Comp650 amp comp730 hold the project kick-off meeting with

Question

TERM PROJECT:

This is the only assessment for this paper and students MUST complete successfully to gain a pass in this subject. There is No final examination

Project Rationale & Objectives:

After completing this project you should be able to:

• Apply project management structured approach using group processes to manage an information technology project
• Develop a project plan that identifies project tasks, schedule, milestones , risks, resources, constraints and dependencies
• Report the project status and progress.
• Use Industry standard project management software to manage and control
• Present information to an audience

Other skills acquired by attempting this assignment.

• You will develop skills in working within team dynamics and leadership skills
• You will be analysing task requirements; questioning; critically interpreting material; evaluating the work of others
• You will develop organisational and time management skills: 'Having to do group work has changed the way you work. You can't do it all the night before. You have to be more organised and efficient'

Summary of Project Tasks:

This project consists of five assignments listed hereunder. Each assignment will have its own deadline date for submission to your lecturer. Make sure to submit your work online otherwise penalty will apply [refer to your course outline for more details].

1. Pre-Initiation Phase/Business Case - Milestone 1

2. Project Management Plan - Milestone 2

3. Progress Report - Milestone 3

4. Presentation - Milestone 4

5. Final Report -  Milestone 5

Project Scenarios:

Choose one project from the following scenarios:

Scenario 1-

In this scenario you will apply the five project management process groups (Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling and closing) to manage and control a computer networks project.

Currently Cornell Institute is facing a high demand for wireless network in its two main campuses (161 and 150 Hobson Street) as the number of mobile devices used by employees and students are increasing exponentially. No investigation has been done by the IT department to assess whether the current WiFi network is providing the needed coverage to users at both campuses.

In this project you are required to assess the performance of the current WiFi network at Cornell and estimate the ideal network capacity needed to support Cornell users. First, you will interview users (staff and lectures) and identify their uses\academic needs of the WiFi network and the type of data files (video, graphics, audio) they deal with. Second, you will meet James (the head of IT department) and learn about the security procedures in place for protecting the network from intruders, and the type of files and applications that users are permitted or blocked from using and whether violations to the WiFi network have been experienced in the past where intruders gained access and stole Cornell bandwith.

To investigate this matter further you will be:

1. Use Opnet or Wirkshark simulators to run your scenarios.

2. Measure the key performance metrics such as throughput, packet delay, packet loss, etc.

3. Assess the strength of the signal at different locations in the buildings using Windows wireless signal graph.

4. Assess whether there are flaws in the current infrastructure with respect to the location and the access points, the capacity of the network devices.

5. Assess the performance of the network under noisy and interfering channels.

6. As a result of your investigation you may recommend an additional component: wireless Bridge- Repeater that extends the range of the WiFi coverage.

Scenario 2-

In this scenario you will work in a group of 2-4 to create project management plans for the development of the mobile application development project assigned to you in COMP721. You are free to choose the scope for your mobile application project, but if it is not challenging enough, your lecturers may change the project, or impose additional requirements to bring it up to the required standard. Your clients for this project are your lecturers for COMP730 and COMP721.

The scope of the COMP730 project covers the five knowledge areas: scope, time, cost, risk and human resource managements. You will apply the five project management process groups: Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling and closing to manage COMP721 project. In addition to the project management tasks needed to manage the project, you will be applying a software development methodology (preferably agile) to create, test and deploy your application.

The duration of this project is 9 weeks. To attempt this project you will use the knowledge and techniques you have learned in COMP30 and skills acquired in earlier subjects, and apply them to a live project.

Students must work on the assignments from first day. The subject is designed on the premise that you start straight away and work steadily through the term, as you would in the real business world.

In order to be successful:

• Students must negotiate with their client on the scope of their project;
• Receive feedback on your work before submission.

Milestone 1: Pre-Initiation Phase:

In this assignment you will lay the groundwork for your project before you officially start it. The pre-initiation phase provides justifications to sponsors that the project is worthwhile.

TASK 1 - KICK-OFF MEETING

Hold the Project Kick-Off meeting with your other group members to discuss the following:

• Determine the scope, time and cost constraints for the project
• Agree on a timeframe and assign responsibilities to develop the Business Case.
• Agree on when, where and how often you will meet.
• Select a project manager and assign roles to team members.
• Assign responsibility to a team member to prepare the team contract.

TASK 2 - BUSINESS CASE

To justify investing time and efforts in this project, you must complete a Business Case. Since the project is relatively small and for internal sponsor, the business case must be brief.

• Use the templates provided by Schwallbe (2010). Chapter 3. The Project Management Process Groups: A Case Study
• Your sponsor will approve this project only when Payback period happen within a year with good return on investment.

1. Prepare a Business case that includes the following sections:

I. Introduction/Background

II. Business Objective

III. Current Situation and problem/opportunity statement

IV. Critical Assumptions and Constraints

V. Analysis of Options and Recommendations

VI. Preliminary project requirements

VII. Budget estimate and financial analysis

VIII. Schedule estimate

IX. Risk Analysis

X. Appendices

Tasks to perform-

1. Estimate the benefits of this project for each year in terms of money. Ensure to provide detailed explanation of how you reached those estimates.

2. Estimate costs of this project for each year in terms of money. Ensure to provide explanation of how you calculated costs.

3. Project costs and benefits for this project over the project duration time.

4. Provide calculations of the NPV, ROI and year in which payback occur. Use a discount rate of 8% and to round the discount factor to 3 decimal places.

5. Write a report to provide explanation of the results of the financial analysis

The Financial analysis documents must be provided as supporting documents to Appendix A of your business case.

TASK 3- DEMONSTRATION OF PROJECT STRENGTHS

1. Meet with your group members and develop a checklist, or a list of criteria that will help you demonstrate the strength of your project against the current situation (Option 1). Consider the selection criteria for IT projects discussed in class.

2. In a group prepare a weighted scoring model. Use the selection criteria, assign weights to each criterion, assign scores and then calculate the weighted scores.

3. Develop a bar chart to summarise your results. Write one page describing this weighted scoring model explaining the results.

	Weighted Scoring Model for Cornell Wireless Network Project
Criteria	Weight	Option 1	Option 2
Weighted Project Scores	100%

The Weighted Scoring Model must be provided as supporting documents to Appendix B of your business case.

TASK 4 - STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

In this task you will meet with your team members to identify the primary stakeholders of your project. Prepare a stakeholder register that includes the names, roles and contact information of your primary stakeholders. Complete a stakeholder management strategy for each stakeholder that covers their level of interest (high, medium, and low), level of influence on the project (high, medium and low) and consider strategies that will help increase their support throughout the project.

TASK 5 - PROJECT CHARTER

Prepare a project charter for your proposed Project and have it signed by your sponsor and project manager. The project charter is the document issued by the sponsor that formally authorizes the start of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities. It documents the business needs, assumptions, constraints, the understanding of the customer's needs and high-level requirements, and the new product, service, or result that it is intended to satisfy, such as:

• Project purpose or justification,
• Measurable project objectives and related success criteria,
• High-level requirements,
• Assumptions and constraints,
• High-level project description and boundaries,
• High-level risks,
• Summary milestone schedule,
• Summary budget,
• Stakeholder list,
• Project approval requirements (i.e., what constitutes project success, who decides the project is successful, and who signs off on the project),
• Assigned project manager, responsibility, and authority level, and
• Name and authority of the sponsor or other person(s) authorizing the project charter.

Milestone 2: Develop Project Management Plan:

In this assignment you will develop the Project Management Plan which is the process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all subsidiary plans and integrating them into a comprehensive project management plan (Integration management). The key benefit of this process is a central document that defines the basis of all project work.

Develop a project management plan that integrates and consolidates the following baselines from. :

• Scope baseline (WBS only) (BMBOK Guide Section 5.4.3.1),
• Schedule baseline (BMBOK Guide Section 6.6.3.1), and
• Cost baseline (BMBOK Guide Section 7.3.3.1)
• Very brief Human resource management plan (BMBOK Guide Section 9.1.3.1),
• Very brief risk management plan (BMBOK Guide Section 11.1.3.1)

Task 1 - Scope Management-

Q1- Project Priority Matrix

• Based on the priorities defined by the sponsor, weigh your vision and your constraints and establish project priorities by filling in the flexibility matrix. This will provide clarity when developing the project WBS and schedule, and will guide you when you are forced to make choices.

Tradeoff	Constrain	Enhance	Accept
Factors
Scope
Cost
Schedule

• Based on the project priority matrix you have developed, write max of one A4 report reflecting on your understanding of the project constraints and your strategies for making this project a success.

Q2- Work Breakdown Structure

The creation of a WBS to define the scope of the project will help you ensure delivery of the project's objectives and outcomes. Project failures can often be traced to a poorly developed or nonexistent WBS.

A number of project management activities that use the WBS as input. For example, the WBS utilizes the Project Charter as its starting point. The high-level elements in the WBS should match, word-for-word, the nouns used to describe the outcomes of the project in the Scope Statement (in your case this can be the project and product deliverables stated in the business case). In addition, allocating the project's resources requires the WBS to define work package assignments. The WBS Dictionary defines, details, and clarifies the various elements of the WBS (not required for this project). The Network Diagram is a sequential arrangement of the work defined by the WBS and the elements of the WBS are starting points for defining the activities included in the Project Schedule.

Therefore, it is an essential element of the Planning process group, PMBOK planning process group includes the following activities:

5.1 - Plan Scope Management

5.2 - Collect Requirements

5.3 - Define Scope

5.4 - Create WBS

Due to the time constraint, in this project you will skip 5.1, 5.2 and 5.2 and develop the WBS.

Create WBS by subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable into smaller, more manageable components, until the project work deliverables is defined in sufficient detail to accomplish the project scope. The key benefit of this process is that it provides a structured vision of what has to be delivered.

Develop your project WBS and ensure to include the following:

-Identifying and analyzing the deliverables and related work;

-Structure and organizing the WBS; define upper levels (level 1) of your WBS that typically reflect the major deliverable work areas of the project, decomposed into logical groupings of work. The structure you apply can vary depending on the type of project.

-Decompose the upper WBS levels into lower-level detailed components. Use major deliverables as the second level of decomposition (level 2).

-Define the lowest-level WBS (level 3) components are called Work Packages and contain the definitions of work to be performed and tracked. These can be later used as input to the scheduling process to support the elaboration of tasks, activities, resources and milestones which can be cost estimated, monitored, and controlled.

-Develop and assign identification codes to the WBS components; and

-Verify that the degree of decomposition of the deliverables is appropriate.

You may decompose to even lower levels if needed. The specific number of decomposition levels defined for a specific project should be appropriate for effectively managing the work in question.

Among other things, the WBS may also include the following:

• The Life cycle model product related activities that will be performed in each phase;
• Activities related to updates of the project baselines
• Activities related to the communication among stakeholders
• Verification of project documentation and product releases.
• Validation of product releases
• Project team meetings and development of progress reports
• User groups or stakeholders meetings may be face-to-face, virtual, formal, or informal.

Task 2 - Time Management & Schedule Control-

Project Time Management includes the processes required to manage the timely completion of the project. PMBOK Planning Process Group includes the following activities:

6.1- Plan Schedule Management

6.2- Define Activities

6.3- Sequence Activities

6.4- Estimate Activity Resources

6.5- Estimate Activity Durations

6.6- Develop Schedule

Do to time constraint, in this project you will skip 6.1

Q1. Develop Project Schedule

Develop your project Schedule by performing the following processes:

-Activity Definition

• Use the WBS to develop the list of activities that will be performed to produce the desired project outcomes The final output are activities rather than deliverables, as done in the WBS.
• Develop milestone list. A milestone list is a list identifying all project milestones. Milestones are similar to regular schedule activities, but they have zero duration because milestones represent a moment in time.

-Activity Sequencing

• Create relationships among the project activities by defining the logical sequence of work to obtain the greatest efficiency given all project constraints.
• When deciding on the sequence of activities, you should ask the following 3 questions:

Which activities that must finish immediately before this activity can be started.

Which activities that can be done concurrently with this activity

Which activities cannot be started until this activity is finished.

• It may be necessary to apply lead or lag time between activities to support a realistic and achievable project schedule.
• Perform sequencing and develop network diagram using Microsoft project 2010 software

-Estimate Activity Resources

• Produce a resource information sheet that provides information about HR resources that the project demands. Information includes roles and responsibilities defining the positions, skill level, competencies and hourly rate; Include information about other resources such as material, equipment, and supplies and cost involved.
• Estimate the type and quantities of material, human resources, equipment, or supplies required to perform each activity.
• Use the Gantt chart developed in Task 2 and the resource information sheet to assign human resources to the project. Once you assign resources the Gantt chart become schedule.
• The key benefit of this process is that it allows cost and duration estimates.

- Estimate Activity Durations

• For each activity estimate the total elapsed time (the time for the work to be done ) plus associated waiting time if applicable. It is good practice to allow the person who will perform the work to estimate duration. Activity duration estimate is based on the number of resources expected to perform the work.

-Develop Schedule

• Using Project 2010, construct a Gantt chart and network diagram for this project that includes the activity list, milestones, time durations and relationships.

Q2. Prepare a Report

Prepare a report to your client to address the following project information.

i. When is the project estimated to be completed?

ii. What is the critical path for this project?

iii. Determine the positive and negative slack for each activity

iv. Discuss the flexibility of this when facing delays.

Task 3 - Human Resource Plan-

The human resource management plan provides guidance on how project human resources should be identified, staffed, managed, and eventually released.

Q1. Develop Responsibility Matrix

Use the developed WBS in Task 1 and develop a responsibility matrix that shows the allocation of team members and their responsibility for each task. Roles can be Primary, Support and Reviewer but it is up to you and your team to define roles for your project.

Q2. Prepare a Staffing Management Plan

Prepare a staffing management plan that provide information for each team member about the key work periods and the type of work involved where each member will be heavily allocated. The key work periods are those periods where the resource will be heavily allocated and should be prepared to have significant (above 20% working time).

Task 4 - Cost Management-

Project Cost Management includes the processes involved in planning, estimating, budgeting, financing, funding, managing, and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved budget. PMBOK framework fifth edition includes the following processes.

7.1- Plan Cost Management

7.2- Estimate Costs

7.3- Determine Budget

7.4- Control Costs.

Due to time constraint, in this project you will skip 7.1 and 7.4.

-Estimate Costs

• Estimate the cost for all the activities of all the work packages. Calculate labour cost based on the estimated work hours.
• Include in your cost estimate sheet in addition to the labour cost, other project related cost including material, equipment, facilities, travel, supplies, rents and expenses ...etc.

-Determine Budget

• Provide the aggregated cost estimates over the time and determine the project overall budget.
• Budget is basically is the roll up and aggregation of the Activity Cost estimates. The aggregation starts at the Activity Level, then onto Work Package Level and then onto Control Accounts Level (Higher Level WBS) and then onto Project Level.
• Add to the activity costs aggregation the contingency reserves to get to the Budget. Contingency reserves are the amount that has been planned to set aside or budgeted for the risks identified in the risk register.
• The aggregation of the activity costs added with the Contingency Reserves leads to Cost Baseline. The main objective of this process is to set your cost baseline.

Task 5 Risk Management-

The objectives of Risk Management are to increase the likelihood and impact of positive events, and decrease the likelihood and impact of negative events in the project, Processes include:

11.1- Plan Risk Management

11.2- Identify Risks

11.3- Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis

11.4- Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis

11.5- Plan Risk Responses

11.6- Control Risks

In this project we will only implement 11.2, 11.3 and 11.5.

-Identify risks.

• Identify a minimum of 6 risks (positive and negative risks) for your project.

-Perform quantitative risk analysis

• Analyse the risks using a probability/impact matrix. Assign a numeric value for the likelihood of occurrence and the potential impact of each risk. Use a scale of 1 to 10 in assigning the value, with 1 being low and 10 being high. Provide a risk score for each identified risk.

-Plan Risk Responses

• Develop a contingency plan for each identified risk. Describe what specific tasks need to be done to implement the strategy. Include time and cost estimates for each strategy as well.

Risk	Likelihood	Potential	Risk	Mitigation	Cost to
Description		Project	Score	Actions and	Recover
		Impact		Back-up Plan	-Impossible /
					-Very High /
					- High / -
					Medium / -
					Low

Milestone 3: Progress Reporting:

At this stage you have completed and approved your project management plan, developed WBS, schedule and cot baselines. Use Microsoft Project 2010 to set your baselines.

You can use a tracking Gantt chart to collect information about the progress of your project and capture % completion for each task.

At this stage you are expected to report your first periodic progress summary report publishing progress, plans, and issues at regular intervals.

Task - Project Status Reporting - Major Task Completion

Project Status - Major Task Completion: Presents status reports for weeks 6,7 and 8, with emphasis on reporting completion status of major tasks.

• List of tasks completed with % completion rate.
• Issues encountered
• Proposed solutions or action taken.

• Assigned roles and responsibilities of team members.