Project Management - Ch. 5 Summary

Planning is the systematic arrangement of tasks to accomplish an objective. The plan lays out what needs to be accomplished and how it is to be accomplished. The plan becomes a benchmark against which actual progress can be compared; then, if deviations occur, corrective action can be taken.

The first step in the planning process is to define the project objective -- the expected result were end product. The project objective is usually defined in terms of scope, schedule, and cost. The objective must be clearly defined and agreed upon by the customer and organization or contractor that will perform the project.

Once the project objective has been defined, the next up is to determine which work elements, or activities, need to be performed to accomplish it. This requires developing a list of all the activities.

The work breakdown structure (WBS) breaks the project down into manageable pieces, or items, to help ensure the all the work elements needed to complete the project work scope are identified. It is a hierarchical tree of end items that will be a compost or produced by the project team during the project. It usually indicates the organization or individual responsible for each work item.

a responsibility matrix is often develop to display, in tabular format, the individuals responsible for clutching the work items in the WBS. It is a useful tool because it emphasizes who is responsible for each work item and shows each individual's role in supporting the overall project.

Finally, network planning is a technique that is helpful in planning, scheduling, and controlling projects that consist of many in a related activities. In addition, it is also useful for communicating information about projects. There are several different network plan formats that can be used; the two most popular are activity in a box (AIB) and activity on the arrow (AOA).

In the activity of the box format, each activity is represented by a box in the network diagram, and a description of the activity is written within the box. In the activity on the arrow format, each activity is represented by an arrow in the network diagram, and activity description is written above the arrow.

After a list of activities has been created, a network diagram can be prepared. When deciding on the sequence in which the activity should be drawn to show their logical presidential relationship to one another, you must determine (1) which activities must be finished immediately before a given activity can be started, (2) which activities can be done concurrently, and (3) which activities cannot be started until prior activities are finished.

Project planning is a critical activity and developing an information system (IS). A project-management planing tool, or methodology, called the systems development life cycle (SDLC) is often used to help plan, execute, and control IS development projects. The SDLC consists of a set of phrases or steps: problem definition, said some analysis, system design, system development, system testing, and system implementation. All of these need to be completed over the course of the development project.

Numerous project management software packages are available to help project managers plan, track, and control projects in a completely interactive way.

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