CIS 270 : Chapter 9 – 31 Project Planning and Project Management Solutions to End-of-Chapter Problems; A+ work.

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CIS 270 Chapter 9 Project Planning and Project Management Solutions to End-of-Chapter Problems Review Questions 1. List the six major reasons that projects fail. 2. List six critical fact ... ors that contribute to project success. 3. Define project management. 4. List five internal responsibilities of a project manager. 5. What is the difference between the client and the user? 6. What is meant by an organic approach? 7. What is the importance of “ceremony”? 8. List the nine areas of the PMBOK. 9. What is meant by Agile project management? . 10. How is scope management accomplished with Agile project management? 11. What are the four activities of Core Process 1? 12. What are three reasons that projects are initiated? 13. What is the difference between system capabilities and business benefits? 14. What factors are usually considered when approving a project? 15. List 10 types of benefits that may be considered when approving a project. 16. Explain how net present value (NPV) is calculated. 17. What is the difference between tangible benefits and intangible benefits? 18. What are some factors to consider when assessing organizational feasibility? . 19. What are the five activities of Core Process 2? 20. List seven types of information that should be captured during a project. 21. What is the difference between the project iteration schedule and the detailed work schedule? 22. What is a work breakdown structure used for? 23. What is the benefit of an iteration review and retrospective? Problems and Exercises 1. Read this description and then make a list of expected business benefits that the company might derive from a new system: Especially for You Jewelers is a small jewelry company in a college town. Over the last couple of years, it has experienced a tremendous increase in its business. However, its financial performance hasn’t kept pace with its growth. The current system, which is partly manual and partly automated, doesn’t track accounts receivables sufficiently, and the company is finding it difficult to determine why the receivables are so high. It runs frequent specials to attract customers, but it has no idea whether these are profitable or if the benefit—if there is one—comes from associated sales. Especially for You wants to increase repeat sales to its existing customers, thus it needs to develop a customer database. It also wants to install a new direct sales and accounting system to help solve these problems. 2. Read this narrative and then make a list of system capabilities for the company: The new direct sales and accounting system for Especially for You Jewelers will be an important element in the growth and success of the jewelry company. The direct sales portion needs to track every sale and be able to link to the inventory system for cost data to provide a daily profit and loss report. The customer database needs to be able to produce purchase histories to assist management in preparing special mailings and special sales to existing customers. Detailed credit balances and aged accounts for each customer would help solve the problem with the high balance of accounts receivables. Special notice letters and credit history reports would help management reduce accounts receivable. In a jewelry company, direct sales and accounting system is very important element to growth and success for a jeweler. In this narration, I read and understand that it needs some important elements to increase this company benefits. A list of system capabilities for this company: 3. Develop a System Vision Document for Especially for You Jewelers based on the work you did for Problem 1 and Problem 2. 4. Develop a work breakdown structure (WBS) based on the following narrative. It should cover all aspects of the move—from the beginning of the project (now) to the end, when all employees are moved into their new offices. Format your solution in tabular form with the following column headings: Task ID No, Task Description, Estimated Effort, Predecessor Task ID. For your solution, follow these guidelines:  Include dependencies.  Include effort (work) estimates.  Have 30 to 40 detailed tasks.  Cover a period of at least two months to a maximum of six months. You are an employee of a small company that has outgrown its facility. It is a Web development and hosting company, so you have technical network administrators, developers, and a couple people handling marketing and sales. There are 10 employees. The president of your company has purchased a nearby single-story building, and the company is going to move into it. The building will need some internal modifications to make it suitable. The president has asked you to take charge of the move. Your assignment is to (1) get the building ready, (2) arrange for the move, and (3) carry out the move. The building is nearly finished, so the job shouldn’t be too difficult (no construction is necessary—just some refurbishing). The building has several offices as well as a larger area that needs to be set up with cubicles. You and the president are walking through the building, and he tells you what he wants: “Let’s use the offices as they are,” she says. “We will need a reception desk for visiting customers. The office in the back corner should be okay for our computer servers. Let’s put the salespeople in these offices along the east wall. We are short a few offices, so let’s put up a few cubicles in the large room for our junior developers. “Of course, we will need to get everybody connected to our system, and I think Ethernet would be faster than wireless for us. And we all need to have phones. “Let’s plan the move for a long weekend, like a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Of course, we need to be careful not to shut down the clients we are already hosting. “Will you put together a schedule for the move for our employees and set up instructions for all the employees so they know how they are supposed to get ready for the move? ” 5. Enter your WBS from Problem 4 into MS Project. First, enter the tasks, dependencies, and durations. Write a paragraph on your experience using MS Project. 7. Build a Gantt chart by using MS Project based on the table shown in Figure 9-21. Enter the tasks, dependencies, and durations. Print out the PERT chart (Network chart) and the Gantt chart. Figure 9-21 presents a list of tasks for a student who wants to have an international experience by attending a university abroad. Assume that all predecessor tasks must finish before the succeeding task can begin (the simplest version). Also, insert a few overview tasks, such as Application tasks, Preparation tasks, Travel tasks, and Arrival tasks. Be sure to state your assumption. 8. The state university wants to implement a better system to keep track of all the computer equipment it owns and needs to maintain. The university purchases a tremendous number of computers and software that are distributed throughout the campus and are used by faculty, staff, departments, and colleges. Currently, the university has very sparse records of its equipment and almost no records about maintenance or the software that has been purchased. A list of use cases has been defined; it will serve as the starting point to develop this system. Take the following list of use cases to create a project iteration schedule. You should try to arrange the use cases so similar ones are developed together. Also, the most important use cases should be developed first. State your assumptions, and explain your reasons for your solution. Note: For brevity, we use the word computer to refer to any type of computing equipment, such as a desktop computer, laptop computer, server computer, printer, monitor, projector, wireless access point, and so forth. 1. Buy a computer. 2. Sell a computer. 3. Put a computer in service. 4. Take a computer out of service (surplus). 5. Assign a computer to a person. 6. Record the location of a computer. 7. Repair a computer (in house). 8. Return a computer for repair. 9. Identify computers ready for replacement. 10. Search for a specific computer by various options. 11. Buy a software license. 12. Renew a software license. 13. Install software on a computer. 14. Remove software from a computer. 15. Record a warranty for a computer. 16. Purchase a warranty for a computer. 17. Search for multiple computers by various options. 18. Search for software on computers by various options. 19. Assign a computer to a department or college. Solutions to End-of-Chapter Cases Case Study: Custom Load Trucking 1. Do you think the decision by CLT to build project managers from its existing employee base is a good one? What advice would you give CLT to make sure it has strong project management skills in the company? 2. What kind of criteria would you develop for Monica to use to measure whether Stewart (or any other potential project manager) is ready for project management responsibility? 3. How would you structure the job for new project managers to ensure or at least increase the possibility of a high level of success? 4. If you were Monica, what kind of advice would you give Stewart about managing his career and attaining his immediate goal of becoming a project manager? Running Cases: Community Board of Realtors 1. Given the total vision of this system, develop a System Vision Document. Focus primarily on finding the benefits to the community board, the real estate agents, and home buyers. 2. Including the uses cases and functions identified in Chapters 3 and 8, make a list of all the uses cases that must be developed. Divide them into subsystems as appropriate. You should have at least two subsystems: one for viewing data and one for updating data. Add any additional use cases (and subsystems) that might be important to the Community Board of Realtors itself. [Hint: Think about user goals and CRUD.] Answers will vary 3. Decide on a work sequence, and develop a project iteration schedule. 4. Estimate the development cost and the time required. 5. Develop a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project’s first iteration. 6. Enter your WBS into MS Project to create a detailed work schedule. (Instructions on how to use MS Project are given in Online Chapter C, which you can find on the Cengage Web site.) Running Cases: The Spring Breaks 'R' Us Travel Service 1. Based on the answers you gave to the Chapter 2 running case questions, develop a System Vision Document. 2. Based on the functional descriptions you provided for the Chapter 2 running case and the use cases you defined in Chapter 3, finish identifying a complete list of use cases for each of the four subsystems. One important decision you will have to make is which subsystems to develop first. In other words, can the subsystems be deployed independently and, if so, which should be deployed first? Defend your answer. 3. A related decision is whether to organize your programmers into one larger team or multiple smaller teams and how many programmers you can use on this project. Make that decision and then defend your answer. 4. Once those decisions are made, develop a project iteration plan. If you have multiple independent teams, your project iteration plan will have parallel paths. After I made that decision on question #3 now I want to develop a project iteration plan so I need two teams for this project. They are Student Function Team and Resort Function Team. Student Function Team Resort Function Team 5. Based on your previous answers, develop an estimate for the total project cost and the time required to complete the project. Student Function Team Resort Function Team Now for this team expense category and amount required such as: 1. Salaries…………………………………………$200000 2. Training for the team………………….$10000 3. Equipment for the team………………..$18000 4. Travel for them……………………$15000 Total ………………………………$243000 6. Assuming an annual revenue increase of $250,000 per year (benefit) and an annual operating cost of $75,000, develop a five-year NPV worksheet by using your estimates for developing the system. Use a 6 percent discount factor. Running Cases: On the Spot Courier Services 1. Create a System Vision Document. 2. Review all the use cases that you identified in Chapter 2 and then enhance the list to achieve a complete solution. Assign each use case to one of these four subsystems from Chapter 8:  Customer account subsystem (like customer account)  Pickup request subsystem (like sales)  Package delivery subsystem (like order fulfillment)  Routing and scheduling subsystem 3. Create a project iteration schedule for each subsystem. The project consultant is planning to assign one team of two people to this project, and the subsystems will be built consecutively. Based on the answers you provided in Chapter 8, combine your four individual schedules into a total project iteration schedule. 4. Create a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the first iteration of the project as you have outlined it. Estimate the effort required for each task in the WBS. 5. Enter the WBS into MS Project to create a detailed work schedule. (Instructions on how to use MS Project are given in Online Chapter C on the Cengage Web site.) Running Cases: Sandia Medical Devices 1. Based on the use case diagram and other project information, develop a list of software components (subsystems) that must be acquired or developed. Describe the function(s) of each component in detail. Be sure to consider components that aren’t directly tied to use cases, such as the software interface between the glucose monitoring wristband and the cell phone. 2. Prioritize the list of software components based on risk. 3. Prepare a project iteration schedule based on iterations that last between two and four weeks. The schedule should include all the tasks needed to develop a complete version of the system, which will then be subjected to live testing and evaluation by real users for three months. 4. Prepare a detailed work schedule for the first iteration. If you have access to project management software, prepare the schedule and a Gantt chart by using the software. [Show More]

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