Course Overview

The Foundation in IS Project Management course focuses on project management issues in the context of IS/IT applications. Key course areas include:

• the nature of projects and project work
• effective project planning
• monitoring and control
• change control
• configuration management
• quality issues
• project estimation and risk
• project organisation and communication

Project environment

• Characteristics of a project; the 'triple constraint' of time/cost/quality
• Project and operational responsibilities
• Special features of computer projects
• Role of the Project Manager
• Project success and failure
• Development lifecycles

Project initiation

• Stakeholder analysis and management
• Defining the objectives and scope of the project
• The role of the Client and their responsibilities
• Project constraints and resources
• Project Initiation Document

Project planning

• The importance of breaking work down
• Product breakdown structures
• Project and User deliverables
• Standard deliverable sets and templates
• Product flows and work packages
• The concept of dependencies

Estimating deliverables

• Key concepts in estimating
• Estimating difficulties
• Estimating by analogy
• Parametric estimating
• Effort and elapsed time estimates
• Schedule compression

Planning networks and charts

• Precedence diagrams and project networks
• The critical path and its implications
• Gantt charts and resource histograms
• Planning at an appropriate level
• The use and abuse of planning software

Working in teams

• The elements of a good team
• Team composition
• Team roles

Motivation and management style

• The roots of motivation at work
• Approaches to motivation (Maslow, Herzberg)
• The effect of management style

Project risk management

• Purpose of risk management
• Risk management process
• Identifying and assessing risks
• Introduction to quantitative risk assessment

Project quality plans

• Principles of quality management
• The contents of a quality plan
• Quality Management
• Configuration management

The project plan

• Elements of a project plan (schedule, quality, risk)
• Contents and structure of a project plan

Project monitoring, reporting and control

• The importance of monitoring and control
• Allocating personal deliverables
• Progress measurement
• Time recording
• Introduction to earned value analysis
• Dealing with non-delivery
• Slippage and re-planning - corrective actions
• Change control, scope creep and over-engineering
• Reporting structures

Project completion

• Project sign-off and the need for a controlled close
• Post-project reviews

The project manager

• The project manager’s role revisited
• Qualities and characteristics of effective project managers