Project Management

Project Management

Exercise 2 Case Study Analysis

Problems often arise because projects get started without knowing who the true customers are and what their needs/requirements are. Brian could have accomplished both by using the needs and requirements definition life cycles and the joint application development (JAD) approach. Needs involve the emergence, recognition and articulation of the needs and well as the establishment of functional requirements and the articulation of technical requirements. The requirements definition life cycle provides the planning, elicitation, analysis, formalization, and verification of the requirements. JAD is a collaborative workshop approach that brings key personnel from the technical as well as the business side of the house together in an off site establishment to brainstorm until a consensus of acceptable requirements is produced. By using these processes/procedures Brian would have kept his problems to a minimum. The one-on-one with the Vice President was definitely the wrong approach. The customer/stakeholder and other key players both business and technical need to be identified and engaged when establishing needs and defining requirements. This could have been done by incorporating the joint application development session (JAD). In project management today the JAD approach has been proven effective in developing requirements and fulfilling the customer’s needs and wants. There has to be a high level of involvement and good communication lines with the customer/stakeholder and other key figures in regards to eliciting requirements so that they all understand the standards that are being laid out.

It was clear that an analysis of the requirements was not completed. The analysis would have given the design team a good measure of cost, schedule and system wide impacts. In addition, the analyses also prioritize requirements to distinguish which ones are necessary compared to requirements that are nonessential. Most of the modification suggestions that the Vice President of New Product Development was making probably were not needed. The Design team lead should have used proper change control procedures for the Vice president’s modification requests.

Upon completion of the requirement analysis the requirements become more formalized and detailed and are considered at this time to be specifications. There was no indication that the requirements were formalized properly and then verified as a last check procedure to see if they are on target with the customer’s needs. Customers/stakeholders should be able to review the requirements to make sure they are in line with their needs and wants.

Another problem to be considered is that once the requirements were validated by all key individuals involved there should have been a formal document signed by the customer accepting the requirements that were presented by the team. This action binds all parties to the requirements being delivered and also reveals that significant discussion has taken place to ensure that requirements are comprehended accurately.

When these procedures are not utilized properly there are a list of problems that will arise including misunderstood requirements and possibly scope creep, incomplete requirements which result in incomplete information about the system, ambiguity regarding the functionality and objectives of certain requirements, unstable requirements or new requirements that are not necessary and, conflicting goals by key players. In any project it is necessary for requirements to have the same level of attention that is given to project implementation. Furthermore, you must have the proper tools to define requirements.

There are quite a few tools that one can use when defining requirements for any given project. Some tools that I would take into consideration are flow charts, data dictionaries, decision table, data flow diagrams, structured English and context diagrams

Flow charts are basic tools used to capture detailed sequential processes. They are graphically represented and depict processes being studied and used to plan stages of a project.

Data dictionaries define the way in which you categorize information that will be stored in the fields of a repository/database. Such characteristics of data include meaning, relationships to other data, origin, usage, format and the type and length of each data element.

Decision table is a matrix representation of the logic of a decision, which specifies the possible conditions for a decision and the resulting actions. They are used to describe the required external behavior of some aspect of a system. Decision tables are good analysis tools for ensuring that all combinations of input conditions have a corresponding action. They allow the technical team