Objectives
This assessment task relates to the following course objectives:
- Employ a systems thinking approach to identify and understand the critical roles and phases in IT projects;
- Explain the basic components of project management and its importance in improving the success of IT projects
- Adopt a project management framework to write a project management plan, for a simulated real world contemporary information technology project;
- Apply the process groups model to manage information technology projects of various complexities and scales;
- Demonstrate decision-making processes to solve a range of information technology project issues;
- Classify and discuss current issues in IT project management
- Appreciate the importance of project management practice within an information technology business environment; and
- Value the significance of software quality in IT projects
Background
A critique or critical analysis is a review or appraisal based on careful analytical evaluation. Writing a critical analysis requires you to read the selected text in detail and to also read other related texts so that you can present a fair and reasonable evaluation of the selected text.
In this assignment, you are required to undertake a critical analysis of a Project Management Plan (PMP) which is the core of PMBOK. Critical thinking is an important component of being a professional. Without thinking critically you are only looking at the surface of things. To be a successful project manager you need to sort out what's accurate and what's not, and you need to identify a solid, factual base for solving problems and addressing issues on your project.
1. The structure and components of the PMP. They can usually be found at the table of content
2. The content of the PMP. How and why the particular information is used
3. Presentation. How each content or section is presented, especially the conciseness, format, and style
4. Tools. The common techniques and tools used in the PMP presentation
5. Effectiveness. The most effective or the best techniques and tools for each components
Requirements
Your critical analysis will understand (interpret and summarise), analyse and evaluate (judge) key aspects of the assigned PMP. You should adopt Schwalbe (2014, pp.161-164) and the PMI's (2013, p.76-77) PMBOK Guide as frameworks for comparison and evaluation.
An electronic copy of these documents is available in Moodle (partner students please see your Tutor or Course Lecturer).
Also see Appendix I, PMP Critique Guide at the end of this document.
When reviewing the PMP think about the following:
- What planning tools the authors have used;
- Any additional content that has been included;
- Any content that has been omitted;
- The language used;
- The layout and useability of the PMP;
- The overall quality of the PMP
Your report should be presented in a business or management style and structured as follows:
- Title page;
- Executive summary;
- Table of contents;
- Introduction;
- Analysis of PMP:
o Introduction;
o Organisation;
o Management and technical approach;
o Work to perform;
o Schedule; and
o Budget
- References; and
- Appendices (if needed)
Project
1 Process Model
The project is initiated on Aug 26, 1997 and terminated with the end of the semester on Dec 9, 1997. Major milestones are the Client Project Review on Oct 30, 1997 and the Client Acceptance Test on Dec 9, 1997. The project uses an object-oriented design methodology based on the Objectory lifecycle process and uses UML for the development of the software. The development process is organized in several activities. The members of the project are organized in teams. At the end of each activity up to and including testing, each team submits documents describing the achievement of the activity. The individual approved documents produced by the teams are considered work products and are part of the software documentation. The team documents are under version control using Perforce running on a PC platform using Free BSE version 2.2. Links to the team documentation are available from the team homepages and the course electronic bulletin boards.The links to the major documents on the Perforce server are also available from the project home page. The activities and milestones are described in the next following sections.
1.1 Project Planning
Project planning includes description of project tasks, activities and functions, dependencies, resource requirements and a detailed schedule. This activity results in the software project management plan for the JAMES System. Another output of the planning phase is the project agreement, which is issued after the design activity is completed.
1.2 Requirements Analysis
The requirements analysis activity takes the problem statement and reviews it in terms of consistency, completeness and feasibility. During this activity, a set of models of the proposed system is determined by interacting with the clients resulting in the requirements model. The main part of the requirements model are four models: the use case model describing the complete functionality of the system, the object model, the functional model and the dynamic model.
1.3 System Design
The purpose of the system design activity is to devise a system architecture that maps the analysis model to the chosen target environment. The major part of the system design phase is the design of subsystems, that is, the decomposition of the system with respect to the chosen target platform. The system design activity also refines the use cases from the analysis model and describes in terms of interaction diagrams how the objects interact in each specific use case.
Attachment:- SPMP.pdf