1. Chapter 11
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PRESENTED BY:
SRAVAN KUMAR BANKA

2. Objectives of Project Management
2
 The important goal is to deliver a quality product that
meets the business needs on time, every time with an
affordable budget.
 There are 3 basic constraints that needs to managed to
achieve this. They are :
 Time
 Scope
 Cost

3. SOME DEFINITIONS
3
 Project
 A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a
unique product or service. It typically is a one time
initiative that can be divided into related activities that
require coordination and control, with a definite beginning
and ending.
 Project Management
 The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques
to a broad range of activities in order to meet the
requirements of a particular project.

4. SOME DEFINITIONS
4
 Program
 A group of projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain
benefits not available from managing them individually.
 Program Management Office
 An organizational unit with full-time personnel to provide
full range of standard approaches to project management
support and services that are utilized across projects;
lessons learned from each project are collected from post-
project reviews and shared across project managers.

5. IT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
5
 Its typically the responsibility of a committee of senior
business managers and IT leaders of an organization to
prioritize, manage and maintain the approved IT projects.
 Decision making about any important aspects in the project
are made here.
 It is the responsibility of the organization to maintain a
trusted relation with the business, and also monitor the
progress of the approved projects.

6. PROJECT PRIORITIZATION
6
 The idea of prioritization on different projects is based on
organizational standards and vision of implementation.
 Most organizations prioritize their projects based on the
investment, financial returns and obviously the strength in
personnel, and the technologies that can actually handle
the project.

7. PROJECT PRIORITIZATION
7
 According to Denis et al(2004) prioritization is of four
types:
 Absolute Must A mandate due to security, legal, regulatory,
or end-of-life-cycle IT issues.
 Highly Desired/Business-Critical Includes short term
projects with good financial returns and portions of very
large projects already in progress.
 Wanted Valuable, but with longer time periods for returns
on investment.
 Nice to have Projects with good returns but with lower
potential business value.

8. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
8
 New projects requests are typically submitted using an
organizational template.

9. PROJECT MANAGEMENT ROLES
9
 Usually every project in an IT organization may contain 3
roles in common.
 Project Manager
 Project Sponsor
 Project champion
 However the role of project manager is more critical in
every project management.

10. PROJECT MANAGER
10
 Any systems project is typically led by an IT project
manager demonstrated with both technical and managerial
skills.
 He is responsible for managing relationships with the
project sponsors and other stake holders, as well as
initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing a
project.
 He is the one who is responsible to identify, and manage
risks during any phase of project execution.

11. PROJECT MANAGER
11
 Project manager is the one who should maintain the
metrics and monitor the progress of project.
 He is the one who should make sure all the deliverables are
delivered to the business as per the schedule.
 He also maintains the project budget and work towards
improving financial returns on the project.
 He takes care of scheduling, and staffing the resources.

12. PROJECT MANAGER
12
 Effective project manager should not only have technical
expertise, but also should possess some non technical skills.

13. 13

14. PROJECT SPONSOR
14
 Project Sponsor is a high level fiscal owner of the project.
 He is typically a business manager who financially “owns”
the project (i.e., the person who “writes the check” for the
project).
 For systems projects that will be implemented in multiple
business functions or business units, the sponsor is likely to
be the officer of the company(e.g., a CFO or COO) or
designated owner of major business process (e.g., a supply
chain manager).

15. PROJECT CHAMPION
15
 The project champion is a business manager with high
credibility among the business users who will be impacted
by the new system.
 Project champions are usually business analysts who have a
very good knowledge on the domain and the workflow of
the customers.
 For some projects project sponsors may also play a role of
project champion.

16. THE PROJECT LIFE CYCLE
16
 There are four different phases in which any project life
cycle is categorized into. They are:
 Project Initiation
 Project Planning
 Project Execution and Control
 Project Closing

17. PROJECT INITIATION
17
 This is the first phase in which the project is formally
authorized and a determination is made as to whether the
project should actually proceed or not.
 The important deliverable in this phase is a Project
Charter.
 Project Charter is a document that describes a project’s
objectives, scope, assumptions, and estimated benefits.

18. PROJECT INITIATION
18
 Project feasibility is assessed in various dimensions here.
Like :
 Economic – Positive Financial Return?
 Operation – Impact on Organizational operation?
 Technical – Technology and required expertise?
 Schedule – Time constraints and impact?
 Legal or Contractual – Legal conflicts?
 Political – positive support from all stake holders?

19. PROJECT PLANNING
19
 The objective of project planning process is to ensure that the
project goals are achieved in the most appropriate way.
 The 3 major components of project planning are:
 Scheduling
 Budgeting
 Staffing
 These components are obviously interrelated, and poor planning
for one component can severely effect the another.

20. SCHEDULING
20
 Project Scheduling usually starts with work breakdown
analysis.
 Work breakdown is a basic management technique that
systematically subdivides blocks of work down to level of
detail at which the project can be controlled.
 Once the work is broken down, estimates are given for each
and every task based on the past experience.
 A master schedule is defined with Project milestone dates
and deliverables.

21. BUDGETING
21
 It documents the anticipated cost for the whole project.
 There are two traditional approaches to estimating project
costs:
 Bottom-up approach – costs estimated based on the tasks
in project plan and are then integrated.(Most preferred)
 Top down approach – used when not much information is
known in the project or not very clear about the tasks.

22. BUDGETING
22
 According to Frame(1994), inexperienced estimators
typically fall into 3 estimation traps:
 Too optimistic about what is needed to do the job.
 Tend to leave components out of estimates.
 Do not use a consistent methodology for estimations.
 Good training in how to estimate project estimates should
be mandatory for all the PMs involved in estimations.

23. BUDGETING
23
 Sometimes project estimates are done inaccurate
purposefully and can have adverse effect on the project.
 They are :
 Highballing(budget padding) – Overestimating project
costs on purpose.
-- Projects may not be approved sometimes because of this.
 Lowballing– Underestimating project costs on purpose.
-- Sometimes helps in gaining project approval, but can result
in failed projects due to over budget.

24. STAFFING
24
 Project team must have a mix of IT skilled resources to be a
successful one.
 PM should be capable enough to estimate the skill type,
proficiency level, quantity and time required for a resource
to complete a particular task.
 Appropriate “knowledge transfers” are done for a specific
project.
 Established COE to achieve skilled resources for future
projects.
 Provide incentives to retain high skilled resources.
 Ensure proper knowledge on business is delivered to
resources from SMEs.

25. STAFFING
25
 Staffing must include exercises which help in “team
building” to inculcate motivation and team spirit among all
team members.
 Some resources must be assigned full time for the project,
and some can be hired on contract based on the skillset
required for the project.
 However having employees on contract is not always
advisable because of the risks and standards of the
organization from which they are hired.

26. PLANNING DOCUMENTS
26
 Two primary deliverables from the Planning phase
 Statement of Work(SOW) – A high level document for
the customer that describes what the project will deliver
and when.
 Project Plan – A formal document that includes the
project schedule, budget, and assigned resources that is
used by the project manager to guide the execution and
control of project.

27. PLANNING DOCUMENTS
27
 Other common planning documents are : (1) PERT or CPM
charts (2) Gantt chart.
 PERT(Program Evaluation or Review Technique) or
CPM(Critical Path Method) graphically models the
sequence of project tasks and interrelationships using a
flow chart.

28. PLANNING DOCUMENTS
28
 A Gantt chart graphically depicts the estimated times (and
later, the actual times)
 Overlapping tasks can be easily seen.

29. PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
29
 The objective of the execution process is to effectively
coordinate all the resources as the project plan is carried
out.
 Most projects exhibit the following characteristics:
 Risk and uncertainty are highest at the start of the project
 The ability of the project stakeholders to influence the
outcome is highest at the start of the project
 Cost and staffing levels are lower at the start of the project
and higher toward at the end
 The deliverable for this phase is the completed project.

30. PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
30
 Good communication among the team members are also
critical for task coordination and integration
 Communications with other stake holders should be simple
and accurate

31. PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
31
 Request for change (RFCs) are something which effects the
project flow.
 All the changes are to be
documented with the RFCs so that
we will have a record of the cost,
and schedule being effected.

32. PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
32
 Be considerate about people-related and process-related
“early warning signs”.
 People related “Early warning signs”
 Required business stakeholder may be unavailable
sometimes
 Process related “Early warning signs”
 Lack of documentation

33. MANAGING PROJECT RISKS
33
 Reduce the risk of failing to achieve the project’s objectives

34. MANAGING BUSINESS CHANGE
34
 Change Management is the ability to successfully
introduce change to individuals and organizational units.
 According to Lewin/Schein most of business changes have
their roots in 3 stages.
 Unfreezing Stage – Should be in “safe to change”
environment.
 Moving Stage – Requires KTs for necessary information
 Refreezing stage – Changing the original setup.

35. MANAGING BUSINESS CHANGE
35
 Kotter change management model:
 Establish a sense of urgency
 Form a powerful guiding coalition
 Create a vision
 Communicate the vision
 Empower others to act on the vision
 Plan for and create short term wins
 Consolidate improvements and produce still more change
 Institutionalize new approaches

36. PROJECT CLOSING
36
 Project closure includes a post-project review session.
 Discussions during post project review:
 What went good?
 What went bad and how can be overcome that in future?
 What are the lessons learned through this project?

37. MANAGING COMPLEX IT PROJECTS
37
 Most of the times experienced IT PMs in an organization
are asked to handle complex IT projects.
 Three high level factors that are critical for a complex IT
projects are:
 The business vision was integral part of project
 A testing strategy was used at the program level
 The projects used a phase release approach.

38. MANAGING VIRTUAL TEAMS
38
 Outsourcing IT applications
 Virtual teamwork can also introduce new IT project risks
due to 3 related factors:
 Difference in communication norms
 Unfamiliarity with different cultures
 Lack of trusting relationships across team members.
 However this strategy is encouraging because of cost
effectiveness.

39. LESSONS LEARNED
39
 Most IT projects are successful when they actually follow all
the standards that are defined for the project.
 Be pro active in every phase of project until closure.
 PMs are important and should be hired with appropriate
knowledge.
 Document everything as it would be used for other teams
following the same standards.
 Managing different teams would be a risk but can be
handled if dealt properly.
 Risks should always be kept in mind in every phase.

40. QUESTIONS
40