Geog 469
GIS Workshop
Project Management
Outline
• Why review information needs and system
requirements?
• What are three popular activities that can
assist with project management?
Why review information needs and
system requirements?
• Scope of the system
– What are four scopes for a project?
• Critical success factors
– What is important?
Scope Statement
• Scope statement consists of two parts containing four
core elements; each element builds from previous
Information Need
1) Goals
– What your project is going to accomplish?
2) Objectives or need-to-know questions
– How is your project accomplishing that goal?
3) Deliverables or information products
– Specific items or services that must be produced in order to fulfill
the goals of the project produced in completion of an objective
Systems Requirements
4) Resources
– Identify the GIS resources (data, software, hardware, people)
used to produce the deliverables
Critical success factors
• Understanding of and consensus on project
goals/objectives by key stakeholders
• Well-defined scope statement
– Clearly defined requirements derived from goals and
deliverables
• Involvement from the stakeholders
– Communication plan
• Well-defined project plan
– Project schedule, risk management plan
• The use of established project management
practices
What are three popular activities that
can assist with project management?
Applying project management activities to project
implementation plan:
• Assigning roles and responsibility to personnel
- Work Breakdown Structure content used to develop
Responsibility Assignment Matrix
• Understanding dependencies between tasks
- Program Evaluation and Review Technique
• Estimating the duration of project activities
- Critical Path Method
Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Graphically display the deliverables of the
project in a hierarchical fashion, i.e. levels of
detail
• Organizes the work of the project into logical
groupings
• Helps assign resources and estimate time and
costs
Organizing the WBS levels
• Level 1: the name of the project
– e.g. annual conference project
• Level 2: deliverables or major milestones of the
project or project phases
– e.g. PCs set up
• Level 3: tasks or grouping of tasks
– e.g. Obtain PCs, Set up PCs
• …
• Lowest level: work packages
– e.g. Arrange delivery, Load software
Organizing the WBS levels
- tree form -
From Heldman 2005 Project management jumpstart
Organizing the WBS levels
- outline form -
Task list
• Deliverable is a “noun” while task is “verb” action
• Tasks are single activities, or units of related work,
completed to satisfy a project deliverable or the
requirement of a deliverable
Organizing the WBS levels
• Where to stop?
– Keep adding levels of the WBS until you’ve broken the work out
to the point where responsibility for each unit of work can be
assigned to a specific person or to a team
– work packages: the lowest level of a WBS where resource
assignments and time/cost estimates are established
• Why identification codes?
– allows you to uniquely identify each element of the WBS
– serves as convenient reference numbers to other planning
information
• Link to scope statement?
– Make sure all deliverables in scope statement are included in
WBS
Constructing the Responsibility
Assignment Matrix (RAM)
• Similar to personnel requirement in Stage 2 report
• Assign roles and responsibilities to available resources
(staff)
• Row: types of resources needed
• Column: WBS work packages
• For resource assignments, use expert judgment and
historical information
Estimating activity durations
• Similar to timing requirements of Stage 2
• Determine the number of work periods
needed to complete the tasks defined in
the WBS
• Use PERT to determine the duration of
project and critical path tasks, which we
address next
Program Evaluation & Review Technique
(PERT) uses a network diagram
• Tasks are dependent on one another, thus one task
cannot start or finish until the previous task has finished
or started
• Network diagram shows the tasks of the project in
sequential order
• Visualizes the progress of the project, and determines
how the work of the project must be performed
• Critical path: longest (duration) full path on the project
PERT
A
D
H
J
1
1 day
4
4 days
8
Mon 8/3/98
Mon 8/3/98
Tue 8/4/98
Fri 8/7/98
Wed 8/12/98 Wed 8/19/98
6 days
10
3 days
Thu 8/20/98 Mon 8/24/98
E
5
5 days
Wed 8/5/98 Tue 8/11/98
B
2
2 days
Mon 8/3/98
Tue 8/4/98
F
6
4 days
Wed 8/5/98 Mon 8/10/98
C
G
I
3
3 days
7
6 days
9
2 days
Mon 8/3/98
Wed 8/5/98
Thu 8/6/98
Thu 8/13/98
Fri 8/14/98
Mon 8/17/98
Each box is a project task. Arrows show dependencies between
tasks. The tasks in red are on the critical path. If any tasks on the
critical path take longer than planned, the whole project will slip
unless something is done.
Source: Tom Nolan’s lecture note
Critical path method (CPM)
• Used to calculate the duration of the project
• Critical path is the longest full path on the project;
when you change the duration of a critical path
task, it always changes the project duration
• Float time: the amount of time you can delay the
early start of a task without delaying the finish date
of the project
• All tasks with zero float time are considered critical
path tasks
Critical path method
3
2
1
7
4
1.
2.
3.
4.
Early finish date of the ith task = early start date + duration
Early start date of the (i+1)th task if dependent on other task i = (the early finish date of task i) + 1
Set i = i + 1}
Calculate the late start date and late finish date for each task, beginning with i = max (task #) {
•
•
•
6.
7.
6
List the tasks on the worksheet, WBS number, and task description
List the dependencies of each task
Record the duration of each task
Calculate the early start date and early finish date for each task, beginning with i = min (task #) {
•
•
•
5.
5
Late start date of the ith task = late finish date – duration
Late finish date of the (i-1)th task if the ith task depends on the (i-1)th task = (the late start date of task i) – 1
Set i = i – 1}
Calculate float for each task where float = late start date – early start date
Determine the critical path for the project by adding up the duration of every task with zero float
•
Task # 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the critical path task and their durations total 144 days