Introduction to software project management
Exercise 1 to 4
SPM/int/exA
Brightmouth College Payroll
Brightmouth College which used to be managed by a local authority has been made autonomous. Its
payroll is still administered by the local authority and payslips and other output are produced in the
local authority’s computer centre. The local authority now charges the college for this service. The
college management are of the opinion that it would be cheaper to obtain an ‘off-the-shelf’ payroll
package and do the processing themselves.
The college has no payroll office at present. The personnel office has the responsibility of notifying the
local authority of staff changes, but the distribution of payslips etc is done by the finance office in the
college. Although the college has quite a lot of IT equipment for teaching purposes, there is no
machine set aside for payroll processing and the intention is that the hardware to run the payroll will
be acquired at the same time as the software.
There is also a requirement additional programs to analyse the costs of each course that is run by the
college. Details of the pay that each member of staff receives will be obtained from the payroll
computer file. The number of hours that each member of staff spends teaching on each course may
be obtained from standing files on a computer-based time-tabling system that is used by a designated
member of academic staff to produce time-tables. The intention is that this additional software will be
written by a contractor.
Exercise 1
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Identify the likely stakeholders in the Brightmouth College. For each stakeholder suggest what
their objectives and concerns might be in relation to the payroll project.
Draft objectives for the Brightmouth College payroll implementation project.
Design measures of effectiveness which would objectively test that the objectives drafted above
would be met.
Exercise 2
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Identify the products that the Brightmouth College payroll implementation project would need to
produce (The result of this could be in the form of a product breakdown structure).
For TWO of the products, draft a product description
Draw up a product flow diagram (PFD) showing the sequence in which the products are to be
created
Convert the product flow diagram into a first-cut Activity Network.
Exercise 3
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For each activity, produce an estimate of
 effort
 duration
To help in producing the estimates - and there may be a large degree of speculation involved identify
 component activities
 effort-drivers
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Revise the activity network to create a more manageable plan, by sub-dividing large activities into
components and amalgamating small tasks (For this plan activities of about a week are ideal, and
should not be less than a day in duration).
For each activity, identify the type of specialist who should carry out that task.
Exercise 4
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The details of the plan drafted above will be set up in Microsoft Project.