978-0073402987 Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Closing Material Part 1

subject Type Homework Help
subject Pages 7
subject Words 2364
subject Authors Amy Phillips, Paige Baltzan

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CHAPTER NINE
CLOSING MATERIAL
OPENING CASE QUESTIONS
GETTING YOUR PROJECT ON TRACK
1. Knowledge: List the signs for assessing if a current project is
experiencing issues.
June is the perfect time of year to reect on the current state of all the key
projects that were approved in January. At this stage, you and your
management team should have enough data to know if each initiative will
successfully meet its objectives. You may already know there are projects
2. Comprehension: Identify the options a project manager can
follow if a project is not meeting its success criteria.
To determine a course of action, ask yourself the following questions
about the project:
If part of or the entire project can be salvaged and delivered on time and
with the remaining budget, if the right leaders are present to steer the
project, if the new plan is solid, and if management will continue to
support the project, the following four steps will help you regain control
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and deliver the revised project successfully. These steps are basic
3. Application: Illustrate the triple constraints role in a project.
The triple constraints include scope, resources, and time. These three
components are interdependent and if you change one the others must
4. Analysis: Analyze the four steps to recovering a project and
determine which one is the most critical.
The following are the four steps a project manager can review to
determine a project’s success or failure. Of course, each one is equally
5. Synthesis: Propose how you would develop a game plan to
recover a project.
Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and
techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Projects are
short-term e orts such as removing old servers, developing a custom
ecommerce site, or merging databases. By continuously measuring and
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Project constraints are speci.c factors that can limit cost estimating
options. They include: budget, delivery dates, available skilled
6. Evaluate: Argue for or against the following statement:
“Throwing good money after bad will not save a project.”
If all of the signs appear that a project is failing, it may be time to cut your
losses and cut the project—or at least radically restructure it. You know
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What role does project management play in the systems
development e9ort?
Any systems development e ort needs to be properly project managed.
2. What role does the project manager play in determining a
project’s success?
The success of a project completely depends on the ability of the project
3. Why would a project require an executive sponsor?
The person or group who provides the .nancial resources for the project is
4. Which phase in the systems development life cycle is the most
important?
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All phases in the systems development life cycle are important. One of
5. If you had to skip a phase during the development of a system,
which phase would it be and why?
You should never skip any phases during the systems development life
6. Which phase in the systems development life cycle contains the
most risk? Be sure to explain your answer.
All phases have risk but where most projects fail is in analysis of the
7. Which project management methodology would you choose to
run your software development project?
8. If you started on a new software development project and the
project plan was using the waterfall methodology, would you
remain on the project? What could you do to better prepare your
project for success?
Any project using the waterfall approach is doomed for failure and you
9. Explain the di9erent types of feasibility studies a project
manager can use to prioritize project importance.
The di erent feasibility studies include economic, operational, schedule,
10. Why should end users be involved in the systems development
e9ort?
End users should be heavily involved in every phase of the systems
development life cycle to ensure the project is complete to their
11. Why would a project manager use Gantt and PERT charts?
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A PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical
network model that depicts a project’s tasks and the relationships
12. Why is gathering business requirements a challenge for most
projects?
Gathering business requirements is di<cult as most users do not
understand the entire business processes from end-to-end and gathering
13. What are the di9erent types of outsourcing available for a
project?
Onshore outsourcing —engaging another company within the same
country for services. Nearshore outsourcing —contracting an outsourcing
14. What are the risks associated with outsourcing?
Length of contract, threat to competitive advantage, and loss of
15. Explain the goals of the Project Management Institute and
identify three key terms associated with PMBOK.
The Project Management Institute created the Project Management Body
CLOSING CASE ONE
Disaster at Denver International Airport
1. One of the problems with DIA’s baggage system was inadequate
testing. Why is testing important to a project’s success.
Without testing the risk or errors will surly destroy the project. Di erent
types of testing include:
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2. Evaluate the di9erent systems development methodologies.
Which one would have most signiEcantly increased the chances
of the project’s success?
Student answers to the type of implementation method that would have
improved the success of the system will vary. There are a number of
di erent software development methodologies including:
3. How could more time spent in the analysis and design phase have
saved Colorado taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars?
An error found during the analysis and design phase is relatively
inexpensive to .x. All that is typically required is a change to a Word
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4. Why could BAE not take an existing IT infrastructure and simply
increase its scale and expect it to work?
Increasing the scale increases everything. It increases the stress on the
hardware, more users on the software, and greater information needs and
CLOSING CASE TWO
Reducing Ambiguity in Business Requirements
1. Why are ambiguous business requirements the leading cause of
system development failures?
The most common reason systems fail is because the business
requirements are either missing or incorrectly gathered during the
2. Why do the words “and” and “or” tend to lead to ambiguous
requirements?
And and or have well de.ned meanings and ought to be completely
unambiguous; yet they are often understood only informally and
3. Research the Web and determine other reasons for “bad”
business requirements.
Student answers to this question will vary.
4. What is wrong with the following business requirement: “The
system must support employee birthdays since every employee
always has a birthday every year.”
Every employee does not have a birthday every year. Some employees
could be born on leap year and therefore would not have a birthday every

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