8 APPENDICES
8.3 APPENDIX C – PROJECT MANAGEMENT
In traditional systems development projects, the analyst or a project manager will be responsible for managing the project, including planning, scheduling, monitoring and reporting to relevant stakeholders. Project management focusses on managing the balance of costs, time and project scope, sometimes referred to as the project triangle, as a change to one of the three will affect the other two.
Project management involves identifying the tasks to be carried out and producing a work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS is used to produce a Gantt chart which shows the schedule of tasks on a horizontal bar chart. Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM) are two important techniques used to calculate the length of the project and show the critical path which is made up of the sequence of activities that add up to the longest overall duration. This determines the minimum time possible in which to complete the project.
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A work breakdown structure is formed by breaking down all the main activities in the SDLC into smaller tasks and assigning them a duration, costs and resources, e.g. staffing.
In addition to the tasks there are also milestones, important events occurring at a set point.
These are used to monitor progress and usually involve attention from stakeholders. A milestone may be used to signal the end of a deliverable such as “testing completed”. Tasks may be dependent on other tasks e.g. one task cannot start until another has finished.
The following example shows the work breakdown structure for a system development project in the form of a Gantt chart using Microsoft project professional 2016. The main activities are shown in the Task name column and each of these higher level activities can be expanded to show their lower level tasks, as shown for the activity “Analysis/Software Requirements”, which reveals 9 sub tasks. The horizontal bars to the right of the tasks indicate the task duration in days. The small arrow exiting a task bar indicates that when this preceding task is completed the task being pointed to can start. Note. In most projects there will be some tasks that can run in parallel e.g. testing, where different modules may be undergoing testing at the same time. Milestones are shown as black diamonds and indicate a project check point which usually has no duration.
WBS Schedule
Fig 7.2 Example system development Gantt chart
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WBS tasks may be arrived at either using a top-down approach of breaking down high level activities such as an SDLC phase, or using a bottom up approach which involves identifying all the tasks and then grouping them under higher level activities. Where a similar project has been undertaken it may be possible to utilise an existing WBS template. Accurate task duration estimation can be difficult although experienced analysts and project managers will find this easier.
When all the tasks have been entered the CPM, which is also called the critical path analysis, can be performed in order to identify the critical path for the project. This is the series of activities which determines the earliest time the project can be completed. It is in effect the longest path through the project with the least amount of slack or float – the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or the whole project.
The critical path can be calculated by using a network diagram which is derived from the WBS.
There are two types of network diagram, activity-on-arrow (AOA) or arrow diagramming method (ADM) and the precedence diagramming method (PDM) or activity-on node (AON).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7 8
A = 2 D = 2
H = 2
C = 1
G = 5
B = 2 F = 5
E = 4
I = 6
J = 3
Fig 7.3 Activity-on-arrow (AOA) network diagram
The activities are labelled A-J and their durations are shown in days.
This gives the following paths:
1. A-D-H-J 2+2+2+3 = 9 days 2. B-E-J 2+4+3 = 9 days 3. B-F-I-J 2+5+6+3 = 16 days 4. C-G-I-J 1+5+6+3 = 15 days
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Therefore, the critical path is path 3 which is 16 days – the longest path through the network.
The precedence diagram method shows the activities within boxes with the arrows linking them.
The example precedence diagramming method network diagram below, which was produced using Microsoft Project, shows the same activities as used in the network diagram above.
Each activity is shown as a box which contains the task start date, finish date and duration.
The activities highlighted in red are critical activities which cannot slip without affecting the overall project deadline.
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