Project Management Project Part 2: Role of Project Manager and Work Performance

Project Management Project Part 2: Role of Project Manager and Work Performance

 

Post 11: Consulting:

It is a good thing to monitor the former website and compare it to the new website. The essential thing in the comparison is the functionality of the two websites. As a project manager, I discussed the states of the project and the content management of the website with my client. I went further to discuss situational knowledge and consulting process to evaluate the current and future status of the project.”All of the processes that you need to manage time, cost and quality are included. The processes also help you to manage change, risk, issues, client acceptance and communication’’ (Mann, 2011:1).The situational knowledge is really essential because it helps the project team and the client to understand the business workflow from start to finish. ’’Situational knowledge gaining knowledge requires an understanding of the precise circumstance, the state and environment in which client currently operates’’ (RDI, 2011, Unit2, lesson1:9). Another form of situational knowledge l discussed with my client is identifying client problems and issues in which l used cause and effect diagram also known as Fishbone diagram. It is a great tool to analyse problem. ‘It is a vital diagnostic tool in consulting’’. (RDI, 2011, Unit2, lesson1:16). In the process of monitoring of former website and establishing the final prototype of the project, it is actually necessary to identify the problems encountered by the employees in the former website using fishbone diagram which is a good way of analysing a problem. ’’Fishbone diagram is a good way of analysing a problem it can help you to think of causes which might not have occurred to you immediately’’ (Lake, 1999:170).

 

Post 12: Application Design

It is necessary to put content management into consideration in application design of the website that will give us the ability to populate the webpage. At this point I liaised with my technical teams including the programmers and business analyst, we agree on how to design forms and buttons on the web page. The essential thing I discussed with my technical team and client is how the different web pages interact with each other. It is really crucial to determine whether the website meets the business requirements that are the reason I have to carry my clients and technical team along during the application design and building of the website. ’’Assessing the degree to which a software actually fulfils its requirement in the sense of meeting the user’s real needs ,is called validation”(Pezze,M.&Young,M,2007:15).Every step in project development and application design verified and validated by the clients and project manager will actually help build clients confidence on the particular project. ’’Increasing prototype are developed as part of the design phase to demonstrate to the client how business processes are accomplished and how the user needs will be met’’.(RDI,2011,Unit2,Lesson2:13).One of the major factor that must be put into consideration when designing the prototype is how to populate the webpage. My project team and I decided who are the audience and choose of language that will be beneficial to the purpose of the website. Furthermore, we decide a website that will be easy to navigate and attractive to the client; examples include designing company Logo and spelling and grammar check.

Post 13: Project Management

Evaluating risk involved in the system is really important; it will help the end-user, project team and stakeholders to have great satisfaction in the system. Managing risk on the website will help the organisation to save money and time. l discussed with my project team and the client on how to manage risk to a tolerance level that will not be detrimental to the performance of the website.’’Risk management is the process of controlling risk and monitoring the effectiveness of the control mechanism’’ (Craig & Jaskiel, 2008:26).Project risk management is an integral part of the project such as security breach, budget management and content of the website. The best definition of risk according to Benta et al(2011:142) ’’Risk are uncertain events which when occur have negative effect on at least one project goal e.g time, cost, content or quality’’.I did brainstormed with my technical team and the clients to identify areas of risk with e-business. The areas of risk l identified are the authentication of employee concerning user name and password, security breach from hackers and input of wrong data of timesheet and payroll transaction. I went further to discuss the issues of contingencies; the risk of system failure is a great concern to my project team and the client. The client informed us that they made funding already for contingencies. ’’Contingencies should always be established to manage risk’’( RDI Managing client focused project,2011:unit4,lesson3:6).It is really essential to provide for uncertainty of the functionality of the system.

Post14: Software Testing

As we progress in the project, it is really significant to define areas of testing; the features need to test and features need not to be tested.We can achieve this by developing a standard test-plan. ‘’Test plan describes the overall method to be used to verify that the software meets the product specification and the customer’s needs. It includes the quality objectives, resources needs, schedules, assignments, method and so forth.’’(Patton,2001:28).Some of the WebPages have form fields in which employees can enter their personal information such as location of work, view paystubs and timesheets. I engaged myself with the technical team to perform negative testing by entering wrong information and the main purpose is to get error response from the system. The testing procedure will surely determine the testing environmental needs, there are needs for Web, Application and Database server and testing tools such as QTpro and Test Director must be installed and configured correctly to meet the business requirement. Test deliverables are really important to the project team and the client; test summary report gives you the overall result of the outcome of the test. Incident Report is something that is rarely occur during testing, my software tester write about a serious bugs or errors and submit it to project manager or test manager. Test case is another deliverable that shows user action and get response from the system, if the expected result is different from actual result that means the test failed. Acceptance test plan is the final deliverable.

 

Consulting: Post 15:

The stability of the website is greatly important; the website must be able to maintain high traffics of users during the day. There are high traffics in the morning and afternoon because that is office hours every employee wants to transact business or perform daily task. I brainstormed with my technical team on how to perform loading test that can withstand over 100,000 users at a time during the Peak hours. I consider the peak hours from 9am-5pm that is normal office hours. ’’Website traffic fluctuates, time of the day, seasonality, promotions, popularity and flash crowds can all drive volumes’’ Scalable(2011).Determining the scalability of the website is greatly important by considering the unstable websites traffics during busy hours of the day and holiday season. There are low- traffics during the holiday period because school were closed and there is minimal activities happening on the websites. ’’Scalability is inherently about concurrency; after all, it’s about doing more work at the same time’’ (Brown,S ,2008:1).As part of my job as the project manager, I made my clients understand that it is good for their employee to maintain the website by themselves. Operating website by a third party is cumbersome and waste of company revenue.”Relying too heavily on third-party consultants is problematic on many fronts. Whether technology or development-focused, this seemingly obvious problem is quite common” (Anderson et al, 2009, 179).I further discussed with my client the importance of being independent in maintaining the website after project completion. Developing user interaction is part of our discussion to achieve project success. Every employee must be capable to perform daily task on the website.

Application Design: Post 16

Writing of the programming code is the priority of the technical team; they are responsible for the choice of programming language to build the website. Choices of programming codes that come to mind are JavaScript, Html, Php and Java. There are some forms on the website that employees can enter information such as unavailable date to work in a month. ’’Forms defines new HTML elements for interface widgets like text entry and password ,entry fields, radio buttons, check boxes, push buttons to submit data and even pull-down menus’’(Powell & Wickre,1995,p51).HTML and JavaScript are the programming languages that were used by the technical teams to build the website.”HTML is the Lingua franca of the web, it is the format in which web pages are built and web information is distributed” (Powell & Wickre,1995:36).As part of the validation of the website, I brainstormed with the technical team to test the website with different web browser such as internet explorer, Firefox,Netscape.”A web browser is a program on web surfer’s computer that is used to interpret and display webpages’’ (Ballar & Moncour, 2009:13).The test was successful because the website was really compatible with all the web browsers.I later asked my client about their views about the website and choice of browser installed on their computer, they told me that Microsoft internet explorer was installed because it was faster and reliable. My projection about the choice of browser will be a lasting solution which is a permanent one that the company will be using for all their business activities online.

 

Software Testing: Post 17 Week 9

There are two important levels of software testing to be performed at this stage; they are unit testing and integration testing. Unit Testing can be defined as ‘’Testing that occurs at lowest level is called unit testing or module testing’’(Patton,2001:112).It is a kind of testing that is also known as white box testing, it reviews the internal operation of a software or system; It is mainly performed by programmers and Testers because it involves testing of programming codes. The programmers checking for ‘’For Loop’’  and  ‘’If statement ‘’ in the code to ensure that the programming code work efficiently. While integration testing shows how the system interacts with each other. ’’Integration testing is the level of test done to ensure that various components of a system interact and pass data correctly among one another and function cohesively’’ (Craig & Jaskiel,2008:130).As part of the testing task performed by the technical team, buttons and links are checked whether they are working properly and are connected to each other. The tester makes sure that if a user clicks on a button, the right page is opened for viewing. Every employee of school board wants sense of satisfaction anytime they check their timesheet and cancel shifts on the website; most employees get frustrated when they click on a button on website and they get error message’’ The browser cannot open’’. The main goal of project team is customer satisfaction and the only way to achieve that is working towards perfection and maintaining company quality standard.

 

Team work: Post 18

The technical team has played a great role in troubleshooting and maintaining the website in progress. One of the areas of priority is to build a website that will sustain heavy traffics with minimal maintenance after Go-Live. I discussed with the developer or programmer about the programming code, we review the risk of choice of programming languages with clients. I even went further to discuss how to identify and fix bug or error on the website with the technical team and client. I really agree with Armour that stated that there are always two stages in testing expose a bug and fix a bug (Armour, 2004:18).That is absolutely what l did with my technical team. l gave them the tasks of looking for areas of bug and ways to fix it. The tasks were mainly carried out by programmer, tester and project manager. Since the project is getting towards completion; l submitted a project status report to the management of my company and client, it is really important to carry the management and my client along with the status of the project. The management and client were happy and satisfied with the project status that actually motivated me to do more for my project team. One of the great reasons l have a strong team is we trust ourselves and that gives them the power to work independently ’’Providing employees as much freedom as possible to make decisions about their job can work wonders’’(Fountoukids,2010:42). During our team meeting, each member updated the team tasks they accomplished on their own and I asked them questions in areas of concern and improvement.

 

 

 

 

Project Management: Post 19

As we are approaching the final stage of the project, the critical task to perform will be user acceptance testing and Go-Live. This is the stage of the project closing and to determine client satisfaction and perform client sign off. Project is brought to closing when the client is satisfied with the deliverables of the project and accepts them. ‘’Obtain the deliverables have been turned over and the warranty/support period is over, it is time to perform the administrative closeout steps. These include closing the project accounts, preparing the final actual and obtaining sponsor sign off’’ (Mingus, 2002:311).The closing of the project is the verdict point between the project team and client; that will actually allow the client have time to put closure to the project. ’’Project management closing formalizes acceptance of the product, service, or result and brings the project to an orderly end.’’(Bolles & Hubbard, 2011: 279).That actually gives client and project team sense of satisfaction. The user acceptance testing was completed with clients and project team to check whether it conform to business requirement. “Definining all final acceptance testing, aligned with the initial specifications, should be one of the first activities undertaken in technical projects, as part of scope definition and planning.’’(Kendrick, 2009:293).  Testing is a continuous process in a project so as to maintain quality and standard. The user acceptance testing sign-off was signed by the representative of client and the project manager.

Consulting: Post 20

The project team was eager to meet with the client to discuss project closing. I wrote a memo to the client on how to meet for project closing and user acceptance testing. As a project manager l made a phone call to my client to discuss the parameter of the user acceptance testing and I tried to inform them if there is any form of adjustment or suggestion to make for the upcoming user acceptance testing. The project was ten weeks duration, my client prefer it that way because it was affordable and manageable. ’’However, consulting contracts tend to be  shorter and there is a growing trend towards contracts that have a shorter duration’’(IT Global,2011:15) .Most of the major reason large organization want external contractors to execute their short-term project is because it is not time consuming and it is economical and easier to manage. Consulting company has the obligation to deliver quality service to his or her client to maintain business continuity ’’A consulting firm ought to define markets and products, identify their requirements, find clients, and then sell the consulting service to them’’ (Chitakornkijsil, 2011:7).It is the responsibility of the consulting company to give good service to client to meet their business and technical requirements. The user acceptance testing day was great; everything went fine as scheduled. The result of the testing was good because the expected result matched actual result that actually gave everybody in the room sense of joy and satisfaction