Week 5 - Project Management Tools

When it comes to project management, there are heaps of tools that you can use - many of them free.

Microsoft Project is the first commercial one that comes to mind, but it is not part of the standard Microsoft Office suite.

Free/Cheap Project Management tools

Online Solutions

The main advantage of looking at an online solution is that it is available anywhere you have internet and usually have collaboration tools built in.

Here is a list of some of the free online project management tools (in no particular order):

• Teamwork
• Wrike
• Freedcamp
• Zoho Projects
• Ace Project
• Gantter
• Trello
• Podio
• Asana
• Producteev
• Meister Task
• BamBam
• Bitrix24

Download and Install - Open Source solutions

• ProjectLibre
• Open Project
• LibrePlan (web based)
• Task Juggler
• Gantt Project 
• OrangeScrum
• ]ProjectOpen[
• Redmine 
• 2-plan

Class Activity 1

Research your allocated Tool(s). Report back on features and any costs/plans associated with the tool. Do you think that the tool would be worth taking for a test drive?

Creating a Gantt Chart

For this exercise, although we have PS Project in the classroom, I will download and install ProjectLibre

http://www.projectlibre.org/product/projectlibre-open-source

Enter the Tasks from last week's class exercise. I will upload image to Moodle if required.

Once the software has been installed, you can create your first project.

Type in your project details and start date.

• Indent/Outdent activities if required
• Set the duration for each activity - day is the default time measurement
• Predecessors are activities that need to occur before the current activity. Most are on a FS basis - the predecessor must finish before the current activity can be started.

Clicking in the information column will bring up the properties box for the highlighted activity.

Continue adding activities until the Gantt Chart is complete.

What are our closedown dates. How long from start to finish will the move take?

Week 4 - Introduction to Project Time Management

Introduction To Time Management

Time

• is easily and simply measured
• is often used to determine success of a project
• is inflexible
• passes no matter what happens on a project
• management involves ensuring timely completion of a project and the processes required to schedule the tasks and measure the time each requires.

Time Management Processes

The main processes involved in time management are

• Activity definition
• Activity Sequencing
• Activity Duration estimation
• Schedule development
• Schedule Control

Activity Definition

Activity Definition involves

• identifying the specific activities that the project team members and stakeholders must perform to produce the project deliverables
• An activity or task is an element of work
• The end result of defining the activities is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Work Breakdown Structure

• The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is an analysis of the work to be done to complete a project. It provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs and changes.
• The Work Breakdown Structure is usually depicted as a task-oriented list of activities, organised around project products or phases. It can be in the form of a chart, or alternatively as an indented list of tasks.

There are several approaches you can use to develop work breakdown structures. These include:

• Using guidelines
• The analogy approach
• The top-down approach
• The bottom-up approach

Using Guidelines

Some organisations, especially government departments, have guidelines that must be followed when developing a Work Breakdown Structure.

If you are developing a project for an organisation that does, it is important that you follow them.

The guidelines have been produced so that if a number of organisations tender for a project, it is easy to compare the costs and time allocations.

The Analogy Approach

With this method, you start with a WBS from a similar project and make the necessary changes to suit the new project.

Some organisations keep a library of WBSs and other documentation from previous projects that can be reviewed and used as a basis for other projects.

Top-Down Approach

The top-down approach is where you start with the largest items of the project and then break them into the smaller tasks.

As the tasks are broken down into the smaller items, more detail is included.

At the end of the process, all resources should be assigned at the work package level.

This approach is best suited to project managers who have vast technical insight and a big-picture perspective

Bottom-Up Approach

In this approach, team members start by identifying as many specific tasks related to the project as possible.

The tasks are then grouped into summary activities or higher levels in the WBS.

Activity Sequencing

From the WBS, the activities can be sequenced.

Sequencing involves putting the tasks into the order that they will be done or at least commenced.

Sequencing also involves looking at relationships and dependencies of each task

Sequencing Example - Tea making

I love a nice cup of tea – what individual tasks or activities are sequenced together for me to do this?

• Put on jug to boil water
• Get a mug from cupboard
• Get teapot from bench
• Put tea leaves in teapot
• When jug boiled, pour water into teapot
•  
• Wait for tea to brew
• Pour tea into mug
• Add milk
• Gently stir
• Drink and enjoy (a couple of Tim Tams are often called for)

We have the tasks defined and put in order, but what about relationships and dependencies.

Are there any tasks that cannot commence until another has finished?

Can some tasks be done at the same time?

Are there some tasks where order doesn’t matter?

Will the order of the tasks change the timeframe?

Is there any "idle" time (waiting time)?

In our tea making exercise:

• you cannot pour water until it is boiled
• You need to have tea leaves in pot when adding water
• The second and third activities can be done in any order

 Activity Duration

• This involves estimating the number of work periods that are needed to complete individual activities.
• Work periods will depend on length of project. A shorter project may be measured in hours, whereas a longer project may be measured in weeks or months.
• Choose a work period measurement that suits the project duration
• In the tea making example, it may take 3 minutes to boil the jug. The tea may need to brew for 5 minutes

Schedule Development

This involves:

• analysing activity sequences,
• Taking activity duration estimates
• Looking at activity dependencies
• Make decisions on what resources are required for each activity.
• Create the project schedule. This can be in the form of a Gantt chart or a timeline.

Schedule Control

• Time management, or actually any kind of management, is ongoing.
• Managers need to monitor the schedule to ensure that all team members sticks to the timeline.
• Timeline may need to be adjusted to allow for deviations from the schedule
• Managers need to report to stakeholders in regards to schedule

You can create your schedule by hand, with a spreadsheet, or by using a project management tool.

To begin with, we will use a simple spreadsheet!

Class Activity

"THE BIG MOVE"

Scenario: Mysty River Regional Library Services' new home has been completed and the old library needs to be relocated into the new premises. New shelving has been delivered, but the old shelving needs to be dismantled so that it can be reused by the local secondary college and 2 primary schools. It has been agreed, for OHS reasons, that the library will close during the transition. It is anticipated that the process will take 2 weeks, but the library will only be closed for 1 week.  There is a budget that allows for employment of extra staff, volunteers, and outside contractors.

• Using the Bottom up approach, list all of the activities that need to take place to complete the move.

• Sequence these activities

• Estimate duration of each activity

• Look at any dependencies and relationships between activities to develop a schedule

Once we have the list of activities and sequence, they can be put into the schedule. You could start by using Excel, or you could put them straight into a project management tool. For this exercise, we will start with Excel and then put the tasks into one of the project management tools.

Week 3 - Project management and scope

What is a Project?

A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to accomplish a unique purpose. Projects normally involve several people performing interrelated activities as part of a team.

The following attributes relate to a project:

• A project has a unique purpose. Every project should have a well-defined objective and should provide a unique product, service, or result.
• A project is temporary. A project has a definite beginning and a definite end and must be completed within the time span.
• A project requires resources, often from various areas. Resources include people, hardware, software, or other assets. Many projects cross departmental or other boundaries in order to achieve their unique purposes.
• A project should have a primary sponsor or customer. Most projects have many interested parties or stakeholders, but someone must take the primary role of sponsorship. The project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding for the project.
• A project involves uncertainty. Because every project is unique, it is sometimes difficult to clearly define the project’s objectives, estimate how long it will take to complete, or how much it will cost. The uncertainty is one of the main reasons project management is so challenging, especially on projects involving new technologies.

Who is a Stakeholder?

A stakeholder is ANYONE who will be affected by the project.

Project Management Framework

 

Project Management involves all of the above process to make a successful project.

The first stage of Project Management is to define the scope of the project. The scope is defined at the very beginning of the project management process, but Scope Management is ongoing.

Project Scope Management

One of the most important and most difficult aspects of project management is defining the scope of a project. Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them. Project stakeholders must come to an agreement on what the products of the project are and, to some extent, how they should be produced. In Multimedia, this is also referred to as a design brief or project brief. Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and controlling what is or is not included in a project. It ensures that the project team and stakeholders have the same understanding of what products will be produced as a result of the project and what processes will be used in producing them. The main processes involved in project scope management include:

• Initiation - this involves committing the organisation to begin a project or continue to the next phase of a project. An output of initiation processes is a project charter, which is a key document for formally recognising the existence and providing a broad overview of a project.
• Scope planning – this involves developing documents to provide the basis for future project decisions, including the criteria for determining if a project or phase has been completed successfully. The project team creates a scope statement and scope management plan as a result of the scope planning process.
• Scope definition – this involves subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components. The project team creates a work breakdown structure WBS during this process.
• Scope verification – this involves formalising acceptance of the project scope. Key project stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, formally accept the deliverables of the project during this process.
• Scope change control – this involves controlling changes to project scope. Scope changes, corrective action, and lessons learned are outputs of this process.

The project manager needs to:

• ascertain the client’s brief
• attune to the client and their culture
• clarify unclear information
• gather sufficient information to write a clear proposal
• explain any queries the client has

One way of achieving this is to create a questionnaire. The questionnaire is used to help both you and the client decide what features are important and the kind of look and feel that the website needs to achieve.

Here are some example questions


https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/20-questions-all-project-managers-should-ask.php


Once you have your questions and they have been answered, you can go ahead and start to put together your scoping document. When it comes to working on a creative project, your scope document and design brief can be interchangeable as they would contain similar information.

What is a Design Brief?

Wikipedia describes a design brief as "A design brief is a comprehensive written document for a design project developed in concert by a person representing the business need for design and the designer. The document is focused on the desired results of design – not aesthetics."

There is no set format for a design brief, but the headings below can be used as a guide.

Business/Corporate Profile

Background information about your company, description of who and what you are.

Market Position

Information about your market, branding, customer base, industry and competitors.

Current Situation

What has happened that has instigated this project. The why or reason for the project.

Objectives

What do you hope to achieve from this project.

Target Audience

Who is your target audience. Are you currently reaching that audience. Why or why not. What are the demographics of your target audience (age, location, cultural, financial). Is there anything unusual about your target audience.

Corporate Branding or personality

What image does your brand currently have. What image do you want to portray with this project. What message do you want to portray. What message do you specifically not want to portray. Use adjectives such as expensive, approachable, trendy, friendly, cutting-edge.

Budget

The all important rough estimate of how much you want to spend on this project or roughly what it would cost.

Timeframe or schedule

What is the timeframe for the project. When MUST it be finished by. Any other date/time constraints.

Medium

What is the medium for the project – website, CD-ROM, Video, DVD, paper. What are the constraints of the chosen media – for example if it a CD-ROM then size will be an issue as well as distribution.

Technical or practical constraints.

Are there any inflexible parameters or constraints that will have some bearing on the project. An example of this could be a corporate style guide.

Purpose of  Design Brief

A design brief is in the format of a short informal report and these would become the headings. The information could come from the client directly as a brief, or you could put it together after you have interviewed the client. It is just a guideline and should not include specific information such as actual page designs or layouts.

A designer will use the design brief to confirm requirements with their client. A good designer will then go off and create some design layouts, samples, storyboard, and even a mock-up before the final product is developed.

 A design brief may be written by the client, outlining what they require, or by the designer after consultation with the client. It is a guideline of what work is to be done. Usually, if instigated by the designer, it would be called a Scoping Document rather than a Design Brief, but either way, it should form the basis of any contract between you (the designer) and your client.

Activity:

Create a questionnaire that can be used to gather information regarding a new website.

I am giving you the "heads up" - you will be working in pairs for your major project. You will need to use this questionnaire with your partner to scope out their web design project. Full guidelines will be provided next week, but this week you should get prepared!!