Project Management Project Part 1: Role of Project Manager and Work Performance

Project Management Project Part 1: Role of Project Manager and Work Performance

 

INTRODUCTION

           This paper  is on methodology of client-focused project that has this theme ‘’ Optimization of Human resource department at York region district school board. The project management assignment was for period of ten weeks which focus mainly on four areas of client-focused projects and area of choice that includes project management, consulting, teamwork, application design and software testing.

Every week I posted two different topics aforementioned above. Each post consists of related appendices that further explain the posts in details.

The objective of this project is to create electronic business that every employee at YRDSB would be able to access and perform certain related work activities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post 1: Project Management:

Project Management is a methodology that is significantly being utilized in all business organisations. ‘’Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectation from a project’’. (PMBOK, 1996, p6)     The topic of my proposed project is ‘’Optimization of Human Resources Department at York Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada’’. It is a client- focused project. The project scope will definitely define objectives and deliverables. The Project objective is to create E-business website that give 24 hour access to the employees. Over 10,000 employees of the school board will benefit from this project. The project will be in duration of 10 weeks and the cost of executing the project will be $50,000.00. The deliverable of the project will be E-business website that all employees can monitor their timesheet and paystub online. The website will be designed for York Region District School Board, Ontario Canada. We are six people in the project team. l am the project manager, programmer, two business analysts, sponsor(Project steering group) and a software tester. Each employee is assigned username and password in a secure environment. My role as a project manager in company A is to coordinate and manage the project from the initiation stage to the closing stage. The programmer is responsible to write the functional programming code like JavaScript and html.Business analyst is to gather business requirements to meet the client needs. Sponsor is the owner or project steering group of the project and it is responsible for the financing and the approval of the project. The software tester is to carry out functional testing and load testing on the website.

Post 2: Chosen Knowledge Area: Essential of the Software Testing:

Software testing is an essential factor during the execution of a project. Software tester or quality analyst is responsible for carrying out black box and white box testing to make sure the system work properly and also conform to the business requirements ‘’In black box-testing the system is given a stimulus (input) and if the result (output) is what was expected then the test passes.’’(Craig.R.D and Jaskiel S.P, 2008).Black box testing is the procedure used to test the physical part of a system. It is actual test where the user regularly interacts with the system. Software testing enables us to create test cases which are the functions or methods the system will perform in real life. It is responsibility of the software tester to carry out testing on the specific test-cases. These are the test that will be performed in this project because they are very essential for best performance of the website: Load Testing, user acceptance testing, stress testing and other functional testing. During the start of the project, the project manager and the stakeholder will determine areas of priority to be tested in these categories such as high risk, medium risk and low risk.

 

 

 

 

Post 3: Consulting:

Consulting is the major factor of knowing our client. It is a significant tool to explore areas of needs, problems and finding solutions that will be validated or satisfied by the clients.During the course of the project,I had several meeting with clients both on-site and in my office.My client explained their problems to me telling me about poor management of tracking employee hours of work,availability of employee to work, accessing pay-stub online. My clients went further to tell me that they need a website that all employee can log on and access their timesheet and paystub and they can also integrate themselves anywhere in the world with accounting and human resources department of their company. I developed a questioning techniques to get more information about their needs and problems and solutions proposed. I presented my questionnaires after third meeting to my client and they were satisfied with the content of the questionnaire and l gave them a week to get feedback. I went further to conduct one on one interview with people of subject matter at client site. I asked the management about their needs, problems they encountered using the system and areas of improvement. I went further to inquire about their estimated budget for the project proposal. l went further to inform them that the project will last for 10 weeks. The last questioning techniques l implemented in the project is the observation on the client website to determine areas of improvement. The result of questionnaires was really overwhelming that ninety percent of the participants agreed that website needs an improvement that will solve all organisational problems.

 

 

Post 4: Teamwork

Teamwork plays a great role to determine who will coordinate and sponsor the project from initiation stage to completion stage. Managing the project in an effective way leads to successful completion. Teamwork is a phenomenon that enables us defines project goals and roles of each project member. Good communication and trust are significant for success of the project. Performance measurement and innovation is a tool that project manager must abide with during the project life cycle process.’’ Regular open communication, in which group members share their thoughts, ideas, and feeling is a must for successful group work’’. (cte,uwaterloo,2011).As a project manager, l carefully chose my project team using projectised structure model, ‘’ Where the majority of staff are engaged in project work ,usually the project work for an external client, the project manager has a high degree of authority and autonomy’’(RDI Managing client focused project,2011:unit1,lesson2,11). My project team involves the steering group, business analyst, software tester and programmer. My role as a project manager l diligently researched the project goals to understand the client needs that helped me to pick the right people in the project team. l chose the business analyst to gather project requirements that include technical, functional and business requirements. The programmer was responsible to choose what kind of programming language that will meet project specifications, the business analyst worked hand in hand with project manager and the programmer and we all had weekly meeting about the status of the project. The same way, l as the project manager, met with steering committee twice

Project Management: Post5

The work breakdown structure (WBS) ‘’ is the framework on which the project is built’’. (RDI Managing client focused project, 2011:unit4, lesson2, 3) The scope of the project is further emphasise in this post is shown below that involve requirement, deliverables, cost and milestones. I deem it necessary to emphasise on the project schedule. ’’A schedule consists of planned dates for carry out project activities and meeting project milestones’’. (RDI Managing client focused project, 2011:unit4, lesson2, 6)   The project charter was issued at the start of project. As soon as the management informed me that project charter has been received, I quickly gathered my team together and started the execution of the project. I completed the feasibility study with my project team. The client was satisfied with project cost and budget. It was a project that is affordable within their cost. As a project manager l defined my deliverables to the project team and with help of my business analyst we are able to brainstorm on a regular basis to bring together the deliverables such as schedule chart, work break down chart, progress report, and prototype and budget report. I could remember that l advised the project team about meeting the project deadline and importance of good communication among the team. Project is facing three constraints which are cost, requirement and schedule. Requirement baseline is really vital to the success of any project, requirement baseline depends on WBS (work breakdown structure).It describes the entire scope of the project. The work breakdown structures give me general overview of project life cycle from the initiation stage to closure stage.

 

 

APPLICATION DESIGN:Post6

Application design is illustrated in the appendices 6, where l propose prototype of the website, which is totally different from the initial website. The upgraded version of the new website for York Region District School Board shows an employee can log on with their assigned employee number and password created by employee. The major difference cannot log on it is general open to public. The major goal of this new website is to optimize the existing website to accommodate employees to perform their daily activities such as cancelling shift hours, view their sheet and monitoring their hours worked during the pay period. I remember after several meeting with the project team and my clients, we are agreed on the proposed solutions and new design (Prototype) that actually gave me a great optimism that l am gaining the confidence and trust of my project team and stakeholder. In the system integration, I recommended three servers such as web server, database server and application server that will enable end-user to perform their daily tasks in a work environment. It is of great importance as a project manager to maintain ethical standard in the application design because of legal issues about people visiting the website that their personal information is not jeopardized by unwanted visitors. ’’Ethical standards should pervade a manager thinking throughout the solution development life cycle and be designed into solutions and not be an after-though’’. (RDI Managing client focused project, 2011:unit2, lesson3, 10)

 

 

Teamwork Post 7:

Knowing the status of the project is a thing of importance to the project team and the client .l had a meeting with my client, l did send memo to my project team especially the technical members who are the programmer and business analyst about the upcoming meeting with the clients. l consider my project team essential in planning and execution of the project’’. Teams are an important mechanism for getting things done promptly and for breaking down barriers between discipline’’(Levine,2002,p342).The project manager and business analyst review the existing problem with the website and my team propose solution and client made suggestion on how it want the system to perform. My main goal is to satisfy the client’s need. Good communication between the project team and client is really vital to gain each other trust.’’ Keep the information flowing, information is power’’.(Rasiel&Friga,2002,p159).Teamwork need the following characteristics to be effective in executing any viable projects. Defining a clear purpose to avoid project failure, project team review the status of the work to meet client expectation, effective and honest communication among the team members and meeting project deadline. The project manager must make sure all these characteristics work’’ The project manager must also be able to coach and develop team members’’ (RDI, Managing client focused project 2011: Unit1, Lesson2, 2). During the course of the meeting, l assured my clients that my company will provide maintenance and hosting of the website after the completion of the project. I also informed them that my company understand and respect the mutual agreement between the two companies.

Consulting Post 8:

Different consulting methodologies were implemented by the company in getting information from my clients and other stakeholder. l work mostly with my team in my office and client side. l tried as much as possible to review the existing problem with client is facing with old system. Only permanent senior staff were given the privilege to log on to the website but temporary, casual and contract staff are not allow performing any task in the existing website. I recommended a new independent webpage that will allow temporary, casual and contract staff to perform certain activities such as monitoring timesheet, pay-stub and asking for time-off. l went further to inform my client to decide on domain name, they want for the new site examples are ..NET, .com, and .org and they finally agree with me to use domain name conducted two hours meeting at client side, l wrote the agenda of the meeting and l facilitated the meeting and welcome every one ideas and suggestion in the meeting. ’’Teams communicate mainly through messages’’ (Rasiel&Friga, 2002, p159).One of the major task project team need to complete is the review of existing problems with the client. I was engaged in the discussion of general upgrade of the system and how it can handle the capacity of 10,000 employees online. The client also mentioned slow performance of the system and my project team assured them that very soon the system will be upgraded to a standard that will be more efficient, faster and reliable. I finally recommended one day workshop for all employees to learn how to navigate the website in a very effective way or launch a virtual training video on the website.

Post 9: Project Management

Establishing final prototype of the website is an integral part of the project. After preparing and defining specification, it will actually give us the overall operation of the website using use-case diagram. There are many use-case business scenarios that happened on the website. For example employee accessing the system to cancel his shift or want to absent from work for just one day. The employee is the actor interacting with the system and the website is the system. I always tell my project team and client the importance of setting up effective and reliable website because the website yields income, reduces cost of operation and helps employee process their task faster. The success of every e-business starts with good implementation of tools to build the website. Defining servers such as application, web and database server is an important factor. I discussed the issues of search engine with the client and my project team. I let them realised that it is a good idea for any user or visitor coming to the website to easily view the website by just typing the organisation name into any of these search engines such as Altavista, Galaxy, Yahoo and Google which are considered to be “Popular search engine’’ (Stair & Reynolds’, 1999, p312).All the three servers are integrated together for the flow of information or data from one point to another. All the data are stored in the database server; it is retrieved to application server when needed by the web server.

 

Post 10: Software Testing

At this stage, it is really interesting to identify test cases that are applicable to the business transaction of the website.”Test cases are at the heart of all testing, they describe exactly what will be executed and what is being covered’’ (Craig & Jaskiel, 2002, p187). I informed my technical team, software tester and business analyst to create test cases. There are different test-cases created that must pass or fail. When the test cases do not give expected result, they are considered to be failed but when the actual result and expected result are the same, the test cases are considered to be passed. Testing procedure is actually determined by test strategy. The test strategy is a crucial factor that determines project scope, when will testing occur, testing environment, people that are involved in conducting the testing and the critical success factor. The project scope that is involved in testing strategy may include new system created or website maintenance is the client/server. The methodology of software testing is actually related to project quality management which is the integral part of project management.”Project quality management includes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken (Duncan, 1996, p83).Project quality management ensures that the project meets client satisfaction and that is the reason the testing team has to do a great job before inviting client to perform their own test.”An internal quality system should be more stringent than an external quality system; otherwise the project will most certainly not comply with the external quality system” (RDI, Unit4, 2011, p7).Diligence in testing is the crucial factor that will determine client satisfaction.