CHAPTER TWO

INFORMATION SYSTEMS
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS
COURSE CONTENTS

Managing Information System Project

Information Systems Project Phase
Representing and Scheduling Project plans
Using Commercial project Management Software

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Introductions
Project:- is a planned undertaking of a series of related activities to reach an
objective that has a beginning and an end
Objective of a project
Solve a business problem (develop a MIS)
Take advantage of a business opportunities (develop BIS)
Other non rational reason: spend existing available resources, training and
enhancing skills of employees
Project:-is a series of related jobs usually directed toward some major output and requiring a
specified period of time to perform.
A project is characterized by: -
 Having an identifiable beginning and an end
 Having identifiable clients
 Having objectives
 Having constraints
 Requiring individual, continual management

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Introductions
• Project Management:- is an important aspect of system analyst
– Need to know project management skills more details about
resources management, project management, change
management, risk management
• Project manager refers to system analyst’s role in managing
information system project
• Project manager works in an environment of change.
– He identifies and solves problems
– He is responsible of all aspect of system development project
(time, cost, progress, etc. see next slides)
– He is responsible either as a part or the whole project
• System analyst has specific tasks (identify requirements, allocate
budget and keep timing constraints)

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Introductions
Project Management: It is the process of leading the
work of a team to achieve goals and meets success criteria
at specified time.
Project management is an important aspect of the
development of information systems and a critical skill
for a systems analyst.
The focus of project management is to assure that
system development projects meet customer expectations
and are delivered within budget and time constraints.

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2.1. Managing Information Systems Projects
Creating and implementing successful projects require managing
resources, activities, and tasks needed to complete the information
systems project.
The first question is "Where do projects come from?"
There is no standard and answer varies from organization to
organization.
Several projects may be submitted and need selection by filling a
“Systems Service Requests”

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2.1. Managing Information Systems Projects
 Project manager:- is an individual with a diverse set of skills
who is responsible for managing the project process when the
project is accepted
 Responsibilities of project manager include: initiating, planning,
executing and closing-down the project
 Skills of project manager:
 Leadership
 Management (resources, materials, funding)
 Customer relationships
 Technical problem solving
 Conflict management
 Team management & risk management
 Skills needed by a project manager go beyond just building a
system
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2.1. Managing Information Systems Projects
• In summary, systems development projects are
undertaken for two primary reasons;
 To take advantage of business opportunities
 To solve business problems.

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2.2. Information System Project Phase
Project management

Project management is the controlled process of initiating,

planning, executing and closing-down a project.
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2.2. Information System Project Phase
 Determining the size, scope, resource requirements for
a project are just a few of the many activities that a
project manager must involve.
• A project manager is a person who is responsible for
initiating, studying, planning, executing, and closing-
down a project.
• The project management process involves five phases:
1. Initiating the project
2. Planning the project
3. Executing the project
4. Closing down the project
–Several activities must be performed during each of these
four phases.
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1. Initiating a Project
1. Project Initiation: the project manager performs
several activities that assess the size, scope, and
complexity of the project.
Project Initiation Activities are:
2. Establishing the project initiation team
3. Establishing relationship with the customer
4. Establishing the project initiation plan
5. Establishing management procedures
6. Establishing project management environment & project
workbook

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1. Initiating a Project
1. Establishing the project initiation team.
 This activity involves organizing an initial core of project team
members.
 Size: identify project team member who will work within the
project.
2. Establishing a relationship with the customer.
 A thorough understanding of your customer builds stronger
partnership and higher levels of trust.
 Develop good work relationship & trust between customer or users
of the project & the IS development group (project team) before
the project.
 Helps customers to understand their problems they might face &
propose improvement.
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1. Initiating a Project
3. Establishing the project initiation plan.
 This step defines the activities required to organize the
initiation team.
 The two core team members of the project needed to define
when and how they would communicate, define deliverables
and project steps, and set deadlines.
 These steps eventually led to the creation of their System
Service Request (SSR) form.
 SSR-A formal user request for something new to be provided. Example: “I
need a new Macbook.”
 Define the scope (objectives) of the project (even objectives
are unclear)
 Assign objectives to project team members
 Define roles of each member in the project
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1. Initiating a Project
4. Establishing management procedures.
 Successful projects require the development of effective
management procedures.
 In some organizations, many of the mgt procedure would be
established as standard operating procedure.
 In establishing procedures, you are concerned with developing.
 Team communication and reporting procedure,
 Job assignments and roles, project change procedures, and
 Determining how project funding and billing will be
handled.
 Conflict management
 Regulatory procedure

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1. Initiating a Project
5. Establishing the project management environment and project
workbook.
 The focus to this activity is to collect and organize the tools that you will use
while managing the project and to construct the project workbook.
 Establish an environment that includes data related project, called workbook
 Performing the workbook is one important task of project manager
 Workbook be on line (a web site as SIMNET) or a hard copy repository that
contains
 All project correspondence: minutes, deliverable, input, output
 Deliverables and reports
 Standard to performing audits
 Management procedures
 Post project review meeting (future
 Workbook are mainly on line in order to allows different partners to access the content
through different locations)
 And standards established by the project team
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2.Planning the Project
2.Project planning
 It consists to define clear discrete activities and the work needed to
complete the activities within a single project (identify time, input
and output)
 There is positive relationship between effective project planning
and better project outcomes.
 In actual fact, you often have to construct longer-term plans that
are more general in scope and nearer term plans that are more
detailed.
 Project planning is different than Information System Planning
(ISP)
 ISP focuses on assessing the information system needs of the
entire organization
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2.Planning the Project
Planning Phase Activities
1. Describing project scope, alternatives and feasibility
2. Dividing the project into manageable tasks and logical order
3. Estimating resources and creating a resources plan
4. Developing a preliminary schedule
5. Developing a communication plan
6. Determine project standards and procedures
7. Identifying and assessing risks
8. Creating a preliminary budget
9. Developing a statement of work (for customer)
10.Setting a baseline project plan

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2.Planning the Project
1. Describing project scope, alternatives, and feasibility.
 The purpose of this activity is to understand the content and
complexity of the project.
 Identify project scope through answering question such as
 What problem or opportunity does the project address?
 What quantifiable results to be achieved?
 How success will be measured?
 What criteria to be used in order to ensure the project is
completed?
 Identify alternatives solution for current business problem
 Assess feasibility of solutions
 Make decision about the planed solution

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2.Planning the Project
 After defining the scope of the project, identify and
document general alternative solution for the current
business problem or opportunity.
 You must then assess the feasibility of each alternative
solution and choose which to consider during
subsequent SDLC phases
 In some instances, standard software can be found.
 It is also important that any unique problems,
constraints, and assumptions about the project be
clearly stated.

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2.Planning the Project
2. Dividing the project into manageable tasks.
 Divide the entire project into manageable tasks and
then logically order them to ensure a smooth
evolution between tasks.
 The definition of tasks and their sequence is referred
to as the work breakdown structure.
 Some tasks may be performed in parallel where as
others must follow one another sequentially.
 For example, it may be very difficult to list tasks that
require less than one hour of time to complete in a
final work breakdown structure.

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2.Planning the Project
2. Dividing the project into manageable tasks.
 Is called “work breakdown” structure
 Require to decompose SDLC phases into activities and
activities in to tasks
 SDLC include 6 phases. Each phase involves many
activities. Each activities involves many tasks. E.g.
during phase 3 of SDLC,
Activities = develop data and process flow.
Tasks = interviewing manager, identifying process and
data inflow, outflow, and transformation, etc.

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2.Planning the Project
3. Estimating resources and creating a resource plan.
 Estimate resource requirements : how many manpower, money,
software tools, are required to complete the project ?
 Resources planning is the estimation of the resource, within each
activity, needed to complete the project
 Time allocated to tasks depend on people assignment to tasks
 Project time estimates for task completion and overall system
quality are significantly influenced by the assignment of people to
tasks.
 One approach to assigning tasks is to assign a single task type to
each worker for the duration of the project.
 Remark: a person could be assigned to more than one tasks in his
own area of expertise.
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2.Planning the Project
4. Developing preliminary schedule.
 preliminary schedule a tentative timeline of activities and
milestones that are necessary to complete the project.
• Preliminary schedule = tasks + time + people within
each activity of work breakdown structure.
• This schedule may be drawn using the Grant Chart and
the Network diagram (PERT) chart.
• Using the information on tasks and resource availability
assign time estimates by to creating target starting and
ending dates for the project.
• Target dates can be revised and modified until a
schedule produced is acceptable to the customer.
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2.Planning the Project
5. Developing a communication plan.
 When & how different roles will communicate
 When and how written and oral presentation will be
provided by the team
 How many deliverables (official reports) and when
should be written (set deadlines)
 Define agenda for meetings and set deadlines (small &
big meetings)
 Outline the communication procedures among
management, project team members, and the customer.

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2.Planning the Project
6. Determining project standards and procedures.
 You will specify how various deliverables are produced and tested
by you and your project team.
 For example, the team must decide:
 What tools to use?
 How standard SDLC might be modified?
 What approaches will be used (JAD, prototyping, etc.)?
 How different team will report (horizontal or vertical)?
 documentation styles (e.g., type fonts and margins for user
manuals).
 Setting project standards and procedures for work acceptance is a
way to assure the development of a high-quality system.

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2.Planning the Project
7. Identifying and assessing risk.
 It identify sources of project risk and to estimate the
consequences of those risks.
 Risk might arise (source) :
From the use of new technology,
Prospective users' resistance to change,
Availability of insufficient resources,
Team member inexperience

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2.Planning the Project
8. Creating a cost benefit analysis.
 Estimate project cost of the and some times the revenue of the project
(show revenue is great than cost)
 Create a preliminary budget that outlines the planned expenses and
revenues associated with your project.
 The project justification will demonstrate that the benefits are worth
these costs.
 This analysis shows Net Present Value calculations of the project's
benefits and costs as well as a return on investment and cash flow
analysis.
 NPV is used in capital budgeting and investment planning to analyze the
profitability of a projected investment or project.

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2.Planning the Project
9. Developing a Statement of Work (For customer)
 It is developed primarily for the customer
 Is a short description of all work to be done & expected
deliverables
 Give clear idea to all project team and customer about the project
size
 The statement of Work is useful to make sure that you, the
customer, and other project team members have a clear
understanding of the intended project outcomes.
 A (SOW) is a document usually employed in the field of project
management.
 It is the narrative description of a project's work requirement. It
defines project-specific activities, deliverables and timelines for a
dealer providing services to the customer. 28
2.Planning the Project
10. Setting a Baseline Project Plan.
 Once all of the project planning activities have been completed, you will
be able to develop a baseline project plan.
 This baseline plan provides an estimate of the project's tasks and resource
requirements and is used to guide in next project phase - execution.
 As new information is acquired during project executions, the baseline
plan will continue to update.
 Contains resources, times and manpower (resource requirement)
 Is used to guide the executing phase or to update it when change happen
 A baseline in project management is a clearly defined starting point for
your project plan. It is a fixed reference point to measure and compare
your project's progress against. This allows you to assess the
performance of your project over time. For example, let's say your
project is on target to finish in six weeks .
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3. Executing the Project
3.Project Execution
 It consists to put the planned baseline project into action
 Project execution occurs primarily during the analysis, design, and
implementation phase.
 the project manager is responsible for five key activities during
project execution.
1. Executing the Baseline Project Plan.
2. Monitoring Project Progress against the Baseline Project Plan
3. Managing changes to the Baseline Project Plan.
4. Maintaining project workbook
5. Communicating the project status.

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3. Executing the Project
1. Executing the Baseline Project Plan.
 Keep the project schedule
 Ensure the quality of product deliverable
 Motivate people and increase the work team; think as one member
 you initiate the execution of project activities, acquire and assign
resources; orient and train new team members, keep the project on
schedule, and assure the quality of project deliverables.
 You are responsible for initiating new team members by providing
them with the resources thy need and helping them assimilate into
the team.
 Regular team project status meeting, team-level reviews of project
deliverables, and other group events to mold the group into an
effective team.
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3. Executing the Project
2. Monitoring Project Progress against the Baseline Project Plan
 Monitoring project activities can result in modifications to current plans
when needed
 Evaluate efficiency of project team member
 E.g. if one dependence activity is changed, you have to undertake the
impact on the other related activities
 PERT and Gantt will help you to fast undertaking changes
 While you execute the Baseline Project Plan, you should monitor your
progress.
 If the project gets ahead of (or behind) schedule, you may have to adjust
resources, activities, and budgets.
 Measuring the time and effort expended on each activity will help you
improve the accuracy of estimations for future projects.

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3. Executing the Project
3. Managing changes to the Baseline Project Plan.
 Manage the change if it has to occur
 Managing change requires three steps
 Request a change
 Accept change
 Apply change order
 PERT and Gantt charts can be used to undertaking changes
 A formal change request must be submitted and approved by the
steering committee.
 The request should explain why changes are desired and describe
all possible impacts on prior and subsequent activities, project
resources, and the overall project schedule.
 In addition to changes occurring through formal request, changes
may also occur from events outside your control.
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3. Executing the Project
4. Maintaining project workbook
 Update the workbook as the project progress
 Maintain complete records of all project events.
 The workbook provides the documentation new team
members require to integrate project tasks quickly.
 It explains why design decisions were made and is a
primary source of information for producing all project
reports.

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3. Executing the Project
5. Communicating the project status.
 The project manger is responsible for keeping all team abreast of
the project status.
 Clear communication is required to create a shared understanding
of the activities and goals of the project; such an understanding
assures better coordination of activities.
 Procedures for communication project activities vary from formal meeting to
informal hallway discussions.
 Keep involved roles informed about the latest development of the
project
 There are three types of communication (communication is useful
for)
 Solving issues through oral presentation
 Informing others through e-mails
 Keeping permanent storage of records (of written documents)35
5. Closing Down the project
 Project closedown: is to bring the project to an end.
 Within the context of the SDLC, project closedown
occurs after the implementation phase.
 When does a project end?
If requirements have been all met (normal end)
If all objectives have been successfully achieved
Customers’ need are not any more valid in the
customer business environment; state-of-the-art
technology is available on the market)
Running out of money

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5. Closing Down the project
Closing-down the project
Inform all members about the project end
during a review meeting
Conducting post-project review
Set a review meeting with management and
customers to assess project’ strengths and
weakness
Develop new idea for new projects
 Closing the customer contract
Stop funding and further new projects
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Closing Down the project
A. Closing-down the project
 Inform all members about the project end during a review
meeting
 Notify all interested parties that the project has been
completed.
 Finalize all project documentation and financial records
so that a final review of the project can be conducted.
 You should also celebrate the accomplishments of the.

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Closing Down the project
B. Conducting post-project review
 Set a review meeting with management and customers to assess
project’ strengths and weakness
 Final review of the project would be conducted with management
and customers.
 The objective of these reviews is:
 To determine the strengths and weaknesses of project
deliverables
 To evaluate the processes used to create the deliverables, and
the project management process.
 It is important that everyone understands what went right and
what went wrong in order to improve the process for the next
project.
 Develop new idea for new projects 39
Closing Down the project
C. Closing the customer contract
 Stop funding and further new projects
 The focus of this final activity is to ensure that all
contractual terms of the project have been met.
 you must gain agreement from your customer that all
contractual obligations have been met.
 You must also must agreed that further work is either
their responsibility or covered under another System
Service Request or contract.

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
 A project manager has a wide variety of techniques available for depicting and
document project plans.
 The most commonly used methods are Gantt and or Network diagram PERT
(Program Evaluation Review Technique) Charts.
 Gantt Charts
 is a graphical representation of a project that shows each task activity as a
horizontal bar who is proportional to its time for completion.
 Useful for depicting simple projects or parts of large projects
 Show start and completion dates for individual tasks
 Network Diagrams
 PERT chart is a diagram that represents project activities & their dependencies
 Show order of activities

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
 A project manager has a wide variety of techniques available for depicting and
document project plans.
 The most commonly used methods are Gantt and or Network diagram PERT
(Program Evaluation Review Technique) Charts.
 Gantt Charts
 is a graphical representation of a project that shows each task activity as a
horizontal bar who is proportional to its time for completion.
 Useful for depicting simple projects or parts of large projects
 Show start and completion dates for individual tasks
 Network Diagrams
 PERT chart is a diagram that represents project activities & their dependencies
 Show order of activities

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
There are several tools to support Gantt and PERT charts
E.g. of SIMNET Gantt chart

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
 PERT method is a critical path scheduling technique used for
controlling resources and timing
 PERT = Program Evaluation Review Technique
 It allows to determines critical path scheduling and Slack Time
 Critical path scheduling is a scheduling plan where the order and
duration of the sequence of activities directly affect the completion
date of a project
 Critical path is represented by the sequence of connected
activities that produces the longest overall time period
 It represents the shortest time to complete a project
 Slack time refers to the amount of time that an activity can be
delayed without delaying the project duration

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
Steps toward creating the PERT method
 Identify activities to be done within the project:
 Identify the sequence of the activities and precedence
relationship
 Clear beginning and end point of each activity
 Determine the critical path of the PERT network (chart)

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
Example of use of PERT method
 Assume you have a project with 4 activities (1 to 4) see
following slide. Determine for each activity the
• Earliest completion Time or Early Time to finish (TE)
• Latest completion Time or Late Time to finish (TF)
• Slack Time (ST)
 Which tasks are on the critical path?
 Draw a PERT Chart?
 Highlight the critical path

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Representing and Scheduling Project plans
Example of use of PERT method

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Use of project management software
 There are several tools to support the Gantt and Pert
charts
 Allow to facilitate complexity of a project
 Complexity = number of tasks & relationship
 Allow to define tasks, order tasks, assign resources to
tasks, Differences between system
 There are many software
 E.g. Microsoft’s Project is a great tool for any one who
oversees a team, plans a budget, juggles schedules, or
has deadlines to meet

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CASE and Visual Development Environments
 Computer-aided Software Engineering (CASE)
Software tools that provide automated support for some
portion of the systems development process
Upper CASE
CASE tools designed to support systems planning and
selection, systems analysis, and systems design phases of
the systems development life cycle
Lower CASE
CASE tools designed to support the systems
implementation and operation phase of the systems
development life cycle

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CASE and Visual Development Environments
Some CASE Tools
 Diagramming
 Microsoft VISIO
 Project Management
 Microsoft Project
 Development all-in-one solutions
 Oracle Developer Suite
 Microsoft Visual Studio
 Sybase PowerBuilder & Power Designer

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CASE and Visual Development Environments
 Types of CASE tools
• Diagramming tools
• Computer display and report generators
• Analysis tools used to check for incomplete, inconsistent or
incorrect specifications
• A central repository
• Documentation generators
• Code generators
 Form and report generators
 CASE tools that support the creation of system forms and
reports in order to prototype how systems will look and feel to
users

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CASE and Visual Development Environments

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Cont’d
Cont’d………………………..

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