CHAPTER II

Information Systems Development Project

2.1. Managing Information System Project
Project management is an important aspect of the development of information systems and a
critical skill for a system analyst. The focus of project management is to assure that system
development projects meet customer expectations and are delivered within budget and time
constraints.

The manager of an Information Systems department may have a direct role in the systems
development process if the organization is small or that is the manager’s style. Information
Systems managers are more involved in allocating resources to and overseeing approved system
development projects rather than in the actual project development process.

There are several IS mangers in any medium to large IS department.

– The manager of an entire IS department may have the title Chief Information Officer
and may report to the president or chairman of the firm.
– Each division of the IS department will also have a manager.
• Director of IS development, IS operation manger, IS programmer director, etc.
The customer, or the recipient of the Information system project's deliverables, expects a certain
level of functionality and quality from the IS project. These expectations can be self-imposed,
such as the specification of the project completion date, or customer-specified, such as producing
the sales report on a weekly basis.
Although the project manager treats the specifications as fixed, the reality of the situation is that
any number of factors can cause the specification to change. For example, the customer may not
have defined the requirements completely, or the business situation may have changed (happens
in long projects). It is unrealistic to expect the specification to remain fixed through the life of the
project. Systems specifications can and will change, thereby presenting special challenges to the
project manager to manage an information system project. Basically after selecting an IS project
one should be consider the project constraints. Five constraints operate on every project:

 Scope, Quality, Cost, Time and Resources

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 These constraints are an interdependent set; a change in one can cause a change in another
constraint to restore the equilibrium of the project. In this context, the set of five limitations form
a system that must remain in balance for the project to be in balance. The Project Manager is a
system analyst with a divers set of skills – management, leadership, technical, conflict
management, and customer relationship – who is responsible for initiating, planning, executing,
and closing down the project.

The project manager should be care the project parameters and focus on the project management
concepts.

 To ensure that information system projects meet customer expectations: - Delivered in a

timely manner and meet constraints and requirements
 To lead individual who is responsible for specific tasks in the project
 May be a person who is around throughout the entire lifecycle
 Project manager is often an executive or group manager
 Follows projects either there is an effective utilization of resources or not.
 Planned undertakings of related activities to reach an objective that has a beginning and an
end.

Project: a planned undertaking of related activities to reach an objective that has a beginning and
an end. To successfully coordinate the construction of a complex information system, a project
manager must have interpersonal, leadership, and technical skills. Table 1 lists the project
manager’s common skills and activities.

Activity Description Skill

Leadership Influencing the activities of others toward Communication, liaison between

the attainment of a common goal through management, users, and developers,
the use of intelligence, personality and assessing activities; monitoring
Management abilities. progress.

Getting projects completed through the Defining and sequencing activities,

effective utilization of resources. communicating expectations, assigning
Customer
resources to activities, monitoring
Relation

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 outcomes.

Technical Working closely with customers to assure Interpreting system requests and
Problem project deliverables meet expectations. specifications, site preparation and user
Solving training, contact point for customer.
Designing and sequencing activities to attain
project goals. Interpreting system requests and
specifications, defining activities and
Conflict
their sequence, making trade-offs
Management
Managing conflict with in a project team to between alternative solutions,
assure that conflict is not too high or too low. designing solutions to problems.

Problem solving: smoothing out

personality differences, compromising,
Team Managing the project team for effective
and goal setting.
Management team performance.
Communication within and between
Identifying, assessing, and managing the
teams, peer evaluations, conflict
risks and day-to-day changes that occur
Risk and Change resolution, team building, self-
during a project.
Management management.

Environmental scanning, risk and

opportunities identification and
assessment, forecasting, resource
redeployment.

2.2. Information Systems Project Phase

The first step is to identify the need for a system, which can be the result of: -
o Problems in existing system or process
o New feature required in an existing system
o A new idea for which in Information System is required
o A requirement to improve efficiency in the organization
o Compulsory standards or bench marks by an external organization Ex. Government
o The need to keep up with competitors

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During this activity a senior manager, a business group, an Information System manager or a
steering committee identifies and assess all possible systems development projects, which are all
may yield significant organizational benefits.
The requests for developing information system can come from three key sources
 Managers and business units who want to replace or extend and existing system in order to
gain needed information or to provide a new service to customers.
 Information Systems managers who want to make a system more efficient, less costly to
operate or want to move a system to a new operating environment.
 Formal planning group that want to improve an existing system in order to help the
organization meet its corporate objectives, such as providing better customer service.
The factors must be considered when selecting a project are
 Perceived needs of the organization
 Existing systems and ongoing projects
 Resource availability
 Evaluation criteria
 Current business conditions
 Perspective of the decision makers

Process of Information System development project consists of four activities:

1. Initiating the project
2. Planning the Project
3. Executing the Project
4. Closing down the Project
Initiating the Project

During project initiation, the project manger performs several activities that asses, the size, scope
and complexity of the project and establishes procedures to support subsequent activities.
Depending on the project, some initiation activities may be unnecessary and some may be very
involved. The following are the types of activities that you will perform when initiating the
project.

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1. Establishing the project initiation team. This activity involves organizing an initial core of
project team members to assist in accomplishing the project initiation activities.
2. Establishing a relationship with the customer. A thorough understanding of your customer
builds stronger partnerships and a higher level of trust.
3. Establishing the project initiation plan. This step defines the activities required to organize
the initiation team while it is working to define the scope of the project. This step eventually will
lead to the creation of the System Service Request (SSR) form.
System Service Request: is a standard form used for requesting systems development work.

4. Establishing management procedure. Successful projects require the development of

effective management procedure. When establishing procedures, you are concerned with
developing team communication and reporting procedure, job assignments and determining how
project funding and billing will be handled.
5. Establishing the project management environment and project workbook. The focus of
this activity is to collect and organize the tools that you will use while managing the project and
to construct the workbook.
Project Workbook: an online or hard copy repository for all project correspondence, inputs,
outputs, deliverables, procedures and standards, that is used for performing project audits,
orienting new team members, communicating with management and customers, identifying future
projects, and performing post project reviews.

Planning the Project

The second phase of the project management process, which focuses on defining clear, discrete
activities and the work needed to complete each activity within a single project. It often requires
you to make numerous assumptions about the availability of resources such as hardware,
software, and personnel. As with the project initiation process, varied and numerous activities
must be performed during project planning.

1. Describing project scope, alternatives, and feasibility. The purpose of this activity is to
understand the content and complexity of the project.
2. Dividing the project into manageable tasks. This is a critical activity during the project
planning process. Here you must divide the entire project into manageable tasks and then

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logically order them to ensure a smooth evaluation between tasks. The definition of tasks and
their sequence is referred to as the work break down structure.
3. Estimating resources and creating a resource plan. The goal of this activity is to estimate
resource requirements for each project activity and use this information to create a project
resource plan. This resource plan helps assemble and deploy resources in the most effective
manner.
4. Developing preliminary schedule. During this activity, you use the information on tasks
and resource availability to assign time estimates to each activity in the work break down
structure. The schedule may be represented as a Gantt chart or as a Network Diagram.

Gantt Chart: is a graphical representation of a project that shows each task as a horizontal bar
whose length is proportional to its time for completion.

Network Diagram: is a diagram that depicts project tasks and their interrelationship.

5. Developing a communication plans. The goal of this activity is to outline the

communication procedures among management, project team members, and the customer.
6. Determining project standards and procedures. During this activity, you specify how
various deliverables are produced and tested by you and your project team.
7. Identifying and assessing risks. The goal of this activity is to identify sources of project
risk and to estimate the consequences of those risks.
8. Creating a preliminary budget. During this phase, you need to create a preliminary
budget that outlines the planned expenses and revenues associated with your project.
9. Developing a statement of work. An important activity that occurs near the end of the
project-planning phase is the development of the statement of work. This document outlines the
work that will be done and clearly describes what the project will deliver.
10. Setting a base line project plan. Once all the prior 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 tasks and resource requirements and is used to guide the next project phase
– execution.
Executing the Project

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The third phase of the project management process, in which the plans created in the prior phase
(project initiation and planning) are put into action. Within the context of the SDLC, project
execution occurs primarily during the analysis, design, and implementation phase. The following
are list of activities performed during project execution.

1. Executing the baseline project plan. As project manager, you oversee the execution of the
baseline plan. This means that 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.
2. Monitoring the baseline project plan. 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.
3. Managing changes to the baseline project plan. You will encounter pressure to make
changes to the baseline plan. In addition to changes occurring through formal request, changes
may also occur from events outside your control.
4. Maintaining the project workbook. As in all project phases, maintaining complete
records of all project events is necessary. The workbook provides the documentation, new team
members require to assimilate project tasks quickly.
5. Communicating the project status. The project manger is responsible for keeping all team
members – system developers, managers, and customers – a breast of the project status.
Closing down the Project

This is the final phase of the project management process which focuses on bringing a project to
an end. Project can conclude with a natural or unnatural termination. A natural termination occurs
when the requirements of the project have been met – the project has been completed and is
success. An unnatural termination occurs when the project is stopped before completion. The
following are the activities performed during project close down.

1. Close down the project. During close down, you perform several diverse activities. For
example, if you have several team members working with you, project completion may signify
job and assignment changes for some members.
2. Conducting post project reviews. Once you closed down the project, final reviews of the
project should be conducted with management and customers. The objective this reviews is to

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determine the strengths and weaknesses of project deliverables, the processes used to create them
and the project management process.
3. Close the customer contract. The focus of this final activity is to insure that all
contractual terms of the project have been met.
Close down is a very important activity. A project is not complete until it is closed, and it is at
close down that projects are deemed a success or failure.

2.4. Representing and Scheduling Project plans

The activity of project planning takes place throughout the life cycle. It involves tracking the
project progress as well as revising the plan to take account of events as they occur. In many
organisations, there is a specific job role for project planning for the Project Manager.

In this phase, it is not possible to produce a detailed project plan – because there is not yet enough
detailed information about requirements. However, it is possible to produce a plan that shows the
estimated timings for each phase of the project. The ability to accurately estimate the times for
each activity is a skill that is acquired with experience of systems development projects. It is
difficult to estimate the times required if you have not got experience of carrying out each
activity.

The table below is an example of a high-level project plan.

- where possible, the responsible person or team should also be assigned to each task
- Dates for starting each activity can be assigned, to show when the project is likely to be
completed – note that some activities must finish before the next one begins, while others can
begin before the previous one has finished. This is because there are dependencies between
activities.
Task Estimated Begin Date Responsible
Days

1. Planning & Selection

Define the problem 2 days Nov 17
Generate alternative conceptual 4 days Nov 19
solutions
Feasibility Study 3 days Nov 20
Project Planning 1 day

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 2. Analysis
Describe current system 4 days
Define Business Rules 2 days
Detailed Requirements for new system 4 days
Initial design 3 days

3. Design
4 days
Logical Design
2 days
Physical Design

4. Implementation& Operation
5 days
Build database
20 days
Write Code
2 days
Integration
10 days
Testing
3 days
Documentation

Total 69 Days
Table 2: sample project schedule or plan

2.2.1 Prepare project Proposal

The major deliverable from this phase is a document that provides all the information discovered
during the above activities.

The name of the document and the format and content of it vary from one organization to another.

 In an organization where the IT/IS department carries out systems development for other
departments, the document acts as an agreement as to what the problem is, what the proposed
solution is and what are the scope and constraints for the proposed system.
 In the case where an outside supplier is providing the systems development service, this
document acts as an agreement between the supplier of the system/project and the customer. In
this case, the document may need to be more detailed – as it forms the basis of a legal agreement
between the two parties, and a contract may also be signed.

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The document may also be called a Baseline Project Plan or a Statement of Work or a
Statement of Requirements. The exact content and amount of detail in the document depends on
the organization and the participating parties.

The document also includes project-planning information, such as:

 Schedule, at a high level (approximate timings for each of the subsequent phases)
 Estimated time of completion
 Resources required (people and equipment)
The Proposal document will usually have sections for the following:

 Introduction – an overview of the project, and its objective.

 Scope & Constraints – describe the scope of the project, in words and/or with diagrams,
and what constraints have been identified.
 Proposed Solution – describe the proposed solution at a conceptual level; if a feasibility
study was carried out, the rejected solutions can be mentioned also, along with reasons for
rejecting them.
 Schedule – indicate the estimated schedule for the project, showing also the estimated
resources required to achieve the completion date.

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