INF6001 Information Systems Project Management Coursework Assignment 2023-24

1. Introduction

The purpose of the assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to tryout the various project management techniques and apply them to a case study.

There are two components to the assessment: one group report (40%) and one individual report (60%). Each of these components have separate marking criteria, available in Blackboard.

The assignment brief needs to be read together with the Marking Criteria sheets for the two assignments.

2. Learning Outcomes

The assessment covers the following learning outcomes of the module:

•    Demonstrate awareness of the need for effective management of IS projects;

•    Understand and use techniques for estimating IS and IT activities;

•    Produce a project plan which indicates deliverables and milestones.

•    Understand human resource and team management issues in IS development;

•    Demonstrate the skills to schedule human and other resource for the development of an IS/IT system;

•    Show awareness of risk assessment and management issues for IS projects;

•    Show awareness of quality issues for IS projects.

3. Case Study Background

KnowHow is a consulting company that specialises in Research and Innovation funded projects with respect to dissemination and communication activities. They offer customised intermediary services to such research project partners, and their expertise lies in the transportation sector. Very often project partners involved in funded research project, while they are experts in their respective domain and exhibit the required hard skills to carry forward with the research and innovation dimension of the project, they lack the skills and the resources to publicise widely their work, engage with a public audience and maximise the impacts of their work stemming from the research project they work on. KnowHow is able to identify the best way to do the above, facilitate the commercialisation of project outputs, coordinate and support the project team in terms of dissemination and communication and develop processes that can enable the team to maximise their impact.

Over the years, KnowHow has been very successful, also receiving numerous awards by the European Commission with respect to how the projects they are involved in perform, and have been identified as a best practice example in terms of dissemination models. However, the last five years   have been characterised by significant turnover in staff; indicatively, KnowHow started off with a team of 5 members, one of them being the founder of the company. Presently, ten years after their establishment, only the founder still remains with the company, whereas all other staff have moved on to other opportunities.

Mrs Gerbot is now pondering what she needs to do in order to ensure that even if the turnover of staff continues in the coming years, KnowHow will still be able to retain the knowledge produced within the business and that they will not lose vital business contacts and networks. Otherwise, Mrs Gerbot feels that the future of KnowHow will be in jeopardy because the business will not be able to continue being successful in establishing partnerships and therefore in being profitable.

Today, KnowHow employs 10 members of staff:

•    Anne Gerbot is the General Manager of the business

•    Gerbot is supported by one personal assistant (John Louis)

•    There are two Business Analysts (Clara Esposito, Frank Terry)

•    Three communications experts (Laurence Mercaut, Mary Dupont, Roy Morgan)

•    One business model expert (Sundeep Kumar)

•    Two innovation experts (Sree Patel, Mo Jonas)

Like all businesses, KnowHow began their operations after having received a business loan from Bank LTD. Considering this together with the turnover, Mrs Gerbot thinks that it is critical they develop an Information System that can help the business share knowledge better among new and old staff members so that information is available on time to bid for projects, but at the sametime, will help them to retain the information and gathered knowledge internally, thus reducing the risk of losing clients and project information.

KnowHow, being a small business, does not have an IT department nor the expertise to develop such a system internally. Mrs Gerbot contacted SoftEng Developers, a software house that specialises in tailored information systems to explore her options.

4. The project

KnowHow has decided to commission SoftEng Developers to develop an information system that will help them address the current shortcomings. KnowHow would like this project to begin sometime next Spring, with delivery having been agreed for approximately 18 months later.  With regards to the costs, KnowHow will be approaching Bank LTD for another business loan, meaning that they would prefer if the overall project is not excessively pricey.

What they would like the information system to do:

1)   Staff members should be able to develop entries for each of the projects KnowHow is involved.

2)    For each entry, they will want to upload draft and final versions of communication and dissemination plans, and indicate the person who was involved in these (both from KnowHow and the client business, with the relevant contact details)

3)   The General Manager should be able to create entries for upcoming research and innovation competitions, assign these to relevant KnowHow staff members and populate fields that cover the following: deadline for submission, possible partners, KnowHow unique selling point (USP) in relation to the competition, links to previously successful projects, follow up actions

4)   Staff members should be able to email prospective and existing clients from within the information system

5. What you need to do

5.1.     Scope Management Plan

You need to develop the Scope Management Plan. This will include:

•    Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS needs to be based on the Project Lifecycle and the Systems Development Lifecyle. If following the waterfall approach, the WBS needs to be based on phases, activities etc. If you follow an Agile approach, the WBS is based on epics, user stories etc. You need to start off with creating a hierarchical chart that defines the project phases and the system development phases. The System development phases will depend on what development approach you will follow (waterfall or agile). This is a choice that you need to make and follow through with it for the entire project. After this, you need to develop the list of deliverables and milestones (see below) so you need to consider the WBS on the basis of deliverables and work-to-be-done. You are NOT expected to prepare use case diagrams etc, but you need to account for the work required to prepare these.

•    You need to convert your WBS to a Detailed Task List (DTL) and this DTL will need to contain the following:

o a clear hierarchical structure

o how these are associated to each other

o Resource allocation: assign people to tasks (adding people may result in shorter completion times but will increase the budget)

o Estimates for tasks: based on what needs to be done by when and by whom,

estimate the time required for each task (these estimates will depend on the development approach you follow). Make sure you explain how you calculated these (timeboxing, lines of code etc).

5.2.      Detailed Project Plan

You have identified what is needed to complete the project in terms of work. You now need to focus on how you will achieve this. You need to develop a Detailed Project Plan. Based on the WBS and the DTL you need to consider whether you can shorten the project schedule (e.g., tasks can be executed in parallel if the resources are available). The detailed project plan (Gantt chart) needs to contain the following:

•    Linkages between tasks. Opportunities for shortening the duration of the project need to consider task dependencies.

•    Information on the beginning and end of the project (dates) and the number of days needed to complete the project (you need to consider weekends, bank holidays etc in your calculation)

•    Information of the resources usage (are there resources underused/overused? There has to be some kind of balance so you need to include information on how you can balance the load if there are concerns)

•    The above essentially will be depicted on the Gantt chart, but you also need to provide a narrative around the questions indicated above.

The above are still relevant if you follow an Agile approach, but instead you will need to develop the release plan rather than a Gantt Chart and provide an overview of the Kanban Board you will be using for tracking the project.

5.3.      Risk Management Plan

Now that you have completed the project plan, KnowHow indicated that they feel comfortable with your proposal in that it meets their business needs, you need to develop the Risk Management Plan.

•    You need to identify risks (minimum 5, maximum 10). There should beat least one risk identified for each of the project lifecycle phases (a phase may have one risk, and others considerably more).

•    You need to analyse each risk using the tools you have been taught (matrix, register etc).

•    For each risk,you need to identify and describe a mitigation strategy.

The risk management plan needs to take into consideration the SDLC method used.

5.4.     Quality Management Plan

Your report needs to contain a Quality Management Plan. The plan should include the following:

•    A brief statement describing the team’s approach to quality and your objectives for ensuring you deliver a system fit for purpose to your client.

•    Develop and describe the quality-based metrics you will use

•    Develop and describe the validation activities you need to complete

The quality management plan needs to take into consideration the SDLC method used.

5.5.      Implementation Plan

Finally, you need to develop the Implementation Plan. Implementation/Deployment activities are needed to transform a newly developed information system into an operational system for end

users. The initial operation of a new information system generally requires a conversion process.

•    You need to provide a strategy for the conversion (releasing the system to the client). There   are different conversion strategies (direct cutover, parallel, phased). You need to choose one of these, and explain why you consider this strategy to be more relevant for the particular project.

•   A number of implementation challenges can occur. Consider added complexities that often stem from having to adjust to new mindsets, communication patterns, and workflows.

•   You also need to critically review alternative project management approaches that could be taken to manage the successful delivery of this project, while highlighting any specific issues that may be faced if they are chosen.

6. Assignment Details

The purpose of this coursework is to provide you with an opportunity to tryout the various project management techniques and apply them to a case study.

Sections 3-5 of this document provide you with the project brief and details on what you need to prepare. You need to use the information provided, alongside your knowledge of project management to carryout a thorough project plan.

There are two components to the assessment.

6.1.     Group Assignment (40% of mark): Project planning (2,000 words)

Based on the project outline provided by the client, you need to develop the documents indicated by points 1-2 of Section 5: Scope Management Plan and Detailed Project Plan.

You will work on this group assignment within the groups assigned for the seminars.

The components required will need to be included in a single document. The document needs to be professionally looking, addressed to your client, KnowHow. This document will need to contain the   following:

•    Executive summary (5%) - Briefly introduce the report and summarise the main aspects of your project plan for the client (e.g., important deadlines, primary deliverables)

•    Scope Management Plan (40%) – You need to provide the WBS for the project, considering both the Project Lifecycle and the Systems Development Lifecycle. You will need to choose an approach to development (waterfall or agile) and you will need to justify your decision on the basis of the information you have been given and the available literature. You will need   to produce the DTL. Section 5.1 includes details with regards to what you need to cover exactly as part of the Scope Management Plan.

•    Detailed Project Plan (40%) – The detailed project plan needs to be based on the WBS and the DTL you have included as part of the Scope Management Plan. You are expected to produce a comprehensive Gantt Chart (or the equivalent release plan if you do an agile project). Remember to include overhead tasks (e.g., meetings for sign off, sprint planning), dependencies between tasks, resources, and time estimates. You need to justify your decisions on the basis of the information you have been given and the available literature. Section 5.2 includes details with regards to what you need to cover exactly as part of the    Detailed Project Plan.

•    Appendix (pass/fail, i.e., you get no marks for including it, but you lose 3 marks if you

don’t) – You need to include in the appendix the Team Contract (this refers to your Group work, NOT the project itself). You may need to update it as you move forward the assignment, and if you have included any updates, you need to include the first and the final version, and indicate and explain any such updates.

The Team Contract should include:

o Project team members, student ID, roles and responsibilities for the assignment:   what are the skills and knowledge you will contribute to the assignment and what you have been tasked with doing

o Means of communication: how you will communicate with each other (e.g., via  WeChat, GMeet etc), when and where you will be meeting (e.g., every Tuesday, online)

o Rules and Expectations: how you will make decision during conflict, what happens in you missa meeting, or a team member does not contribute to the assignment.

o This document is mandatory and very important and you need to think carefully  what you will include in that as it is meant to hold you accountable to each other and to your tutor. If the Team Contract is not included, you will lose 3 points.

Make sure that any important decisions you take are clearly presented, discussed and justified and that the report uses clear language (15%). To prepare the above you may want to use a software package such as MS Project, ProjectLibre, Lucidhart etc, or you can produce your content manually (handwritten charts and figures). Irrespective of your choices, you need to ensure that everything is readable in your submission as outlined in Practical 1.

You should submit a single copy of the group assignment  including  the  student  ID  of  all  group members. ONLY one group member should submit the group report on behalf of the group.

It is your responsibility that all group members contribute equally, that all group members have access to the final submission and that ultimately get access to the tutor feedback you receive for your submission.

6.2.      Individual Assignment (60% of mark): Monitoring and implementation (2,000 words)

You need to prepare your individual submission on the basis of the group submission. Based on the project outline provided by the client, you need to develop the documents indicated by points 3-5 of Section 5: Risk Management Plan, Quality Management Plan and Implementation Plan.

You will work on the individual assignment individually. You may consult with your team members but the final submission needs to be made on an individual basis.

The components required will need to be included in a single document. The document needs to be professionally looking, addressed to your client, KnowHow. This document will need to contain the following:

•   You need to submit your report by the relevant deadline (see the Blackboard for the deadline). If you don’t submit by the deadline,a penalty is automatically applied.

o  All  penalties  (for  deadlines,  word  counts  and  unfair  means)  are  included  in  detail  in  the Student Handbook.

o  You need to submit via Turnitin – you will need to follow the on screen instructions. When you have finally submitted, you will receive an email notification. If you do not receive the email notification, you have not submitted. You will need to try again. Do not leave your submission until the very last minute because the system may get congested, may be down or the uploading (especially if it is a large file) may finish after the deadline has expired – this will count as late submission!

•   Make sure your diagrams, images, tables etc. are readable. If these do not comfortably fit within a single page, consider splitting them across 2-3 pages.

o  For the Gantt chart in particular, consider splitting it up horizontally,  NOT VERTICALLY! This could be done phase to phase to ease readability. The tasks need to be seen together with the bars in the calendar view to be considered a Gantt Chart.

o  For the WBS (and the Gantt Chart) consider placing themona landscape orientation.

•   Read the marking criteria carefully – they explain how you will be marked.

•   Read sections 5 and 6 very carefully – they explain what the report needs to contain and what is the relative weight of each part. Pay attention to the template and follow it diligently. It will guide you and help you make sure you are not missing important parts of the report.

Important Dates