Unit-04 Project Identification

Objectives
After completing this chapter you will be able to understand: Identify and document the generic and other requirements of a project. Analyse Mini Project Management approach (MPM). Identify the different supports that the project management system provides. Identify the computer related technologies that are easy to use in project management. Prepare a checklist for your project to define, plan, and monitor the project. Elucidate how a call is planned during managing the project.

Structure:
4.1 Introduction 4.2 Requisites of Project Management 4.3 Documenting the Requirements 4.4 Project Identification 4.5 Project Identification process 4.6 Checklist for a Project 4.7 Uses of Checklists 4.8 Teamwork and Relationships among Team Members 4.9 Call Planning in a Project Management 4.10 Project Management Tools

4.1 Introduction
Project management has wide variety of applications such as scheduling, cost control, resource allocation, budget management and so on. The main objective of project management is to achieve a specific target or a goal. Earlier the usage of project management was scientific, unyielding, rigid specific and restricted to only some technologies. However, the applications of project management have taken a wide perspective in emphasizing the process and the human work involved in the process. Project management has many applications/tools that help the delivery of the project in time with expected quality and within budget. These tools/applications helps planning, creating, monitoring the budget, distribution of resources, communication and other factors that are necessary for managing the project easier and deal with the ambiguity of the large projects.

4.2 Requisites of Project Management

A project that deploys a traditional approach for implementing the applications finds it easier to implement the defined scope. However, when the project requires implementing applications that are new for the users, it is necessary that the following features are easily available. Name and general description of the application: This provides information such as the purpose of using the defined application. This outlines the primary objectives of the project that has to be met. It also includes information of the users using the application such as number of users using the application, areas of application, etc. Software: It includes information such as the types of software available, the types of software required, the software version number, new releases, areas of applications, new technology and instructions for using the software. Hardware: It provides information of the physical aspects or the equipments required for the project. It can also include computers, telecommunications and others. Patching requirements: It involves requirements that are used to fix any uncertainties associated with the project. Installation and configuration guidelines: It includes a set of standard procedures that can be referred in case of any problems such as installation errors, corrupted files and any other exceptional operation of the system as per the requirements of the project. Application design: Representation of any information becomes readable and simple if the data is represented as a picture. Application design includes flowcharts and also determines the various dependencies of the task in the project. It includes flowcharts that are used to represent any process of the project by a different symbol with the defined meaning.

Monitoring and systems management: It includes information to monitor the work flow of the project to make decisions that benefits the organisation needs. Monitoring also includes information about managing and maintaining the expected and available budget. It also encompasses information of managing the system for implementing the developed work. Key support and maintenance items: It provides support and maintenance to handle projects of various sizes. It ensures that the project has resources available that best suits the wants of the company. Back up: It facilitates provision of maintaining copies of the work to ensure that the information can be recovered in case of any failure or exceptions. Data retention and data archiving policies: Data retention maintains information about the legal records and business accounts that supports the project workflow. However, data archiving policies are the process of removing the selected data records from operational databases. Information can be stored in an archive and can be retrieved when needed. Archiving also facilitates to move the redundant and old data from working area to another data store. Contingency and mitigation plans: It maintains a plan that ensures that any predictable or occurred risks are analysed and solved in time. A contingency plan is a plan that includes various strategies and actions that helps in dealing with variances that are specific to a particular problem or emergency. The plans also facilitate monitoring of the unpredictable process and ensure that the planned actions are initiated. It is a plan that is maintained as back up procedures, emergency response, and post disaster recovery. This ensures that the resources that are critical for the project is available and the flow of the project is maintained at any emergency situation. On the other hand the mitigation plans are also termed as Risk Response Plan. The plan ensures that the risks that have already occurred should be handled with care and timely. Service level documentation: It maintains information that serves as a guideline for the members of the team2. The various procedures and policies specific to the project are mentioned in this and can be referred by the team. Lesson Learnt: During the project execution, the team goes through lots of experiences. All such experiences that can benefit the forthcoming projects and can avoid repetition of some mistakes in other projects should be clearly documented and circulated to the other projects at regular intervals.

4.3 Documenting the Requirements

Documentation is not only a process of documenting every phase of the project. It is also important to document even before the project is started. This acts as a proposal to the suppliers. The following are the documents that at as an intermediate document between the organisation and the customer. Request For Proposal (RFP): This is a type of document that provides an invitation for suppliers of the project. The process facilitates the structure to the procurement decision. It allows analysis of the risks and benefits associated with the project. Effective RFPs ensures that the suppliers are able to provide the requirements as requested. The main objective of RFP is that it: Allows obtaining information that enables to take decisions in an organisation. Facilitates decisions on strategic procurement. Facilitates solutions to various concerns that are required. www.projectsmart.co.uk/project-management-system-evaluation-checklist.html There are various benefits of Request For Proposal (RFP). Some of them include: It ensures that the suppliers provide the requirements in time. It allows for distribution and response accurately. It alerts the suppliers that the process of selection is competitive. Request For Information (RFI): It is basically the request that is made during the project planning phase. It indicates that more information is required on any concerned factors. For example: When the customer is not clear with the product requirements, specifications, and options of purchase, RFI indicates that more information is required for clear understanding of the product. Documenting the requirements gathered is an essential step for facilitating all the members of team to clearly understand the purpose of the application. However, monitoring each phase of the project by the project manager forms a crucial step in any project management process. The project manager is responsible for making a detailed research and analysis of the project requirements and manages to discuss with each member of the project regarding the same. Once

the Project Kick off meeting is held with members of the project team, the project manager will engage various resources required for developing the project such as developers, support groups, engineers, and security groups. A project Kick off means initiating the plan which defines how to perform the implementation of the project. The project manager gathers all the required resources to meet the requirements defined. It is vital to document any tasks and schedules that have been assigned and maintained in a tracker. The project milestone tracker can be used to check if the tasks and schedules of the project and the objectives of the project are achieved regardless of the size of the project. Documenting the assigned tasks may include designing documents, noting the installation steps, providing information of the hardware, grid location of the hardware, providing versions of the various softwares used, etc. These are documented in the Project Requirements Document. It also facilitates in maintaining information of how to support the application and how to keep the application secure by performing various proactive monitoring checks. Various updates and patches are also documented to keep the working environment more stable. Back up and retention policies are also documented to ensure data recovery, in situations such as system crash.

4.4 Project Identification

Project Identification is a repeatable process for documenting, validating, ranking and approving candidate projects within an organization Project Identification Purpose Due to the changing financial conditions within the total organization, it is necessary to establish a stable process for approving projects for initiation. This process will... 1. Validate the business reason for each candidate project. 2. Provide the base information for more informed financial commitments to projects. 3. Establish a more objective ranking of candidate projects. 4. Allow a more effective matching of skilled resources to the right project. 5. Avoid over-allocating limited skilled resources. 6. Anticipate future human resource quantities and skills. 7. Provide a valid basis for staff training. 8. Make Project Initiation faster and more efficient. Because priorities, finances and resources may change at any time, it is critical that this process be well-defined and easy to follow. It is also important that its value is understood and supported by corporate leaders and the business organization. Criteria This process is intended for proposed projects that... 1. Are of significant size and will require a significant amount of time to complete. 2. Must be tightly coordinated with other active projects. 3. Will use new or emerging technology. 4. Will require a new work process. 5. Are intended for a new customer or unproven market. 6. Will impact numerous departments or organizations. 7. Are highly critical to the success of the business. 8. Are a known high risk.

4.5 Project Identification process

1. CERTIFY BUSINESS CASE 1.1. DOCUMENT BUSINESS CASE Evaluate all Candidate Project Information that has been provided by the requesting organization or that has been gathered by a technical analyst. If additional information is needed, issue an Information Request to the requester. Format this information into a

Business Case. Assign the Candidate Project a new Project Code. 1.2 REVIEW BUSINESS CASE The Business Case will be examined by an screening body with the corporate authority to accept or reject a Candidate Project. When a Business Case is accepted, the Candidate Project is captured in a repository for ranking and selection. If additional information is required on a Business Case, note it as pending and issue an Information Request to the requester. If a Business Case is rejected, send the information to the requester with an explanation for the rejection. Remain this information in a repository. 1.3 UPDATE BUSINESS CASE When additional information is received on a Candidate Project, obtain the pending Business Case from the repository and revise the data. 2. RANK CANDIDATE PROJECTS When requested, all Candidate Projects that are in the repository should be objectively ranked in order of significance. The ranking criteria should include... Target due dates Impact on the total business Impact on the technology architecture Impact on other applications Project size, cost and duration Project risk It will be helpful to rank projects against each of these criteria separately and then compile a single ranking that weights each of these criteria against each other. This ranking process is typically used to feed quarterly budget decisions but may be requested at any time. 3. EVALUATE RESOURCES An updated Skills Inventory should be maintained for all corporate (Business Unit and Information Technology Department) resources that are available for project assignment. Additionally, an inventory of available contract resources should also be captured. The purpose of this Skills Inventory is to understand the true capabilities and capacities of these resources. 4. DETERMINE RESOURCE NEEDS By evaluating the Skills Inventory and the Candidate Project repository, this process will identify anticipated requirements for quantities and capabilities of future resources. This information will provide. The identification of critical training needs A basis for employment opportunities Criteria for contract personal This process should be reviewed on a regular basis by Resource Managers within the organization and can be used for staff career counseling. 5 APPROVE PROJECT 5.1 SELECT PROJECT Based on the information provided by the ranking process, the Core Process Owners of the business will authorize a specific project for initiation. Thisproject should now be removed as a Candidate Project.

5.2 ASSIGN RESOURCES Even though a project has been selected, it does not become an active project until resources are approved and deployed against it. It is critical to remember that when resources are assigned from the Skills Inventory, this deployment has a proportionate impact on the resources availability. The organization must be very careful to not over-commit limited resources in an attempt to look more productive.

4.6 Checklist for a Project

Maintaining the phases and schedules in a bigger organisation is a tedious task to manage. However a bigger task comprises of various smaller tasks that requires constant monitoring of the work. Monitoring the status of the work at any required time and keeping track of such huge volumes of tasks is impossible without the use of a checklist. For a project to meet the required output it is necessary that every phase of the project is implemented successfully according to the standards and policies of the company. However, failure of the first phase/ task will have an immediate effect on the consecutive phase/task. Thus maintaining every task of the project is very important and can be managed by maintaining a checklist to monitor every phase of the project that has to be implemented. A checklist is defined as a to do list for the project managers. This is a tool/method to ensure that the projects are delivered effectively in time. Initially, an analysis of the objectives of the project is performed to determine if the project best suits the schema of the company, the uncertainties and the risks involved with the project is estimated. Once, the risks are estimated, the finance and the budget estimation is done. This determines the expenses that are likely to occur in the development process of the project. On approval of the project plan, the checklists are prepared. There are various benefits of using checklists in a project. Some of them include: It acts as a step by step guide about how to go about in a project. It facilitates in retaining the information of the project. This ensures that the information can be reused. It ensures that the information is easier to find as checklists can be organised by each topic and phase of the project. There are various types of checklists that are adopted by the project manager for managing the project. Some of them are as listed below: Task Performance checklist: They act as indicators of performance of all the members associated with the project. It ensures that better task performance means higher project development. Thus, the task performance checklists facilitate to initiate a process and characterise the progress of the employees in the organisation. Task Supervision checklist: This checklist facilitates in outlining the steps that helps the manager to perform monitoring and control of the tasks. It ensures that the performance of the members is supervised constantly and measures are taken to improve the task performance if needed. Interview Checklist for managers: This checklist facilitates in hiring new employees for the organisation based on project requirement. This checklist helps the employers in order to get prepared for the interview in terms of various factors. The factors include purpose and goals of the interview, ethics, format of the interview and other important aspects. Thus, this checklist ensures that the interview is carried out in a planned and organised order. Project Evaluation checklist: This checklists ensures that the effectiveness and the efficiency of the project flow is kept informed to all the participants of the project. It helps in defining various evaluation criteria and evaluation methods. Project Tracking Checklist: This checklist ensures that various guidelines and tips are provided for the members of the project. This allows the project activities to meet the requirements of the clients. Project Risk management checklist: Risk is defined as the probability of potential loss. Thus, in the project life cycle the loss has a direct impact on the project flow of the process. This results in reduced quality, failure of the project and exceeded budget. Thus, this checklist ensures that the types of risks that are probable to occur are anticipated in time. This helps in minimising or eliminating the risks occurred.

Project Estimation checklist: This checklist ensures that the planned goals and objectives are actually achieved. It facilitates that the effort required, duration required and the costs incurred are estimated efficiently. Project Implementation checklist: This checklist ensures that the objectives of the project, assigned tasks, deadlines and the progress of the tasks and the various milestones set are monitored constantly. Project Quality checklist: This checklist ensures that the quality standards for the project are identified. The deliverables of the project are evaluated to ensure that the quality is maintained according to the policies of the organisation. Project Cost Management checklist: This checklist includes various techniques and procedures for estimating and planning the cost of the project. It also ensures that the variances in the budget and the cost overruns are managed efficiently. Project Human Resource checklist: This checklist ensures that the job roles and responsibilities of the task are distributed according to the skills possessed by the members of the team. This checklist facilitates in modifying the Human Resource as per the specific requirements from the users. Project Execution checklist: Execution is a phase when the manager of the project and the project team perform various tasks and activities to produce the deliverables to the customers.

4.7 Uses of Checklists

Checklists help in organising the various tasks and activities that have to be performed for successful implementation of the project. There are various uses of the project. Some of them include: Reviewing the project: A periodic review of the project is necessary to monitor the status of the workflow. On reviewing of the project by the senior members of the team the changes has to be approved by the other members of the team. An employee is appointed for maintaining the quality of the project deliverables. A member of the team is appointed to make sure that the changes are marked even in the absence of the senior managers of the team. A review is performed in terms of financial issues to make sure that the planned budget does not exceed the occurred expenses. Gathering information for the project: It is necessary to connect with the people who maintain a library of information regarding the application or more likely to gather information on need. It is necessary to hire people who maintains a library of information or likely to gather information on need. Information has to be gathered adequately to ensure that the purpose of the application is served. Time management: Time management is one of the important activities that enable on time delivery of deliverables. It is important to check the available dates and time before committing to any task. The activities have to be prioritised using milestones to achieve the defined time. For example, consider a scenario of documenting a particular application. The various constraints that are considered in the checklist are: Planning and analysing to determine the objective of the application. Selecting right candidates that best suits the verbal and written skills requirement. Ensuring that the information gathered for documentation adheres to the syllabus required. Writing and documenting the contents as per the wants of the client. Sending the document for review to senior members of the team. Performing rework on review. Sending the reworked final document to the project manager. Delivering the document as per the deadlines set.

4.8 Teamwork and Relationships among Team Members

For a successful completion of any project, it is necessary to create an environment filled with energy and positive attitude to work. It is vital to maintain cordial, professional and healthy relationships among the members of the team to interact, co-ordinate and discuss various issues regarding the project. However, for creating such a work force environment in the project team, some factors are necessary to consider, they are: Influencing participants and prime movers: The members of the team require constant motivation and appreciation for their work done. It is necessary to understand the needs and wants of the project as well as the employees. Various problems and oppositions of the employees are required to be discussed and solved. The members of the team are expected to be familiar

with the type of audience and the expectations of the audience from them. A presentation goal has to be prepared first and the factors that support the goal has to be determined. Team work: It is very important to maintain a friendly and cordial relationship among the other members of the team to create the positive interest to work .The team members maturity level has to be understood to determine if further motivation is necessary to achieve the defined goals. It is necessary to find the leader within self to take ownership of the work assigned. It is good to celebrate the success of the project after delivery to ensure that the similar working enthusiasm is built for the next process. It is necessary that listening to the other members of the team is emphasised, trust and work balance are treated as priorities of the team.

4.9 Call Planning in a Project Management

When a call is planed with the clients it is important that the degree of speech is understood clearly. There are five aspects of speech that are essential for clear conversation in the conference call. They include bandwidth, amplitude, reverberation, interactivity and noise. Thus, it is very essential to select an appropriate room for the call that will result in a best conference call experience for both the parties that are communicating. While answering an official call, various factors have to be considered before the call, during the call and after the call. Before the call Before a call is made to the clients it is very important to keep a summary of the previous conversation you had with the same clients. The objectives of the previous call should be clear to continue the conversation. It is important to know the things learnt and promised during the last call. Before making a call it is necessary to select an appropriate place for the conversation such as it could be at clients office, conference rooms etc. It is very important that the schedule is fixed in such a way that it is convenient for both of the parties to have a lengthy an explanatory dialog. The room should be selected in such a way that there are no interferences with respect to the conversation. Thus, before the call is started, care should be taken to ensure that everyone can be heard, especially when the conversation is fast moving and dynamic. During the call It is very important for both the parties to understand the purpose of the call. It is vital to adapt to the clients style and stay focused during the call. It is necessary that you do less talking when compared to the client. An active and patient listening is very important and making note of main and supporting points is vital. If there is a point where in you are not clear or need more information, restate and confirm with the clients points. Find various ways that can develop or enrich the relationships. Before the call is closed it is important to summarise the key points discussed during the call and be specific regarding the requirements of the clients. Close the call once you are convinced that the purpose of the call has served. The call can be closed with the appointment of the next call, a deal or next meet. After the call It is necessary to maintain notes to keep track of the reports of the call such as the objectives of the call, the next actions that have to be taken and find various ways to develop the quality of the things expected by the client. It is always necessary to prepare a Minutes of Meeting (MOM) after the call that is circulated internally in the organisation. This MOM gives an idea of the discussion during the call.

4.10 Project Management Tools

There are various kinds of tools that are available for managing the project of various sizes. However, the best tool requires that organisation can substantiate enough finances. Some of the tools that are also available as a free download to use are: available in the below links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DotProject en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GanttProject en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Workbench Some of the Project Management tools available are: JxProject: This tool facilitates in finding the dependencies of the various tasks, scheduling the tasks, formatting the timeline and leveling of various resources. Dot project: It is an open source tool that facilitates structuring and scheduling various assigned tasks of the project.

Gantt Project: It is open source software that provides facility to create Gantt charts for representing the outcome of the project in an easy way. It can also be used to create Program Evaluation and Review (PERT) charts, and allocating the resources. Open Workbench: It is open source software that allows billing by itself. Project pier: It is open source software that facilitates the processes of managing the messages and various tasks assigned. It is also helpful in defining various milestones of the project. It allows the members of the project to upload and manage various formats of their files. Open Proj: It is open source application software that is used to create charts such as Gantt charts and PERT charts. It is distributed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) and owned by Serena software. Project HQ: It is open source application software that facilitates processes such as tracking and monitoring the projects and defining the milestones. Clocking IT: This tool is used to monitor and estimate the amount of time and effort required on each task in the project. Task Juggler: This tool is open source application software that enables features such as managing the dependencies of various tasks of the project, defining and allocating various resources, and estimating the costs required to meet the defined budget of the project. This tool also provides facilities for analyzing the risks and uncertainties associated with the project. However, there are some licensed tools used for managing the project. They offer a short free trial to the customers required. They are: Microsoft project planner: It is a project planner tool that encompasses various features. Some of them include: - It allows building a detailed schedule for the project and tracking it. - It facilitates to assign multiple resources and analyse dependencies of various tasks. - It ensures that the actual project progress against the planned action is viewed. - It facilitates to set milestones for various tasks and activities. Copper tool: It is a web based tool. It is an online tool that is used for managing the project activities effectively. It is useful in making the projects, clients, various contacts and documents centralized. It facilitates a single location for all the preferred documents. Active Collab: It is also a web based tool that is used to maintain a portfolios of project, it monitors the status of the project on a regular basis. No kahuna: This tool facilitates setting up of projects from any location. It helps in refining and distributing various tasks of the project. It allows constant monitoring and keeping track of the status of the project. Lighthouse: It is an online tool that helps in planning, defining and controlling the project to ensure the best quality output.

Activity 1
Explain the various computer related technologies that the project management should support.

Activity 2
Explain Project Identification and various uses of project.

4.11 Summary
Project management has many applications that are necessary to provide cost effective and quality output as per the expectations of the clients. However, in bigger organisation that manages a portfolio of projects, requires constant monitoring of human resources as well as every phase of the development project. It has vast applications in managing the project such as managing the scope, time, cost, quality, Human Resources, communications, risk, procurement

and integration. The managing of the project facilitates the applications of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques of the objectives of the project to meet the needs and expectations of the stakeholders. Thus, by using checklists in the project, employees can adhere to the standards and policies of the company both internally and the external expectations of the clients. Using checklists in the applications ensures that the work progresses in the flow step by step minimizing the risks and uncertainties associated with the project.

4.12 Self Assessment Question

a) Fill up the Blanks i) The main objective of project management is to achieve a specific target or a goal. ii) Monitoring also includes information about managing and maintaining the expected and available budget. iii) Time management is one of the important activities that enable on time delivery of deliverables. iv) Documentation is not only a process of documenting every phase of the project. v) An employee is appointed for maintaining the quality of the project deliverables.

b) State whether the statement is true or false: i) Project management is to achieve a specific target or a goal. ii) During the project execution, the team goes through lots of Pressure. iii) The various procedures and policies specific to the project can be referred by the Management. iv) The mitigation plans are also termed as Risk Response Plan. v) Ranking process is typically used to feed quarterly budget decisions but may be request at only one time. c) Multiple type Questions: i) The project requires implementing applications that are new for the users. (a). Software (b). Implementing (c). Research (d). Technology. ii) The project manager is responsible for making a detailed research and analysis of the project. (a). Making (b). Achieving (c). Targeting (d). Verifying. iii) Deployment has a proportionate impact on the resources availability. (a). Quantity (b). Quality (c). Resource (d). Responsible iv) A checklist is defined as a to do list for the project managers. (a). Project Manager (b) Employees (c) Customer (d) Organization

v) There are five aspects of speech that are essential for clear conversation in the conference call.

(a) Two

(b) Five

(c) Six

(d) Three

Review Question
1. What is Project Identification 2. What are the measures to be taken while answering a clients call? 3. Explain project management tools. 4. Discuss the Teamwork and Relationships among Team Members 5. Explain the need of documenting the requirements. 6. Discuss various requisites of managing the project. 7. Explain various phases of Project Identification process.

4.13 Key Answer

a) i) Specific Target or a goal ii) Managing, Maintaining iii) Deliverables iv) Every phase of the project v) Quality b) i) True ii) False iii) False iv) True v) False c) i) (b) ii) (a) iii) (c) iv) (a) v) (b)