Course material for software project management with Microsoft Project

1
Course material for software project management
with Microsoft Project

• Vangel Ajanovski
• Teaching assistant at the Institute of
  InformaticsFaculty of Natural Sciences and
  Mathematics, Skopjeajan_at_ii.edu.mk
• Monday, 21 December 2009

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Software project management at the Institute of
Informatics

• Starting from school year 2005/2006 there are
  both 3 year studies and 4 year studies at the
  Institute of Informatics
• 4 year studies have 6 different study programmes
• 3 year studies have 2 different study programmes
• Software Project Management at present
• As a separate course with 4 ECTS in the study
  programmes
• Software Engineering
• Computer science
• Information systems
• Computer Architecture and Networks
• As a separate topic in the courses
• Software Engineering
• Analysis and Logical Design of IS

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Software project management topics in earlier
curriculum

• There were two courses including topics from
  project management in the past
• Operations Research(8th semester curriculum
  1996 and 2000)
• Management(8th semester curriculum 2000)
• These two courses included some of the following
  topics
• Network planning with MS Project and/or PERT and
  Gantt charts
• Time Scheduling
• Resource scheduling
• Optimizations for resources, time and cost

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The new Software Project Management Course

• Main intent was to fit this course into the
  specialization module in the Information Systems
  study programme(Module as a structural group of
  courses)
• Therefore the course was proposed according to
  the
• IS 2002.10 Project Management and Practice
  model course
• IS 2002 Model Curriculum and Guidelines for
  Undergraduate Studies in Information Systems
  created by
• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
• AIS (Association for Information Systems)
• AITP (Association of Information Technology
  Professional)
• The course name was changed in order to include
  it in the specialization modules or electives in
  the other study programmes (SE, CS, CAN)
• The course is planned with 4 ECTS
• 2h/week lectures and 2h/week laboratory work

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IS 2002.10 Course specification- Catalog and
Scope -

• CATALOG
• Advanced IS majors operating as a
  high-performance team will engage in and complete
  the design and implementation of a significant
  information system.
• Project management, management of the IS
  function, and systems integration will be
  components of the project experience.
• SCOPE
• This course covers the factors necessary for
  successful management of information systems
  development or enhancement projects.
• Both technical and behavioral aspects of project
  management are applied within the context of an
  information systems development project.

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IS 2002.10 Course specification - Topics -

• Managing the system life cycle requirements
  determination, design, implementation
• System and database integration issues
• Network management
• Project tracking, metrics, and system performance
  evaluation
• Managing expectations of managers, clients, team
  members, etc
• Determining skill requirements and staffing
• Cost-effectiveness analysis
• Reporting and presentation techniques
• Management of behavioral and technical aspects of
  the project
• Change management
• Software tools for project tracking and
  monitoring
• Team collaboration techniques and tools.

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IS 2002.10 Course specification - Discussion -

• Capstone course for IS majors. It focuses on
  engaging in and completing a major system
  development project.
• The project is a team effort and allows a final
  opportunity to practice personal and
  interdependence skills to ensure team member
  empowerment and success. Project management tools
  will be employed by the team to ensure tracking
  of the project and communication of project goals
  and accomplishments to the client.
• Automated development tools may or may not be
  used depending on available resources. However,
  standards will be developed for all project
  deliverables. Software quality assurance
  methodologies will be employed to ensure a
  successful outcome for the project.
• On-going presentation of project planning,
  analysis, design, conversion plan, and other
  documentation will be done by the team. Each team
  member should play a significant role in some
  aspect of presentation.

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The new Software Project Management Course -
Goals and limits

• The Software Project Management course will start
  in 2008
• At the moment no teacher/assistant is assigned
  yet, so detailed course lecture plans and topics
  coverage are not yet elaborated
• Due to limitations in teacher resources what will
  probable happen is that we will (for this, and
  most of the other new courses)
• Let the course evolve in time towards the
  original goals
• Have detailed coverage for topics where a teacher
  is specialized and have the other topics covered
  with the bare minimum
• Share material with other courses where topics
  coincide
• At first have greater weight on theory than on
  practice
• Learn only the tools, instead of work on real
  projects
• Borrow from others with greater experience

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Other courses - Operations Research

• This course from the past was a 6 ECTS equivalent
• Contents include 3 major parts
• Queuing theory
• Simulations of real-world systems
• Network planning (PERT and Gantt charts, resource
  scheduling, time, resource and cost
  optimizations, simulation of project execution)
• The Network Planning part can be (and is) closely
  related to software project management
• There is experience with tools like Microsoft
  Project
• So this is where earlier experiences come in
  quite handy in the new courses
• What can be used?

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Other courses - Operations Research 2

• Course material for the theoretical part of
  network planning
• Typed in an old text-processor like Chi writer
• No original document, only bad quality
  photocopies
• aprox. 130-40 pages
• It is rather good material, but some work has to
  be done in order to retype it and bring it to a
  more readable and portable form
• The laboratory hours were planned for tools like
  Microsoft Project and Turbo Project, as good
  realizations of the theoretical concepts
• There is some reading material for this books
  translated in Serbian and help files
• There are a dozen of case-studies developed by
  students in other courses using Microsoft project
• There are few tools developed by students which
  could be the basis for discussing various
  heuristics and algorithms for optimization

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Network planning course material

• Contents
• Network planning
• Activities and events
• Defining the structure of the project
• Time-based analysis of the project(time
  reserves, deadlines,)
• Critical path and activities
• Cost-based analysis
• Cost-time dependency
• Direct costs, Indirect costs, Overall costs
• Minimization of overall costs
• Resource-based analysis
• Minimization with constrained resources
• Minimization with constrained time

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Network planning course material 2

• Other literature
• Lewis Project Planning, Scheduling
  Control3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, NY 2001
• Rather narrative and not technical but useful
  for all the other managerial issues in a general
  course of software management
• Microsoft Project is not covered just mentioned
  in few occasions
• Hillier, Lieberman Introduction to Operations
  Research7th edition, McGraw-Hill Higher
  Education, NY 2001
• Has very good on-hand examples on how to
  implement some of the models in Microsoft Project
• Also includes examples how to implement some
  algorithms in Microsoft Excel
• Petric - Operations Research (Operaciona
  Istrazivanja) Nauka, Beograd 1997
• Several solved exercises on project planning and
  cost optimization

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Microsoft Project as a course tool

• The Network Planning material has to include
• examples and instructions how to implement the
  mentioned concepts in MS Project
• In order to be in close correspondence to the
  theory
• special case study has to be built and elaborated
  in lectures and in labs
• Since project management is not only about
  planning, but also includes
• Project tracking, monitoring and
  change-management
• Cost optimization
• Team collaboration
• special focus has to be given on the support MS
  Project has for those activities
• Microsoft Project versions (Standard,
  Professional, Central Server)
• Links with other applications (Outlook,
  Sharepoint portal, Exchange)

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Student projects in Microsoft Project

• Each student or team of students is given some
  project to manage
• They should try to think and discuss in joint
  sessions and
• List all activities
• Find interdependencies between activities
• Plan the resources necessary for performing all
  activities
• After that make a project plan
• Decide on project phases, milestones and
  deadlines
• Create calendars of free project time
• Start the project implementation and tracking
• Unfortunately this is hard to do with students
  from an organizational point
• There has to be some ongoing project that they
  should have planned before-hand and are tracking
  now
• In a specialized course for project management
  the project can not be the actual development of
  a software there is not enough time for that

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Student projects in Microsoft Project 2

• In the last 2 years in the IS course we had a
  project management part and gave a special
  assignment
• To plan the actual work in the course, and not
  the development of the projects that the students
  are designing
• So their project plan did not include
  activities
• how to plan, design and implement a CRM system
  (as an example), but instead
• plan the planning and learning for planning ?
• The project plans were filled with activities
  like
• When to read the course material
• When to work on use-cases, when to make
  interviews etc
• Work with constraints such as regular classes,
  parties, exams, colloquium weeks etc.
• The expected results were
• Amount of time and work spent by each student for
  the course, tracking and monitoring of their
  learning process
• Cost of the learning process, and cost of the
  project planning

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Conclusion Work to be done and questions raised

• There are problems with needs for software
  project management topic in various courses and
  modules and there is lack of teachers and teacher
  time
• Some of the materials have to be shared among
  courses
• Lots of older materials that has to be renovated
• Even rewritten from scratch
• Decision has to be made on proper tools
• Cost of tools (MS Project)
• How to make things work in correspondence with
  theory
• Model for working with students, teams and
  projects