Project Management
The software engineer and the project manager provide complementary skills and work collaboratively on shared activities. The three main activities of the project manager are organizational liaison, personnel management, and project monitoring and control. The "Liaison" section discusses the project manager's role as a go-between for the technical team and agents who are not members of the technical team (such as project sponsors, users, IS management, vendors, and so on).
In the "Personnel Management" section, you will learn that this job entails working with personnel and human resources to hire, fire, and provide employees with professional development.
The "Monitor and Control" section explains that project monitoring involves tracking project progress relative to budget. Project control means implementing changes when progress is not satisfactory (such as training or revising project plans).
Liaison
User
The user is the person(s) responsible for providing the detailed information about procedures, processes, and data that are required during the analysis of the application. They also work with the SE and project manager in performing the feasibility analysis, developing the financial and organizational assessments of user departments for the feasibility study.
|
ICIA Industries—Interoffice Memo
DATE: October 10, 1994 TO: Ms. S. A. Cameron FROM: J. B. Berns SUBJECT: Order Entry and Inventory Control Project Status
Progress We have resolved the testing problems between batch and on-line by going to a two-shift programming environment. The on-line programmers are working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the batch programmers are working from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. This is not an ideal situation, but it is working at the moment. We are still two weeks behind the schedule for programming progress, and we may not be able to make up the time, but we should not lose any more time. The on-line screen navigation test began two days ago and is going smoothly. Several minor spelling problems have been found, but no logic problems have been found. George Lucas should complete the user acceptance of the screen navigation and screen designs within three days if no other problems surface. Problems The decode table for warehouse location, due 5/12/94 from George Lucas, is still not delivered yet. This is going to delay testing of the on-line inventory allocation programs beginning in ten days if we do not have it. Is there another person we can contact to get this information? Operations found what appears to be a bug in one of the CICS modules. When a screen call is made, two bytes of the information are lost. We are double-checking all modules to ensure that it is not an application problem. Jim Connelly is calling IBM today to see if they have a fix for the problem. At the moment, this is not causing any delays to testing. But it will cause delays beginning next week if the problem is not resolved. The delays will be to all on-line modules calling screens and will amount to the time per module to code a workaround for the unresolved problem. This should be about one hour each for a total of 120 hours. We hope this delay can be avoided; everyone possible is working on the problem, including two experts from our company whom we called in last night as a free service to ICIA.
|
FIGURE 3-6 Sample Status Memo and Report
Project manager-user communication includes both planned and unplanned status meetings, written communications for status, analysis, interview results, documentation, and walk-throughs of application requirements as specified by the project team. Timing of user communications differs with the type of communication, but is most often daily until the application begins programming and testing. Then, a minimum of weekly personal contact should maintain the relationship.
In general, tell the user everything that might affect them, the project, or the schedule negatively; do not tell them anything else.