Project Management Quarter

Project Management Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the last of four lectures of Project Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise implementation, or, in other words, to concepts related to implementing enterprise design; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Lecture outline

The predecessor lecture is Business Modeling Quarter.

Concepts

1. Project management. The task of getting a project's activities done on time, within budget, and according to specifications.
   • Project management. Practice and a set of concepts, based on that practice, that define culture of managing of projects from the moment when the project manager is identified to the project closing.
   • Project scope. The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions. See also scope.
   • Project scope. The work that must be done to deliver a product with the specified features and functions.
2. Project. One or more enterprise efforts undertaken to create a unique deliverable, most features of which are identified or can be identified before the efforts start. Any project can be presented as a set of processes.
   • Project charter. A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project, and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
   • Project kick-off. The formally recognized start of a project.
3. Project life cycle. A collection of generally sequential project phases whose name and number are determined by the control needs of the organization or organizations involved in the project.
   • Project phase. A collection of logically related project activities, usually culminating in the completion of a major deliverable.
   • Project schedule. The planned dates for performing activities and the planned dates for meeting milestones.
   • Program. A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way. Programs usually include an element of ongoing work.
4. Planning. Management function that involves setting goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
   • Planning. A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities.
   • Sprint plan. The tangible outcome of a Sprint planning meeting. The Sprint plan is a written document assembled by the development team and includes 1) the goal for the sprint—a brief description of the product or deliverable to be completed by the end of the sprint, and 2) a detailed list of the Product Backlog Items (PBIs) or user stories the team has committed to completing by the end of the sprint, based on the team’s availability and velocity. Each PBI or user story is broken down into tasks according to the priority set by the product owner and assigned to a team member.
   • Specific plan. A plan that is clearly defined and leaves no room for interpretation.
   • Standing plan. An ongoing plan that provides guidance for activities performed repeatedly.
   • Short-term plan. A plan covering one year or less.
   • Single-use plan. A one-time plan specifically designed to meet the needs of a unique situation.
   • Directional plan. A plan that is flexible and sets out general guidelines.
   • Formal planning department. A group of planning specialists whose sole responsibility is helping to write organizational plans.
   • Long-term plan. A plan with a time frame beyond three years.
   • Release plan. The plan that outlines the features to be included in an upcoming release and provides an estimated date for the release. The plan should include responsibilities, resources, and activities required to complete the release.
5. Velocity. A metric that specifies how much work a team is able to complete within a single, fixed-length iteration or sprint.
   • Work capacity. The amount of work that can be completed within a certain time frame and is based on the number of hours that an individual or team will be available to complete the work.
   • Sustainable pace. The pace that an Agile team can work at indefinitely without resulting in developer burnout (ideally 40 hours per week).
   • Technical debt. refers to the obligation a development team incurs when they use a short-term, expedient approach to developing a software package without considering the long-term consequences. Technical debt increases project cost and complexity due to inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and other issues introduced into the software package. Poor management, incompetency, timeline pressure, or inadvertent mistakes can all contribute to technical debt.
6. Sprint. A fixed-length iteration during which one user story or product backlog item (PBI) is transformed into a potentially shippable deliverable. Each sprint is assigned a set amount of time to be accomplished (sometimes referred to as Timeboxing), which could be anywhere from one week to one month, but typically lasts two weeks.
   • Sprint. A set time period during which milestones must be reached and work must be completed and ready for review.
   • Sprint goal (aka Sprint theme). The key focus of the work for a single sprint.
7. Budgeting. The process of allocating resources to pay for designated future costs.
   • Budget. A numerical plan for allocating resources to specific activities.
   • Zero-balance budgeting. Process starting with an established point of zero rather than using the current budget as the basis for adding, modifying, or subtracting resources.
8. Procurement plan.
   • Commercial-off-the-shelf software (COTS). Software developed and sold for a particular market.
9. Impediment. Any obstacle that prevents an individual or team from completing a task or project. Unscheduled meetings, technical issues, lack of knowledge or expertise, a distracting workplace, and office conflict are all examples of impediments.
   • Impediment backlog. A visible or nonvisible list of impediments in a priority order according to how seriously they are blocking the team from productivity.
   • Feature creep. The tendency to add additional requirements or features to a project after development is already underway. Feature creep can occur on either a project or sprint level.
10. Risk management. A process of identifying what can go wrong and making plans that will enable a system to achieve its goals.
    • Risk response plan. A document detailing identified risks, including description, cause, probability of occurring, impact(s) on objectives, proposed responses, owners, and current status. The proposed responses may utilize risk-response techniques such as avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, and acceptance that are designed to enhance opportunities and reduce threats to the project's objectives. The tools include .
    • Contingency planning. The development of a management plan that identifies alternative strategies to be used to ensure project success if specified risk events occur.
    • Workaround. A response to a negative risk event. Distinguished from contingency plan in that a workaround is not planned in advance of the occurrence of the risk event.
11. Deliverable. Any unique and verifiable work product or service that a party has agreed to deliver.
    • Deliverable. Any tangible or intangible thing that is a product of any enterprise effort and is able to be provided to the process beneficiary.
    • Deliverable. A tangible outcome produced by a project. Internal deliverables are created by a project and are used by the company itself. External deliverables are created for clients, stakeholders, or customers. A single project can create many sets of deliverables.
    • Deliverable. Any measurable, tangible, verifiable outcome, result, or item that must be produced to complete a project or part of a project. Often used more narrowly in reference to an external deliverable, which is a deliverable that is subject to approval by the project sponsor or customer.
    • Release. A functional product sent to customers.
    • Release. The transition of an increment of potentially shippable product or deliverable from the development team into routine use by customers. Releases typically happen when one or more sprints has resulted in the product having enough value to outweigh the cost to deploy it. A release can be either the initial build of a product or the addition of one or more features to an existing product. A release should take less than a year to complete, and in some cases, may only take three months.
    • Beta launch. The limited launch of a software product with the goal of finding bugs before final launch.
    • Incremental delivery. Creating working software in multiple releases so the entire product is delivered in portions over time.
    • Done done. A product increment that is considered potentially releasable; it means that all design, coding, testing and documentation have been completed and the increment is fully integrated into the system.
12. Configuration management.
    • Version control. The task of organizing a system or product containing many versions.
    • Continuous integration (CI). A software engineering practice that involves continual integration of new development code into the existing codebase.
13. Continuous improvement. A process of improving quality and efficiency by making small, incremental changes over time. In Kanban, continuous improvement refers specifically to the process of optimizing workflow and reducing cycle time, resulting in increased productivity.
    • Requirements management. The activities that control requirements development, including requirements change control, requirements attributes definition, and requirements traceability.
    • Requirements management plan. A description of the requirements management process.
    • Requirements risk mitigation strategy. An analysis of requirements-related risks that ranks risks and identifies actions to avoid or minimize those risks.

Roles

1. Project manager. The stakeholder assigned by the performing organization to manage the work required to achieve the project objectives.
2. Developer. Developers are responsible for the construction of software applications. Areas of expertise include development languages, development practices and application components.

Methods

1. UX project process.
   • UX strategy stage. The stage during which the brand, guiding principles, and long-term vision of an organization are articulated. The strategy underpinning a UX project will shape the goals of the project—what the organisation is hoping to achieve with the project, how its success should be measured, and what priority it should have in the grand scheme of things.
   • UX research stage. Often referred to as the Discovery stage. Complex projects will comprise significant user and competitor research activities, while small projects may require nothing more than some informal interviews and a survey.
   • UX analysis stage. The stage of the UX process where insights are drawn from data collecting during the earlier Research stage. Capturing, organising and making inferences from The What can help UX designers begin to understand The Why.
   • Design stage. The stage in a user-centred design process where ideas for potential solutions are captured and refined visually, based on the analysis and research performed in earlier stages.
   • Production stage. The stage at which the high-fidelity design is fleshed out, content and digital assets are created, and a high-fidelity version of the product is validated with stakeholders and end-users through user testing sessions. The role of the UX Designer shifts from creating and validating ideas to collaborating with developers to guide and champion the vision.
2. Why-What-How logic.
   • The Why. The statement for need or "why" the customer(s) want/think/need The What, possibly, in The How way.
   • The What. The statement for strategy or "what" is the best solution to satisfy The Why.
   • The How. The statement for tactic or "how" to accomplish The What.

Instruments

1. Sprint retrospective. A meeting held following the completion of a sprint to discuss whether the sprint was successful and to identify improvements to be incorporated into the next sprint.
   • Sprint retrospective. A session where the Team and Scrum Master reflect on the process and make commitments to improve.
2. Project management software. A class of computer applications specifically designed to aid with planning and controlling project costs and schedules.
3. PMBOK Guide.

Results

1. Project management plan. A formal, approved document used to guide both project execution and project control. The primary uses of the project plan are to document planning assumptions and decisions, facilitate communication among stakeholders, and document approved scope, cost, and schedule baselines. A project plan may be summary or detailed.

Practices

This lecture concludes the Quadrivium. Since the next, third module of the Course is Operations Quadrivium; thus, the successor lecture is Monitoring Quarter.