QSO 340 SNHU Successful Project Management Practice Project Analysis

 

 

Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

• COM-30168: Determine appropriate methods to monitor and communicate the status of a project

Scenario

You are in the tenth week of the XYZ Business Workflow project, and things haven’t quite gone according to plan. At the end of the requirements analysis phase, your team told you that:

• Feature 2 (F2) development is more complex than thought initially. It will take at least 10 workweeks to be complete.
• Feature Customization 3 (C3) will take close to five workweeks.
• The complete system testing will take a minimum of one-and-a-half weeks due to the complexity of the systems involved.

You made some necessary resource and schedule adjustments in your plan and obtained stakeholder approval for the same.

However, due to delays in getting client approvals, UI design and development took one week more than estimated, which has now pushed all dependent tasks out by a week. Moreover, a resource availability issue has added three days to the Feature 1 development effort.

You are scheduled to present a project status report at the end of the week at a stakeholders’ meeting that will include the client’s representatives.

Directions

Project Status Report
Create a presentation for stakeholders describing relevant aspects of the current project status. Your presentation must include the following: original and current project schedule, current project status, updated risk register, and any other relevant project information you believe the stakeholders need to know. You can use any project management software (PMS) tool to create and update the project schedule and status. However, remember to choose a tool that will help you complete all parts of the project, like the Gantt chart.

Specifically, your presentation must include the following:

1. General project information
   1. Project goal and objectives
   2. Team information
   3. Initial schedule with milestones and end dates

1. Current project status
   1. Gantt chart that shows the project’s progress and current schedule
   2. Updated risk/issues register that shows:
      1. Status of risks from the project planning phase including whether and how they have affected the project plan and schedule so far
      2. Any issues facing the team currently and how you are managing them
      3. Any new potential risks and proposed mitigation

1. Project summary
   1. Updated milestone and end dates
   2. Action items to ensure the project stays on track

What to Submit

To complete this project, you must submit the following:

Project Status Report
Create a presentation of 8 to 12 slides to share the project status report at a stakeholders’ meeting. The presentation should include the basic project information, current project status, updated risks and issues, and a project summary.

Supporting Materials

The following resources may help support your work on the project:

Document: XYZ Business Workflow Resource and Effort Estimates
This document provides the initial resource and effort estimate for the project.

Project Two Rubric

Criteria	Exemplary (100%)	Proficient (85%)	Needs Improvement (55%)	Not Evident (0%)	Value
General Project Information	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Includes all relevant project details, such as project objectives, team structure, and initial milestone and release dates, in a concise, informative manner	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include verbose, missing, or irrelevant information	Does not attempt criterion	20
Project Status	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Includes the current schedule with a well-laid-out Gantt chart showing the percent of work completed in each task; includes an updated risk register showing the status of each risk, whether a risk occurred, and how it was handled; outlines any issues affecting project	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include missing schedule breakdown; unclear Gantt chart; missing tasks or milestones; missing or incorrect progress tracking; missing or vague risks and issues descriptions; issues or changes in estimates and schedules not handled appropriately	Does not attempt criterion	45
Project Summary	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Provides clear and concise project summary with any changes in milestones and release dates highlighted and explained; includes at least two action items to resolve issues and/or help the project stay on track	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include missing or vague summary; missing or irrelevant action items	Does not attempt criterion	20
Articulation of Response	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Clearly conveys meaning with correct grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, demonstrating an understanding of audience and purpose	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, negatively impacting readability	Submission has critical errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, preventing understanding of ideas	15
Total:					100%

Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

• QSO-20169: Analyze and reflect on factors that commonly lead to the success or failure of a project

Scenario

You have reached the end of Release One of the XYZ Business Workflow project, and your team has faced some challenges during the development process.

One software tester and one developer from your team resigned. You found replacements for both of them. But, the new developer had to be trained by one of your other team members. This affected the team’s productivity.

Also, during one of your status meetings with the client stakeholders, their product owner requested a change in a feature that was almost complete. They were also very resistant to give any additional time for the first release. As a result, you had to add extra hours to your development time.

To accommodate these changes, your team worked extra hours and even some weekends to complete the project. Finally, you managed to deliver the first release according to schedule.

Although the release goes fairly smoothly, after a few days, the customer reports that their users are facing some issues with the software. They also have a list of changes and two new features they would like to see in the software before your final rollout in Release Two.

Directions

Analysis and Recommendations
Your executive team has asked you to prepare a report summarizing your analysis of the first release of the XYZ Business Workflow software and recommendations for how you think Release Two of the project should be planned.

Think about the project charter, the initial project plan you created in Project One, and the challenges the project team has faced so far. What steps did you take to manage these challenges? In retrospect, can you think of some other strategies you could have used during project planning and/or risk mitigation for better results? Specifically, your report should include the following:

1. Reflect on the project so far and provide your analysis of what went well and what could have been better.
   1. Outline what you think were the successes and failures of the project.
   2. Identify major challenges your team faced in completing this project and describe how you handled them.
   3. List some alternate strategies you could have used during project planning and/or during risk mitigation for better results.

1. Based on your experience with Release One, provide some recommendations for managing the second release of the XYZ Business Workflow software, including the methodology, change management, and quality control strategies.

Use information from the scenario, Project One and Project Two, and make reasonable assumptions as you complete these tasks. Be sure to explain your assumptions.

What to Submit

To complete this project, you must submit the following:

Project Analysis Recommendations
Write a short paper with your analysis of the first phase of the software development project and your recommendations for the second phase. Your paper should be 750 to 1,250 words in length; cite any references using the APA format.

Project Three Rubric

Criteria	Exemplary (100%)	Proficient (85%)	Needs Improvement (55%)	Not Evident (0%)	Value
Analysis of Project Successes and Failures	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Includes at least one success and one failure; identifies at least four challenges and describes their solutions; describes at least two ways the first release could have been planned and managed more efficiently	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include missing success or failure; missing or vague challenges or solutions; missing alternative strategies	Does not attempt criterion	50
Recommendations for Next Project Release	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Includes at least four recommendations to manage the next phase of the project, including but not limited to the proposed methodology, risk management, change management, and so on.	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors or omissions; areas for improvement may include missing, vague, or irrelevant recommendations	Does not attempt criterion	30
Articulation of Response	Exceeds proficiency in an exceptionally clear, insightful, sophisticated, or creative manner	Clearly conveys meaning with correct grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, demonstrating an understanding of audience and purpose	Shows progress toward proficiency, but with errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, negatively impacting readability	Submission has critical errors in grammar, sentence structure, and spelling, preventing understanding of ideas	15
Citations and Attributions	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with few or no minor errors	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with consistent minor errors	Uses citations for ideas requiring attribution, with major errors	Does not use citations for ideas requiring attribution	5
Total:					100%