Session 1:

Introduction to IT Project
Management

PMC115
What Is a Project?
 A project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken
to create a unique product, service, or result”
(PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition, 2017)
 Operations is work done to sustain the business
 Projects end when their objectives have been
reached or the project has been terminated
 Projects can be large or small and take a short
or long time to complete

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Advantages of Using Formal
Project Management
 Better control of financial, physical, and human
resources
 Improved customer relations
 Shorter development times
 Lower costs
 Higher quality and increased reliability
 Higher profit margins
 Improved productivity
 Better internal coordination
 Higher worker morale

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Project Attributes
 A project
◦ has a unique purpose
◦ is temporary
◦ is developed using progressive elaboration
◦ requires resources, often from various areas
◦ should have a primary customer or sponsor
 The project sponsor usually provides the direction and
funding for the project

◦ involves uncertainty

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The Triple Constraint of Project
Management

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 The Project Management Process
Analyze
and Revise

Plan & Track Conduct

Define Communicate
Project
Organize Actual Status
Project Close Out
the Project Status

Manage
Changes

Lessons
Learned

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10 Project Management
Knowledge Areas
 Knowledge areas describe the key competencies
that project managers must develop
 Project managers must have knowledge and skills

in all 10 knowledge areas (project integration,

scope, time, cost, quality, resource,
communications, risk, procurement, and
stakeholder management)
 This course includes an entire session on each

knowledge area

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Project Management Framework

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 PROJECT LIFE CYCLE

Starting The PHASE Organizing PHASE Carrying Out PHASE Ending The
GATE GATE GATE
Project & Preparing The Work Project

TIMELINE

MONITORING
INITIATING PLANNING EXECUTING & CLOSING
PROCESSES PROCESSES PROCESSES
PROCESS GROUPS CONTROLLING PROCESSES
PROCESSES

PROCESS GROUPS

SCOPE QUALITY RISK STAKEHOLDERS

COST COMMUNICATIONS

TIME RESOURCES PROCUREMENT INTEGRATION

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Project Stakeholders
 Stakeholders are the people involved in or
affected by project activities

 Stakeholders include
◦ the project sponsor
◦ the project manager
◦ the project team
◦ support staff
◦ customers
◦ users
◦ suppliers
◦ opponents to the project

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Project Management Tools and
Techniques
 Project management tools and techniques assist
project managers and their teams in various
aspects of project management
 Some specific ones include
◦ Project charter, scope statement, and WBS (scope)

◦ Gantt charts, network diagrams, critical path analysis,

critical chain scheduling (time)

◦ Cost estimates and earned value management (cost)

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Project Success
 There are several ways to define project success:

◦ The project met scope, time, and cost goals

◦ The project satisfied the customer/sponsor

◦ The results of the project met its main objective,

such as making or saving a certain amount of
money, providing a good return on investment, or
simply making the sponsors happy

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What Helps Projects Succeed?*
1. Executive support
2. User involvement
3. Clear business objectives
4. Emotional maturity
5. Optimizing scope
6. Agile process
7. Project management expertise
8. Skilled resources
9. Execution
10. Tools and infrastructure

*The Standish Group, “CHAOS Manifesto 2013:

Think Big, Act Small” (2013).
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The Role of the Project Manager
 Job descriptions vary, but most include
responsibilities like planning, scheduling,
coordinating, and working with people to achieve
project goals
 Remember that 97% of successful projects were
led by experienced project managers, who can
often help influence success factors

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Suggested Skills for Project
Managers
 The Project Management Body of Knowledge
 Application area knowledge, standards, and
regulations
 Project environment knowledge
 General management knowledge and skills
 Soft skills or human relations skills

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 The 4 Principle of Effective Project Managers
Principle 1 Solution
• If you don’t know • Set effective project objectives, developed with inputs
where you’re going, from clients and team members.
you probably won’t
get there

Principle 2 Solution
• If you fail to plan, • Learn to use project planning processes, tools and
you plan to fail techniques developed by PMI

Principle 3 Solution
• Problems caught • Proactively look for trouble, with an eye towards
early are easier to managing problems, rather than waiting to be
solve victimized by them.

Principle 4 Solution
• People and politics • Remember to focus attention on people issues, both
are the bigger internal and external.
variables in every
project

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Ten Most Important Skills and
Competencies for Project Managers
1. People skills
2. Leadership
3. Listening
4. Integrity, ethical behavior, consistent
5. Strong at building trust
6. Verbal communication
7. Strong at building teams
8. Conflict resolution, conflict management
9. Critical thinking, problem solving
10. Understands, balances priorities

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Ethics in Project Management
 Ethics, loosely defined, is a set of principles that
guide our decision making based on personal
values of what is “right” and “wrong”
 Project managers often face ethical dilemmas
 In order to earn PMP certification, applicants must
agree to PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional
Conduct
 Several questions on the PMP exam are related to
professional responsibility, including ethics

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Three Sphere Model for Systems Management

23
Phases of the Traditional
Project Life Cycle

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Product Life Cycles
 Products also have life cycles
 The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is

a framework for describing the phases involved in

developing and maintaining information systems
 Systems development projects can follow

◦ Predictive life cycle: the scope of the project can be

clearly articulated and the schedule and cost can be
predicted
◦ Adaptive Software Development (ASD) life cycle:
requirements cannot be clearly expressed, projects are
mission driven and component based, using time-based
cycles to meet target dates

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Predictive Life Cycle Models
 Waterfall model: has well-defined, linear stages
of systems development and support
 Spiral model: shows that software is developed
using an iterative or spiral approach rather than a
linear approach
 Incremental build model: provides for
progressive development of operational software
 Prototyping model: used for developing
prototypes to clarify user requirements
 Rapid Application Development (RAD) model:
used to produce systems quickly without
sacrificing quality

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Agile Software Development
 Agilesoftware development has
become popular to describe new
approaches that focus on close
collaboration between programming
teams and business experts

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 Manifesto for Agile Software
Development
 In February 2001, a group of 17 people that called itself the
Agile Alliance developed and agreed on the Manifesto for Agile
Software Development, as follows:
 “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have
come to value:
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Responding to change over following a plan”*

*Agile Manifesto, www.agilemanifesto.org.

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 Agile Project Management
 Agile means being able to move quickly and easily, but some
people feel that project management, as they have seen it
used, does not allow people to work quickly or easily.
 Early software development projects often used a waterfall
approach, as defined earlier in this chapter. As technology
and businesses became more complex, the approach was
often difficult to use because requirements were unknown or
continuously changing.
 Agile today means using a method based on iterative and
incremental development, in which requirements and
solutions evolve through collaboration.

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The Importance of Project Phases
and Management Reviews
A project should successfully pass through
each of the project phases in order to
continue on to the next
 Management reviews, also called phase

exits or kill points, should occur after

each phase to evaluate the project’s
progress, likely success, and continued
compatibility with organizational goals

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Recent Trends Affecting IT
Project Management
 Globalization
 Outsourcing: Outsourcing is when an

organization acquires goods and/or sources from

an outside source. Offshoring is sometimes
used to describe outsourcing from another
country
 Virtual teams: A virtual team is a group of

individuals who work across time and space

using communication technologies
 Agile project management

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