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1,008 solutions
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1. Developing the project charter involves working with stakeholders to create the document that formally authorizes a project—the charter.
2. Developing the project management plan involves coordinating all planning efforts to create a consistent, coherent document—the project management plan.
3. Directing and managing project execution involves carrying out the project management plan by performing the activities included in it. The outputs of this process are deliverables, work performance information, change requests, project management plan updates, and project document updates.
4. Monitoring and controlling project work involves overseeing activities to meet the performance objectives of the project. The outputs of this process are change requests, project management plan updates, and project document updates.
5. Performing integrated change control involves identifying, evaluating, and managing changes throughout the project life cycle. The outputs of this process include change request status updates, project management plan updates, and project document updates.
6. Closing the project or phase involves finalizing all activities to formally close the project or phrase. Outputs of this process include final product, service, or result transition and organizational process assets updates.
Selecting projects is based on various categorizations, such as the impetus for the project, the time window for the project, and the general priority for the project.
The impetus for a project is often the need to respond to a problem, an opportunity, or a directive. Problems are undesirable situations that prevent an organization from achieving its goals. These problems can be current or anticipated. For example, users of an information system may be having trouble logging onto the system or getting information in a timely manner because the system has reached its capacity. In response, the company could initiate a project to enhance the current system by adding more access lines or upgrading the hardware with a faster processor, more memory, or more storage space. Opportunities are chances to improve the organization. For example, the project described in the opening case involves creating a new product that can make or break the entire company. Directives are new requirements imposed by management, government, or some external influence. For example, many projects involving medical technologies must meet rigorous government requirements.
Another categorization for information technology projects is based on the time it will take to complete a project or the date by which it must be done. For example, some potential projects must be finished within a specific time window. If they cannot be finished by this set date, they are no longer valid projects. Some projects can be completed very quickly—within a few weeks, days, or even minutes. Many organizations have an end user support function to handle very small projects that can be completed quickly. Even though many information technology projects can be completed quickly, it is still important to prioritize them.
Organizations can prioritize information technology projects as being high, medium, or low priority based on the current business environment. For example, if it is crucial to cut operating costs quickly, projects that have the most potential to do so would be given a high priority. The organization should always complete high-priority projects first, even if a low- or medium-priority project could be finished in less time. Usually there are many more potential information technology projects than an organization can undertake at any one time, so it is very important to work on the most important ones first.
A weighted scoring model is a tool that provides a systematic process for selecting projects based on many criteria. These criteria can include factors such as meeting broad organizational needs; addressing problems, opportunities, or directives; the amount of time it will take to complete the project; the overall priority of the project; and projected financial performance of the project.
The first step in creating a weighted scoring model is to identify criteria important to the project selection process. It often takes time to develop and reach agreement on these criteria. Holding facilitated brainstorming sessions or using groupware to exchange ideas can aid in developing these criteria. Some possible criteria for information technology projects include:
• Supports key business objectives
• Has strong internal sponsor
• Has strong customer support
• Uses realistic level of technology
• Can be implemented in one year or less
• Provides positive NPV
• Has low risk in meeting scope, time, and cost goals
Next, you assign a weight to each criterion. Once again, determining weights requires consultation and final agreement. These weights indicate how much you value each criterion or how important each criterion is. You can assign weights based on percentages, and the sum of all of the criteria's weights must total 100 percent. You then assign numerical scores to each criterion (for example, 0 to 100) for each project. The scores indicate how much each project meets each criterion. At this point, you can use a spreadsheet application to create a matrix of projects, criteria, weights, and scores. After assigning weights for the criteria and scores for each project, you calculate a weighted score for each project by multiplying the weight for each criterion by its score and adding the resulting values.
Integrated change control involves identifying, evaluating, and managing changes throughout the project life cycle. The three main objectives of integrated change control are:
1. Influencing the factors that create changes to ensure that changes are beneficial: To ensure that changes are beneficial and that a project is successful, project managers and their teams must make trade-offs among key project dimensions, such as scope, time, cost, and quality.
2. Determining that a change has occurred: To determine that a change has occurred, the project manager must know the status of key project areas at all times. In addition, the project manager must communicate significant changes to top management and key stakeholders. Top management and other key stakeholders do not like surprises, especially ones that mean the project might produce less, take longer to complete, cost more than planned, or be of lower quality than desired.
3. Managing actual changes as they occur: Managing change is a key role of project managers and their teams. It is important that project managers exercise discipline in managing the project to help minimize the number of changes that occur.