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Information Systems Project

Management

ISQS 4350

Zhangxi Lin

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Chapter 1: The Nature of

Information Technology Projects

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Questions What is a project? What is project management? How does project management relate to other

disciplines? What is the career outlook for project managers in

information technology?

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What Is a Project?

A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to accomplish a unique product or service” (Project management body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) Guide 2000, p. 4)

Attributes of projects unique purpose temporary require resources, often from various areas should have a primary sponsor and/or customer involve uncertainty

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Case #1: Caleb’s Mission Critical Schedule System (MCSS) for Continental Airlines

If an airline company has to make up a cancelled flight in an emergency, for example, a plane crash, it may take it several hours to reschedule the relevant flights as well as the crew teams, and a couple of days to settle down other legacy problems. Caleb has developed a mission critical schedule system for airline companies, which can find the solution in minutes and solve other legacy problems in a few hours.

Continental Airlines, as a client of Caleb Technology (Austin) for years, has carefully evaluated the system and decided to adopt the application. Delighted by the winning of the contract, Caleb is facing the following several questions:

EDS is the original application developer and will be working with Caleb in the user interface as Continental Airlines required. How to cooperate with Continental Airlines is the key issue.

MCSS must be integrated into existing enterprise information system of Continental Airlines. How this will be done?

How test MCSS in the real environment to guarantee its reliability and availability. How to switch from old system to the new system integrated with MCSS?

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Case #2: Online medical services appointment system

Making the appointment with a PCP or specialist doctor is normally via phone call. Even though e-commerce and many other online services are prevailing, such a service in medical area has never been done yet. We there were such a system, this system would have allowed patents to check the availability of a doctor or any other medical services from the Internet, making and changing the appointment. So, this is a promising system in several ways: It will greatly make the appointment convenient It can be connected to other networked medical information services, such as medical insurance. It will also benefit the medical service providers much in saving costs and improving service quality.

There several issues : Who will initialize the project? Who should be involved ? Who is to be a target buyer of the system? How this system can be co-operated with other medical information systems? Is this system really beneficial?

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Case #3: Adams Globalization online translation services development

Adams Globalization is a leading translation service company in Austin, Texas. The company provides the translation between English and several other languages, such as Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and Chinese. The company started in 1982. In 1993 it hired 4 employees and in 2003 it hired 40 employees and operating a translator network with more than 1000 freelance translators. The company’s revenue in 2002 was $4,000,000. Adams Globalization has been facing more and more pressures to convert its business model from traditional translations to an Internet-based one: There is an increasing Internet-based application translation demand. Intensified Internet usage requests the company to change its business processes The company is moving towards a global market.

Therefore, there are several reasons for Adams Globalization to adopt e-business. There are several issues: What is the new business model? How to develop a web-based business system? What is the project scope? …

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The Software Crisis

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

-Gerald Weinberg

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Status of IT Projects

31% IT projects were cancelled before completion

53% were completed, but were over-budget, over-schedule, and did not meet the original requirements.

The average cost overrun of medium-sized projects was 202%

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Why Projects Fail – CHAOS STUDY

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What is Project Management?

Project management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet project requirements” (PMI*, Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 2000, p. 6)

*The Project Management Institute (PMI) is an international professional society. Their web site is www.pmi.org.

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Improving the likelihood of success

Socio-technical Approach Cooperation between developers and users

Project Management Approach Depending more on processes and infrastructure Resources management Delivering the outcomes in a professional way as

expected Coping with greater internal and external competition Improving efficiency and effectiveness

Knowledge Management Approach lessons learned best practices

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The 2001 Standish Group Report Showed Decided Improvement in Project Success

Time overruns significantly decreased to 163% compared to 222%

Cost overruns were down to 145% compared to 189% Required features and functions were up to 67%

compared to 61% 78,000 U.S. projects were successful compared to

28,000 28% of IT projects succeeded compared to 16%

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Why the Improvements?

"The reasons for the increase in successful projects vary. First, the average cost of a project has been more than cut in half. Better tools have been created to monitor and control progress and better skilled project managers with better management processes are being used. The fact that there are processes is significant in itself.“*

*The Standish Group, "CHAOS 2001: A Recipe for Success" (2001)

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Factors For Successful Projects

User involvement Executive management support Clear statement of requirements Proper planning Realistic expectations Smaller project milestones Competent staff ownership Clear vision & objectives Hard-working, focused team

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Chaos Study

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Why do we learn project management? It is different from system analysis It will allow you to apply all the knowledge you have learned in IS, such

as programming, data management, and system analysis, into the practices

But more – management Consider you get a programming job. In the first week in the company

you are asked: To work with someone to do some Java programming but you don’t know

what it is for; To join a project group for internal software resource sharing project but you

don’t know who are your colleagues before a meeting; or To look into the latest WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) technology to see the

potential application to your company’s business. You here of it but wonder why

To investigate the search engine market and write a proposal – it is a task for a programmer?

What should you do?

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The context of project management

Interdependent tasks Organizational change Operating Environment

Time Frame Purpose Ownership Resources Roles Risks & Assumptions

Project Attributes:Project Attributes:

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The Triple Constraint of Project Management

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Roles in a project

Project Manager Project Sponsor Subject Matter Expert(s) (SME) Technical Expert(s) (TE)

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Risks & Assumptions

Internal risk From the estimation process or from the fact

that a key member of the project team could leave in the middle of the project

External risk Arises from the dependencies on other

contractors or vendors Assumptions

What we used to estimate scope, schedule, and budget and to assess the risk of the project

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The Project Life Cycle andIT Development

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Definitions

Project Life Cycle (PLC) A collection of logical stages or phases that maps

the life of a project from its beginning to its end for a project

Deliverable A tangible and verifiable product of work

Phase exits, stage gates, or kill points Phase-end review of key deliverables that allow

the organization to evaluate the project’s performance and take immediate action to correct errors or problems

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Generic Project Life Cycle

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Phases/Stages of PLC Define project goal Plan project

Answer questions (What, why, how, who, et al) Baseline plan

Execute project plan Close project Evaluate project

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Systems Development Life Cycle

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Systems Development Life Cycle

SDLC: sequential phases or stages an information system follows throughout its useful life.

Phases/Stages Planning Analysis Design Implementation Maintenance and Support

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Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

1. ProblemDefinition & Feasibility

6. Operations &Maintenance

4. Development,Coding

5. Implementation

2. Analysis

3. Design

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Implementing SDLC:Structured Approaches:

Waterfall Method

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Implementing SDLC:

Rapid Application Development (RAD) Approaches: Prototyping

Develop a small test system in a short time and improve it. Spiral Development

The project is broken into mini-projects each addressing one or more risks until all risks are addressed

Extreme Programming (XP) The system is transferred to the users in a series of

releases. Each release is a working system that only includes one or several functions.

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The PLC vs the SDLC

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PLC vs. SDLC

PLC focuses on the processes of managing a project

SDKC focuses on creating and implementing a product – the information system

SDLC is part of PLC – most of SDLC activities occur during the execution phase of PLC.

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Enterprise System Implementation PhasesEnterprise System Implementation Phases

1. Initiation

4. Realization(Fulfill ERP)

5. Transition

2. Planning

3. Analysis & process design

6. Operations &Maintenance

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What is PMBOK

The Project management body of Knowledge (PMBOK) A document providing a basis for identifying and

describing the generally accepted principles and practices of project management

Originally published in 1987 Available from Project Management Institute

(PMI)

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Project Management Framework

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Project Management Knowledge Areas

1. Project integration management

2. Project scope management

3. Project time management

4. Project cost management

5. Project quality management

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Project Management Knowledge Areas

6. Project human resource management

7. Project communication management

8. Project risk management

9. Project procurement management

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Sample Gantt Chart

The WBS is on the left, and each task’s start and finish dateare shown on the right using a calendar timescale. Early GanttCharts, first used in 1917, were drawn by hand.

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Sample Network Diagram

Each box is a project task from the WBS. Arrows show dependenciesbetween tasks. The bolded tasks are on the critical path. If any tasks on thecritical path take longer than planned, the whole project will slip unless something is done. Network diagrams were first used in 1958 on the Navy Polaris project, before project management software was available.

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The Project Management Profession

The job of IT Project Manager is in the list of the top ten most in demand IT skills

Professional societies like the Project Management Institute (PMI) have grown tremendously

Project management research and certification programs continue to grow

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Top Ten Most in Demand IT Skills

Rank IT Skill/Job Average Annual Salary 1 SQL Database Analyst $80,664 2 Oracle Database Analyst $87,144 3 C/C++ Programmer $95,829 4 Visual Basic Programmer $76,903 5 E-commerce/Java Developer $89,163 6 Windows NT/2000 Expert $80,639 7 Windows/Java Developert $93,785 8 Security Architect $86,881 9 Project Manager $95,719

10 Network Engineer $82,906 Paul Ziv, “The Top 10 IT Skills in Demand,” Global Knowledge Webcast (www.globalknowledge.com) (11/20/2002).

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Project Management Knowledge Continues to Grow and Mature

PMI hosted their first research conference in June 2000 in Paris, France, and the second one in Seattle in July 2002

The PMBOK® Guide 2000 is an ANSI standard PMI’s certification department earned ISO 9000 certification Hundreds of new books, articles, and presentations related

to project management have been written in recent years

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Project Management Certification

PMI provides certification as a Project Management Professional (PMP)

A PMP has documented sufficient project experience, agreed to follow a code of ethics, and passed the PMP exam

The number of people earning PMP certification is increasing quickly

PMI and other organizations are offering new certification programs (see Appendix B)

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Growth in PMP Certification, 1993-2002

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Software outsourcing

Supplemental material

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Offshore Software Outsourcing In next few years, about 2 million IT jobs will shift to foreign

countries because of outsourcing, e.g. to India. Companies have to do so because of the tough surviving

environment. This is the trend of globalization as the economies in different

countries are more dependent of each other. While India’s position is reasonably secure, there is no room for

being complacent. Several upcoming destinations—Argentina, the Czech Republic and China in particular. India scores over China in employee costs, primarily due to that country importing project managers from Hong Kong and Australia. East Europe is home to top-notch engineering talent; it is quite likely that high-end engineering work will flow there.

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Software Industry in Developing Countries Many developing countries have adopted the development of

Software Industry as a long-term strategy for economy growth As software outsourcing is a global trend for developed

countries, there are good opportunities for developing countries to speed up their software industry development

The suggested two-stage development strategy for the software industry in developing countries: Focus on the domestic market first Go to global market once the software companies are competitive

enough Current two patterns of software industries reflect the two-stage

development strategy: International market oriented – normally providing outsourcing

market for the developed countries, which is the pattern for those “early birds”, e.g. India,

Domestic market oriented – for latecomers, e.g. China

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The Pattern of Export-Oriented: India Comparatively, in 2002-2003, the software industry in

India was worth US$ 12 billion, of which software export was $9.5 billion with a growth rate of 25.3%.

The software industry is expected to account for something like 20% of India’s exports for 2002-03. (http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20030331/softserv.shtml).

Heeks (1996) indicated that if the software exports grows rapidly, the growth of the domestic market is prevented.

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The Pattern of Domestic Market Oriented: China

In the past 10 years China’s software industry revenue has been growing at an annual rate between 20-40%. The revenue of software industry in 2002 reached US$13.3 billion, a 46.5% increase from 2001.

In the last three years its software export almost doubled every year. However, China’s software market is domestic-oriented - nearly 90% software products were sold domestically.

In 2002, China’s application software accounted for 64.5% of the total domestic software products.

Foreign software and system integration still account for 95.3% of the upper software market

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India Pattern vs. China Pattern

Comparison of software revenue in 2002: India: $12.5 billion, with $9.5 billion from the export China: $13.3 billion, with $1.5 billion from the export

India’s case is a successful example, while China’s case is more representative for the developing countries just started their software industry.

Heeks (1999) outlines some generic approaches to a developing country’s software industry development. Two dimensions, the target market served (Domestic vs. Export) and the types of business intended (Service vs. Packages), are used in analyzing the strategic positioning for a developing country.

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Potentials of India’s software industry Several markets that could result in large opportunities for Indian.

Product Data Management (PDM) is one such area, covering applications that manage product data and product development workflow. The global market for PDM is projected to grow to $11 billion by 2006, according to CIMData. Automotive, electronics and telecom, aerospace, machinery and process industries are major users of PDM.

Content management is another growth area with the thrust being on delivering digital content across multiple channels. This market is projected to be worth $27 billion by 2006. Services account for roughly 90 percent of this market.

Enterprise Application integration (EAI) is a potential gold mine for Indian software houses. It is projected to be a $43.4 billion market by 2005; services account for 73 percent of this market. Business Intelligence and data warehousing will together account for a $29 billion market by 2005.

The market for wireless and mobile infrastructure consulting, integration and management services will be worth $37.4 billion by 2006.

Straight-through processing (STP) is the complete automation of stock trading from order entry to final settlement. The global market for STP is expected to touch $6.3 billion by 2004. India can offer customised application development, maintenance and support, consulting and transaction processing outsourcing in this segment.

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References in offshore outsourcing

http://news.com.com/2030-1011-5130813.html http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20030331/softserv.shtml Heeks, Richard, “Software strategies in developing countries”,

Development Informatics working paper series, 1999. Li, M., and M. Gao, “Strategies for Developing China’s Software

Industry,” Information Technology and International Development (2003).