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Project Management

The design and implementation of an Information System will usually be too complex to be undertaken by one person. The project will be sub-divided into tasks and each task allocated to a team. This allows the time taken to complete the project to be reduced to an acceptable value. It also reduces the effects of any one team member leaving the project.

At a simple level if a project would take one person 10 years to complete then it should take 20 people six months. This is the thinking that lies behind the use of teams. The actual gains are not as simple as this. Increasing the number of teams/people working on a project will generally reduce the time needed to complete it.

However more teams or people means that the organisation of the project is more complex and there is an increased amount of time in communicating with and between the teams. Another factor that must be taken into account is that certain tasks must be completed before other tasks can be begun. Testing cannot be done until sections of the system are implemented. Project management is therefore not simple. Project management software is available to allow the detailed management of the project to be controlled. This software will allow the project manager to chart who is assigned each sub task, the start and completion dates of each sub task and the interrelationship between the tasks - ensuring that a particular task is not scheduled to start until all other tasks that it is dependent on should be completed. This type of software will also keep track of how many man-days have been allocated to each task and which personnel will be assigned to it.

Project management can be broken down into a series of areas:

Estimating Estimating the time needed and the likely costs to complete tasks. There are few formal methods for estimating IT projects and project managers are largely dependent on experience and informed guesswork.
Planning. Based on the estimate of how long each activity will take, the manager will assign people with the necessary skills to the tasks. Built into this will be the movement of people from one task to another as each is completed.
Monitoring. The progress of the developing system must be checked against the original estimates of both cost and time. The principle method of monitoring time progress is by setting deadlines.
Correction. Deviation from the original estimates must be corrected - perhaps by moving people from less urgent tasks or re-negotiating the implementation schedule with the end user.

Teams working on a major project will break up and be re-formed as the project develops and as tasks are completed. This means that a team is a temporary working group that can bring together people with the required range of skills to solve a particular task. The range of skills needed for another task may well be different and so an appropriate team can be formed for that task. The team leader will be chosen for a particular task and he or she may take a subordinate role when working on a different task with another team. In general a team leader will need the following skills:

  • Good leadership skills that can make the team work as a cohesive unit.
  • The ability to recognise individual strengths and weaknesses and to allocate task appropriately.
  • The technical expertise to understand standards that have been agreed and to ensure that these are adhered to.
  • Sufficient project management experience to be able to deal with monitoring, costing and controlling the team's work.
   

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