Friday, September 26, 2008

Project Management is a must !!!

Yes... Project Management is a must... And yes we can make projects without it... as I did before... Disregarding the time and cost consumed I was able to finished those projects. It is because those are not big as what I have now. Because of what I have practiced, I recognized that it is now hard to me to handle my projects. Geez, I wasn't able to finished two of those on time. And as of now I still thinking how will I work of them with my Thesis. Yeah my projects become more and more and more because i was not able to finish the on time.

Great that now I have my Project Management class... now i realized and appreciate that Project Management is a must. But still I'm suffering hard time in managing our project, our Thesis. What we have is an Online Business Directory of Lucena City With CMS that offers free business and adverstisement listings. With a litte e-commerce included in selling premiums such as Banners, Premium Listings, and Hot Grabs posting.

We use different tools in managing our projects as we learn in our Project Managements class.

1. Gantt Chart with Milestone

I remember when I first used it on our assignment in my Project Mangement
class. I made them on MSPROJECT, the Milestone with Gannt Chart. It also can be made in MSEXCEL.

Provides a graphical illustration of a schedule that helps to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project. To visualize... it is constructed with a horizontal axis representing the total time span of the project. Horizontal bars of varying lengths represent the sequences, timing, and time span for each task. Using the same example, you would put "conduct research" at the top of the verticle axis and draw a bar on the graph that represents the amount of time you expect to spend on the research, and then enter the other tasks below the first one and representative bars at the points in time when you expect to undertake them. The bar spans may overlap, as, for example, you may conduct research and choose software during the same time span. As the project progresses, secondary bars, arrowheads, or darkened bars may be added to indicate completed tasks, or the portions of tasks that have been completed. A vertical line is used to represent the report date. Yeah... Gantt Chart harts give a clear illustration of project status, but one problem with them is that they don't indicate task dependencies - you cannot tell how one task falling behind schedule affects other tasks. This task can handle with another method called PERT.

2. PERT/CPM

This is also supported by MSPROJECT. We used this too in our assignment and I easilly learned it.

First the PERT stands for Program Evaluation Review Technique and used to schedule, organize, and coordinate tasks within a project. A PERT chart presents a graphic illustration of a project as a network diagram consisting of numbered nodes (either circles or rectangles) representing events, or milestones in the project linked by labelled vectors (directional lines) representing tasks in the project. The direction of the arrows on the lines indicates the sequence of tasks. In the diagram, for example, the tasks between nodes 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 must be completed in sequence. These are called dependent or serial tasks. The tasks between nodes 1 and 2, and nodes 1 and 3 are not dependent on the completion of one to start the other and can be undertaken simultaneously. These tasks are called parallel or concurrent tasks. Tasks that must be completed in sequence but that don't require resources or completion time are considered to have event dependency. These are represented by dotted lines with arrows and are called dummy activities. For example, the dashed arrow linking nodes 6 and 9 indicates that the system files must be converted before the user test can take place, but that the resources and time required to prepare for the user test (writing the user manual and user training) are on another path. Numbers on the opposite sides of the vectors indicate the time allotted for the task.

On the other hand the CPM, stands for Critical Path Method. This provides the following benefits:
  • Graphical view of the project.
  • Predicts the time required to complete the project.
  • Shows which activities are critical to maintaining the schedule and which are not.
3. SCurve

I never use this yet. So i had make reserch and ask friends for help. The S Curve is a well known project management tool and it consists in "a display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time".The name derives from the S-like shape of the curve, flatter at the beginning and end and steeper in the middle, because this is the way most of the projects look like. Based on our actual project see link below:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXo65uHsxgje4LLun96-kshIif06Ve9R2FJu3m_6zvXu8hL4MczN_sJ3CdTifEO1HKXlNpEPF9BaZOCq2Imn7trHaUMvlMT2BfhDH9ho8dQgAqxnJU7is3U0j-02-r88y6tt84aymiNY/s1600-h/s+curve.jpg

4. And the Cost Presentation

Sample of Cost Presentation

Activities

duration

cost

Orientation and Discussion of thesis0

18

0

Research of thesis title

25

50

Finalizing/submission of title

22

0

Title evaluation

7

0

Thesis Proposal documentation

9

20

Submitting an reviewing the documentation

9

0

Defense of the thesis proposal

6

400

Thesis Proposal Revision

6

50

Re-defense

6

0

Revising the approve documents

1

30

Submission of the approve thesis to HQ

1

0

Confirming/recommendation from HQ

39

0

Submission of journals/status report

150

400

Thesis 1 documentation

200

450

Thesis Proposal documentation

9

200

Getting the live project name

10

1000

Buying the project components

100

500

Completing the project for implementation

100

300

Thesis 1 defense

5

500

Implementation

200

100

maintenance

0


5. WBS

Work Breakdown Structure is a results-oriented family tree that captures all the work of a project in an organized way. It is often portrayed graphically as a hierarchical tree, however, it can also be a tabular list of "element" categories and tasks or the indented task list that appears in your Gantt chart schedule. I never use this yet too. So i'll display just put a link for you to check. see link...

No comments: