting data, testing and switching to the latest system along with user training. Once the final amendments have been made, there may be bugs that could occur few days later. From this, bugs can be fixed when updating regularly. Importance of the roles in RAD methodology • Product Owner – The product owner improvement technique is one of the first critical function in speedy application improvement and its primary aim is to represent clients to the development crew. Moreover, the important thing pastime is to make the product backlog seen, and the prioritized list of requirements for future product improvement. • Lead Developer – In Rapid Application Development, team developers would mainly set the standard (including coding). Furthermore, the developers can research new technologies for the team and set technical direction. Lastly but not least, they also design architectures of systems. pg. 6 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 7 Waterfall Project Management Waterfall project management is when projects are finished in different stages and is moved step by step towards ultimate release to consumers. Also, users make big plans upfront and then it would be executed in a linear fashion with no changes to be made afterwards. The steps for Waterfall project management include: • Requirements – In this phase, design, function, purpose are understood, and the requirements are recorded. From this, the specifications of the input and output or the last product has been seized in products necessity specification document. • Anal ysis – The analysis is conducted for the project and documented in the requirement specification document • Desi g n – The design is carried out from the requirement specifications from first phase and it helps in specifying hardware, technology and system requirements. • Implementation – The software is divided into small units with inputs from system design. This phase is also known as coding where requirements are rehabilitated into units which are then integrated to create the finalized product. • Testi ng – All the modules developed in the creation phase are integrated to make a product. Furthermore, this product goes through several stages of testing to ensure there are no possible errors and that all the requirements are complete. Therefore, this testing is made for clients to not face any problems during the installation of the software. • Operation – The product has now been finalized with having it been delivered to the client and is being used. Additionally, the team may need to create patches and updates in case an issue may arise. Importance of the roles in Waterfall project management • Lead Developer – This will be the individual that could be responsible with developing the code and is highlighted as the most vital function in Waterfall teams. Similarly, the waterfall programmers ought to keep away from bugs all through their work when you consider that one unmarried flaw may be a cause to run the entire challenge from the very starting. • QR tester – This role is also vital and is mostly conducted at final stages of their realization in Waterfall projects. Therefore, tester must find all faults and bugs in final products and return the software to the developers so that they can fix all defects. pg. 7 Project Solution: 10 Eurofins Information Systems had received a project mandate, and this allowed the delivering and installing solutions for digitally keeping documents by archiving these at Eurofins Analytic. Furthermore, this had pg. 10 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 11 caused it to become challenging to not only using sheer amounts of paper that had been produced in the past (50,000 per month) but also because of the legal requirements to keep the documentation. Here is an example of the solution given below: [ CITATION PRINCETag2 \l 2057 ] Approach: This project methodology started with a period of intense research on the topic which included relevant knowledge from both inside and outside the company. In addition to this, it had helped users develop the project idea further which enabled them to complete it easily and effortlessly. Following this, it came to the evaluation of the applications from a range of software providers and chosen specific software packages with which it started the detail planning. Benefits and limitations: There have been various benefits that have been included with this case study of the project methodology and this would support with reaching the overall goal. These benefits include: Efficiency increase – there have been an efficiency increase during the administration of documents as users could archive documents to organize and plan the process of their designs in a timely way without any hassle of mixing up finding the documents. Reduction of search and retrieval times – users will find it effortless to search for what is needed in order to suit their preferences and needs in a suitable way possible. The time is consumed here since the pace of retrieving the files users need will be quicker than expected. Therefore, this methodology would be very useful for those that are searching in a fluent way without the effort of waiting for the files to load. Decreased storage costs – For this part, it is completely durable and ideal for users to pay as less as possible to store their ideas, methodologies and designs into their archived document in either via cloud storage or their own personal storage media device such as universal serial bus (USB). This can also be used pg. 11 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 12 as a backup in case there may be some sort of corruption which may occur during the saving process. Additionally, within this, users can have a maximum capacity of more than 100mb to release their documents when they start to use PRINCE2 methodology. Therefore, it will save them money which help them to continue in an affordable solution. On the other hand, there have been some limitations which may have caused many users with errors during their experience with using this methodology (PRINCE2). The biggest limitation with this was the collaboration with the external service provider as there were major hurdles in establishing a common understanding of project management and a focus on the project goals. Therefore, the solution would be to include additional time in the plan for communication to ensure a full understanding with expressing ideas within the project team. The other limitation of this was the validation of the scan process as there weren’t enough scanned documents for storage and retrieval. Therefore, extra time would be considered for this task as well to extend the duration. Case Study 3: Waterfall Methodology Evaluation (DOC contracts Plan & Build) Introduction: (what the project is trying to achieve): This task is about creation of a storage building for intermediate storage of digital merchandise in a small community within the outskirts of a massive town in Germany. Venture owner is the organization transport on call, a large distributor of all sorts of customer goods and needs. The project is trying to achieve the possible aims for it to become successful and their aim is to build as many constructive buildings as possible and to earn more profit. The more construction that takes place in wherever location or area, the more earnings they can get in its simplest state. Project summary and outcomes: The overall summary of this project is to start off and build furnished properties, buildings and from its starting date and the record of the results completion. Here are some records that shows the commitments being made: Begin of implementation phase: September 01, 2007 Foundation whole: October 31, 2007 Roof complete, building closed: November 30, 2007 Building provided, preliminary popularity: February 14, 2008 Power methods and automobile parking space paved, legit opening: March 15, 2008 Landscaping entire, listing of open points closed, mission complete: April 15, 2008 This is an example of dates outline the fact that other tasks can not be started until the current one is complete which shows the waterfall methodology in play. pg. 12 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 15 stages Managing Product Deliveries Closing and finishing projects Requires experience to use it confidently RAD (Rapid Application Development) The first phase would be to plan and investigate requirements This methodology suggests fast development and delivery in a short timescale possible The size of user group for this project methodology is a Benefits: It is beneficial whilst customers must reduce the overall challenge chance maximum group This stage will be for Low cost should also be of 4 – 5 people It's adaptable and flexible to clients, developers, necessary modifications users that are in Occasionally the charge with software and team members to communicate and determine the groups can also use a combination of joint application Limitations: Not all application is well matched with RAD predictions and aims for the project development When technical danger is excessive, it is not suitable There may be some potential issues that may occur during the process The steps that are broken would include: Researching latest problems Defining project requirements Finalizing the requirements with each stakeholder’s approval The second phase would be the user design which allows clients to work hard in hand to make sure that their requirements are fulfilled each step for the designing process. This includes testing each prototype of products at each stage to ensure it fulfils user’s expectations It all starts with a developer designing pg. 15 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 16 the prototype which then users will test after it has been finished, and then have a form of communication about what went well throughout the project and what did not go well Waterfall There are 5 different phases which would include: Requirements: Analyzing business needs and documenting the software’s that would be required later Design: This is where technology will be chosen and then being able to produce diagrams and then design the software architecture The suitability against timescales within this methodology is agreed between the experts and client stakeholders that deals with development For each set of project stages, it would allow limited flexibility, and can only be forwarded if only the previous stage has been finalized and finished The size of user group for this project methodology is split into five groups of people and each one of them would have specific roles Benefits: The first benefit of this is that it allows departmentalization and manipulation. From this, schedules can be set with closing dates consistently with stage of development Easy manipulation since the version may be tense and can develop rapidly in a short amount of time Simplicity and fluency to be usable Limitations: Lack of resources to be allocated Coding: This part would be to figure out any sort of coding which would help solve faults and issues when a code is generated after finished with writing it. May be difficult to foresee all the risks which may occur in later stages of development No working model of the software will be available until all phases are finished Testing: This fourth phase would be ensuring that code is valid for future development and checking if it meets the criteria without breaking or damaging anything. Operations – This last phase comes to place where the code is deployed to a production environment along with providing many supports possible. pg. 16 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 17 Agile There are six phases during this project methodology (Agile) and every of these have their own which means and method to that it may facilitate with the employment of developing a product or service within the future. These phases include: Project planning: Team members aim would be to interpret the end goal and value to organizations / clients and how it could be achieved The suitability against this project methodology would be to deliver operation software programs frequently, from multiple weeks to multiple months, with a desire to the shorter timescale. The size of user group for this project methodology would be a minimum of at least 6 – 7 and this may be the proper size for an agile team. The reason as to why teams within this size is suitable is because it would simply seem to work best together and when working collaboratively. Benefits: Predictable Costs and Schedule Early and Predictable Delivery Focuses on Business Value Limitations: Less predictability. For some software program deliverable, developers can't quantify the entire extent of required efforts Greater demands on developers and clients From this, a project scope can be developed by following this method. Project Roadmap Creation: Features that can be broken down briefly to finish the final product where possible. This is considered to be necessary as team members can build these individual features throughout each sprint. Release Planning: This will be the third stage of Agile methodology that would allow users to form a high-level attempt to unleash features. Users will also return and appraise the release plan for that individual feature. Sprint planning: This section would be needed to inform stakeholders that they have to arrange what pg. 17 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 20 Advantages and disadvantages of Waterfall methodology: Advantages: Ease of use: This model is simple to understand and use. The division between ranges is intuitive and clean to grasp regardless of previous enjoy. Structure: The pressure of the Waterfall approach is a liability but can also be an energy. The clean demarcation among degrees enables preparation and work division. Since users cannot cross again, you should be "best" in every degree, which often produces higher effects. Documentation: The sharp recognition on amassing and expertise necessities makes the Waterfall model closely reliant on documentation. This makes it easy for new resources to move in and paintings at the undertaking when needed. Disadvantages: Higher risk: The rigidity of this methodology manner that in case users discover an error or want to alternate something, they should essentially begin the project from the start. This significantly increases the threat of failure Front-heavy: The entire Waterfall approach depends heavily on your understanding and analyzing requirements correctly. Should you fail to do that - or should the requirements change - you must start over. This lack of flexibility makes it a poor choice for long and complex projects. pg. 20 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 21 Conclusion: Overall, these three methodologies have reasonable meanings and its usefulness in order to produce a successful IT project organization. Furthermore, these methodologies exist to come up with a solution before finalization. In addition, there will be an explanation of these three methodologies to be used in the IT industry. The first methodology will be waterfall which is most commonly used in software development. It works best for the following project types which include: • Simplicity and short projects • Projects with requirements that are clear and fixed which comes readymade • Projects with changing resources that depend on in-depth documentation The next project methodology is the agile and this contains flexibility implying that users can adapt it to different types of projects. This methodology would work best for: • Users that do not have a fixed end in mind but have a general idea of a product. • Projects that may need quick changes to be accommodated • Collaboration and communication Lastly, the final project methodology I will be looking at is RAD, it is best suited for large and complex projects with enough and fixed requirements. Furthermore, it is widely used in many countries and is a requirement for government projects. This rapid application methodology will consist of: • Usefulness for small businesses and organizations that may require software to be done rapidly • Being able to provide input for as to what functionalities were required for customers and users • Speed and used strategies including prototyping, iterative development and time boxing. It comes to the overall conclusion of Rapid Application Development where it makes almost everything simpler and effortless to working on software’s and programs which will enable users to become more adaptive with completing the projects as early as possible. Therefore, this project methodology has become one of the most popular and powerful development methods which reduces complexity and extremity. pg. 21 Name: John Atkinson Date: 13/09/2019 22 References https://www.prince2.com/uk/what-is-prince2 https://www.whatisprince2.net/prince2-process-initiating-a-project.php https://hygger.io/blog/benefits-choosing-prince2-methodology-development/ https://www.prince2.com/uk/prince2-methodology https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/rapid-application-development-methodology https://activecollab.com/blog/project-management/waterfall-project- management-methodology https://www.workfront.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-agile-project- management-methodology http://innovify.com/blog/agile-waterfall-methodologies-a-side-by-side- comparison/ https://www.workamajig.com/blog/project-management-methodologies Case Studies RAD - Paul Beynon-Davies, Hugh Mackay* & Douglas Tudhope School of Computing, University of Glamorgan, UK, email:
[email protected] and dstudhope@glamac. UK, and *Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, UK email:
[email protected] Sony and PRINCE2 Agile® Yucel Timur and Camilla Brown AXELOS.com Eurofins’ adoption of PRINCE2® Nico Droshinski AXELOS.com pg. 22