Valacich J., George J., Hoffer J.A. Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design

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Project closedown

The final phase of the project

management process, which

focuses on bringing a project

to an end.

Chapter 3 Managing the Information Systems Project 63

TABLE 3-2: Project Team Communication Methods

Procedure Formality Use

Project workbook High Inform; permanent record

Meetings Medium to high Resolve issues

Seminars and workshops Low to medium Inform

Project newsletters Medium to high Inform

Status reports High Inform

Specification documents High Inform; permanent record

Minutes of meetings High Inform; permanent record

Bulletin boards Low Inform

Memos Medium to high Inform

Brown bag lunches Low Inform

Hallway discussions Low Inform; resolve issues

high-quality project plan, it is much more likely that the project will be

successfully executed. The next section describes your role during project

closedown, the final phase of the project management process.

Closing Down the Project

The focus of project closedown is to bring the project to an end. Projects can

conclude with a natural or unnatural termination. A natural termination occurs

when the requirements of the project have been met—the project has been com-

pleted and is a success. An unnatural termination occurs when the project is

stopped before completion. Several events can cause an unnatural termination

of a project. For example, it may be learned that the assumption used to guide

the project proved to be false, or that the performance of the system or devel-

opment group was somehow inadequate, or that the requirements are no longer

relevant or valid in the customer’s business environment. The most likely

reasons for the unnatural termination of a project relate to running out of time

or money, or both. Regardless of the project termination outcome, several ac-

tivities must be performed: closing down the project, conducting postproject

reviews, and closing the customer contract. Within the context of the SDLC,

project closedown occurs after the implementation phase. The system mainte-

nance phase typically represents an ongoing series of projects, each needing to

be individually managed. Figure 3-19 summarizes the project closedown activi-

ties that are described more fully in the remainder of this section:

1. Closing down the project. During closedown, you perform several diverse

activities. For example, if you have several team members working with

Project Closedown

1. Closing Down the Project

2. Conducting Postproject Reviews

3. Closing the Customer Contract

FIGURE 3-19

Three project closedown activities.

64 Part I Foundations for Systems Development

you, project completion may signify job and assignment changes for some

members. You will likely be required to assess each team member and

provide an appraisal for personnel files and salary determination. You may

also want to provide career advice to team members, write letters to

superiors praising special accomplishments of team members, and send

thank-you letters to those who helped but were not team members.

As project manager, you must be prepared to handle possible negative

personnel issues, such as job termination, especially if the project was not

successful. When closing down the project, it is also important to notify all

interested parties that the project has been completed and to finalize all

project documentation and financial records so that a final review of the

project can be conducted. You should also celebrate the accomplishments

of the team. Some teams will hold a party, and each team member may

receive memorabilia (e.g., a T-shirt with “I survived the X project”).

The goal is to celebrate the team’s effort in bringing a difficult task to a

successful conclusion.

2. Conducting postproject reviews. Once you have closed down the project,

final reviews of the project should be conducted with management and

customers. The objective of these reviews is to determine the strengths

and weaknesses of project deliverables, the processes used to create

them, and the project management process. It is important that everyone

understands what went right and what went wrong, in order to improve

the process for the next project. Remember, the systems development

methodology adopted by an organization is a living guideline that must

undergo continual improvement.

3. Closing the customer contract. The focus of this final activity is to ensure

that all contractual terms of the project have been met. A project

governed by a contractual agreement is typically not completed until

agreed to by both parties, often in writing. Thus, it is paramount that you

gain agreement from your customer that all contractual obligations have

been met and that further work is either their responsibility or covered

under another system service request or contract.

Closedown is an important activity. A project is not complete until it is

closed, and it is at closedown that projects are deemed a success or failure.

Completion also signifies the chance to begin a new project and apply what

you have learned. Now that you have an understanding of the project

management process, the next section describes specific techniques used in

systems development for representing and scheduling activities and

resources.

Representing and Scheduling Project Plans

A project manager has a wide variety of techniques available for depicting and

documenting project plans. These planning documents can take the form of

graphical or textual reports, although graphical reports have become most

popular for depicting project plans. The most commonly used methods are

Gantt charts and Network diagrams. Because Gantt charts do not show how

tasks must be ordered (precedence) but simply show when a task should be-

gin and when it should end, they are often more useful for depicting relatively

simple projects or subparts of a larger project, the activities of a single worker,

or for monitoring the progress of activities compared to scheduled completion

dates (see Figure 3-20A). Recall that a Network diagram shows the ordering of

activities by connecting a task to its predecessor and successor tasks (see

Figure 3-20B). Sometimes a Network diagram is preferable; other times a

Chapter 3 Managing the Information Systems Project 65

FIGURE 3-20

Graphical diagrams that depict

project plans: (A) A Gantt chart,

(B) A Network diagram.

Gantt chart more easily shows certain aspects of a project. Here are the key

differences between these two representations:

쐍 A Gantt chart shows the duration of tasks, whereas a Network

diagram shows the sequence dependencies between tasks.

쐍 A Gantt chart shows the time overlap of tasks, whereas a Network

diagram does not show time overlap but does show which tasks could

be done in parallel.

쐍 Some forms of Gantt charts can show slack time available within an

earliest start and latest finish date. A Network diagram shows these

data within activity rectangles.

Critical path scheduling

A scheduling technique in which

the order and duration of a

sequence of task activities

directly affect the completion

date of a project.

Resources

Any person, group of people,

piece of equipment, or material

used in accomplishing an

activity.

66 Part I Foundations for Systems Development

FIGURE 3-21

A screen from Microsoft Project

for Windows summarizes all

project activities, their durations

in weeks, and their scheduled

starting and ending dates.

Source:

Reprinted with permission

of Microsoft.

Project managers also use textual reports that depict resource utilization by

tasks, complexity of the project, and cost distributions to control activities. For

example, Figure 3-21 shows a screen from Microsoft Project for Windows that

summarizes all project activities, their durations in weeks, and their scheduled

starting and ending dates. Most project managers use computer-based systems

to help develop their graphical and textual reports. Later in this chapter, we

discuss these automated systems in more detail.

A project manager will periodically review the status of all ongoing project

task activities to assess whether the activities will be completed early, on time,

or late. If early or late, the duration of the activity, depicted in column 2 of

Figure 3-21, can be updated. Once changed, the scheduled start and finish

times of all subsequent tasks will also change. Making such a change will also

alter a Gantt chart or Network diagram used to represent the project tasks. The

ability to easily make changes to a project is a powerful feature of most project

management environments. It allows the project manager to determine easily

how changes in task duration affect the project completion date. It is also

useful for examining the impact of “what if” scenarios for adding or reducing

resources, such as personnel, for an activity.

Representing Project Plans

Project scheduling and management requires that time, costs, and resources be

controlled. Resources are any person, group of people, piece of equipment, or

material used in accomplishing an activity. Network diagramming is a critical

path scheduling technique used for controlling resources. A critical path

refers to a sequence of task activities whose order and durations directly affect

the completion date of a project. A Network diagram is one of the most widely

used and best-known scheduling methods.

A major strength of Network diagramming is its ability to represent how com-

pletion times vary for activities. Because of this, it is more often used than Gantt

charts to manage projects such as information systems development where

PERT (Program

Evaluation Review

Technique)

A technique that uses optimistic,

pessimistic, and realistic time

estimates to calculate the

expected time for a particular

task.

Chapter 3 Managing the Information Systems Project 67

Design

System

Write

Programs

Test

Programs

Write

Documentation

Install

System

FIGURE 3-22

A Network diagram showing

activities (represented by circles)

and sequence of those activities

(represented by arrows).

variability in the duration of activities is the norm. Network diagrams are com-

posed of circles or rectangles representing activities and connecting arrows

showing required work flows, as illustrated in Figure 3-22.

Calculating Expected Time Durations Using PERT

One of the most difficult and most error-prone activities when constructing a

project schedule is the determination of the time duration for each task within

a work breakdown structure. It is particularly problematic to make these

estimates when a high degree of complexity and uncertainty characterize a

task. PERT (program evaluation review technique) is a technique that

uses optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic time estimates to calculate the

expected time for a particular task. This technique helps you obtain a better

time estimate when you are uncertain as to how much time a task will require

to be completed.

The optimistic (o) and pessimistic ( p) times reflect the minimum and maxi-

mum possible periods of time for an activity to be completed. The realistic time

(r), or most likely time, reflects the project manager’s “best guess” of the

amount of time the activity will require for completion. Once each of these es-

timates is made for an activity, an expected completion time (ET) can be calcu-

lated for that activity. Because the expected completion time should be closer

to the realistic time (r), the realistic time is typically weighted 4 times more than

the optimistic (o) and pessimistic ( p) times. Once you add these values together,

it must be divided by 6 to determine the ET. This equation is shown in the fol-

lowing formula:

ET 

where

ET  expected time for the completion for an activity

o  optimistic completion time for an activity

r  realistic completion time for an activity

p  pessimistic completion time for an activity

For example, suppose that your instructor asked you to calculate an expected

time for the completion of an upcoming programming assignment. For this

assignment, you estimate an optimistic time of 2 hours, a pessimistic time of

8 hours, and a most likely time of 6 hours. Using PERT, the expected time

for completing this assignment is 5.67 hours. Commercial project management

software such as Microsoft Project assists you in using PERT to make expected

time calculations. Additionally, many commercial tools allow you to customize

the weighing of optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic completion times.

o  4r  p

68 Part I Foundations for Systems Development

Constructing a Gantt Chart and Network Diagram

at Pine Valley Furniture

Although Pine Valley Furniture has historically been a manufacturing company,

it recently entered the direct sales market for selected target markets. One of

the fastest growing of these markets is economically priced furniture suitable

for college students. Management has requested that a new Sales Promotion

Tracking System (SPTS) be developed. This project has already successfully

moved through project initiation and is currently in the detailed project plan-

ning stage, which corresponds to the SDLC phase of project initiation and plan-

ning. The SPTS will be used to track the sales purchases by college students for

the next fall semester. Students typically purchase low-priced beds, bookcases,

desks, tables, chairs, and dressers. Because PVF does not normally stock a

large quantity of lower-priced items, management feels that a tracking system

will help provide information about the college student market that can be used

for follow-up sales promotions (e.g., a midterm futon sale).

The project is to design, develop, and implement this information system

before the start of the fall term in order to collect sales data at the next major

buying period. This deadline gives the project team twenty-four weeks to

develop and implement the system. The Systems Priority Board at PVF wants

to make a decision this week based on the feasibility of completing the project

within the twenty-four-week deadline. Using PVF’s project planning methodology,

the project manager, Jim Woo, knows that the next step is to construct a Gantt

chart and a Network diagram of the project to represent the baseline project

plan so that he can use these charts to estimate the likelihood of completing the

project within twenty-four weeks. A major activity of project planning focuses

on dividing the project into manageable activities, estimating times for each,

and sequencing their order. Here are the steps Jim followed:

1. Identify each activity to be completed in the project. After discussing the

new Sales Promotion Tracking System with PVF’s management, sales, and

development staff, Jim identified the following major activities for the

project:

쐍 Requirements collection

쐍 Screen design

쐍 Report design

쐍 Database design

쐍 User documentation creation

쐍 Software programming

쐍 System testing

쐍 System installation

2. Determine time estimates and calculate the expected completion time

for each activity. After identifying the major project activities, Jim

established optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic time estimates for each

activity. These numbers were then used to calculate the expected

completion times for all project activities. Figure 3-23 shows the estimated

time calculations for each activity of the Sales Promotion Tracking System

project.

3. Determine the sequence of the activities and precedence relationships

among all activities by constructing a Gantt chart and Network

diagram. This step helps you understand how various activities are

related. Jim starts by determining the order in which activities should

take place. The results of this analysis for the SPTS project are shown in

Figure 3-24. The first row of this figure shows that no activities precede

requirements collection. Row 2 shows that screen design must be

preceded by requirements collection. Row 4 shows that both screen

Chapter 3 Managing the Information Systems Project 69

ACTIVITY

1. Requirements Collection

2. Screen Design

3. Report Design

4. Database Design

5. User Documentation

6. Programming

7. Testing

8. Installation

TIME ESTIMATE

(in weeks)

EXPECTED TIME (ET)

o + 4r + p

5.57

FIGURE 3-23

Expected time calculations for

the SPTS project.

ACTIVITY

1. Requirements Collection

2. Screen Design

3. Report Design

4. Database Design

5. User Documentation

6. Programming

7. Testing

8. Installation

PRECEDING

ACTIVITY

—

2,3

5,7

FIGURE 3-24

Sequence of activities within

the SPTS project.

and report design must precede database design. Thus, activities may be

preceded by zero, one, or more activities.

Using the estimated times and activity sequencing information from

Figures 3-23 and 3-24, Jim can now construct a Gantt chart and

Network diagram of the project’s activities. To construct the Gantt

chart, a horizontal bar is drawn for each activity that reflects its

sequence and duration, as shown in Figure 3-25. The Gantt chart may

not, however, show direct interrelationships between activities. For

example, just because the database design activity begins right after

the screen design and report design bars finish does not imply that

FIGURE 3-25

Gantt chart that illustrates the

sequence and duration of each

activity of the SPTS project.

Slack time

The amount of time that an

activity can be delayed without

delaying the project.

Critical path

The shortest time in which a

project can be completed.

70 Part I Foundations for Systems Development

Requirements

Collection

Database

Design

Screen

Design

Installation

User

Documentation

Report Design

Programming Testing

FIGURE 3-26

A Network diagram that illustrates

the activities (circles) and the

sequence (arrows) of those

activities.

= 11

= 5

ET = 6 ET = 5 ET = 3

ET = 2

ET = 6 ET = 5.5 ET = 1

ET = 5

= 18.5

= 21

= 22

= 21

= 18

= 13

5 8

Critical Path

Noncritical Path

3 6

FIGURE 3-27

A Network diagram for the SPTS

project showing estimated times

for each activity and the earliest

and latest expected completion

time for each activity.

these two activities must finish before database design can begin.

To show such precedence relationships, a Network diagram must be

used. The Gantt chart in Figure 3-25 does, however, show precedence

relationships.

Network diagrams have two major components: arrows and nodes.

Arrows reflect the sequence of activities, whereas nodes reflect activities

that consume time and resources. A Network diagram for the SPTS

project is shown in Figure 3-26. This diagram has eight nodes labeled

1 through 8.

4. Determine the critical path. The critical path of a Network diagram is

represented by the sequence of connected activities that produces the

shortest overall time period. All nodes and activities within this

sequence are referred to as being “on” the critical path. The critical

path represents the shortest time in which a project can be completed.

In other words, any activity on the critical path that is delayed in

completion delays the entire project. Nodes not on the critical path,

however, can be delayed (for some amount of time) without delaying

the final completion of the project. Nodes not on the critical path

contain slack time and allow the project manager some flexibility in

scheduling.

Figure 3-27 shows the Network diagram that Jim constructed to

determine the critical path and expected completion time for the SPTS

project. To determine the critical path, Jim calculated the earliest and

latest expected completion time for each activity. He found each activity’s

earliest expected completion time (T

) by summing the expected

completion times (ET) of the activity and each preceding activity from left

to right (i.e., in precedence order), starting at activity 1 and working

toward activity 8. In this case, T

for activity 8 is equal to 22 weeks. If two

or more activities precede an activity, the largest expected completion

time of these activities is used in calculating the new activity’s expected

Chapter 3 Managing the Information Systems Project 71

ACTIVITY

18.5

– T

SLACK

2.5

ON CRITICAL PATH

FIGURE 3-28

Activity slack time calculations for

the SPTS project all activities

except number 5 are on the

critical path.

completion time. For example, because activity 8 is preceded by both

activities 5 and 7, the largest expected completion time between 5 and 7 is

21, so T

for activity 8 is 21  1, or 22. The earliest expected completion

time for the last activity of the project represents the amount of time the

project should take to complete. Because the time of each activity can

vary, however, the projected completion time represents only an estimate.

The project may, in fact, require more or less time for completion.

The latest expected completion time (T

) refers to the time in which an

activity can be completed without delaying the project. To find the values

for each activity’s T

, Jim started at activity 8 and set T

equal to the final T

(22 weeks). Next, he worked right to left toward activity 1 and subtracted

the expected time for each activity. The slack time for each activity is equal

to the difference between its latest and earliest expected completion times

– T

). Figure 3-28 shows the slack time calculations for all activities of

the SPTS project. All activities with a slack time equal to zero are on the

critical path. Thus, all activities except 5 are on the critical path. Part of the

diagram in Figure 3-27 shows two critical paths, between activities 1-2-4 and

1-3-4, because both of these parallel activities have zero slack.

In addition to the possibility of having multiple critical paths, two types

of slack are actually possible. Free slack refers to the amount of time a

task can be delayed without delaying the early start of any task immediately

following. Total slack refers to the amount of time a task can be delayed

without delaying the completion of the project. Understanding free and

total slack allows the project manager to better identify where trade-offs

can be made if changes to the project schedule are needed. For more

information about understanding slack and how it can be used to manage

A. Fuller, Joseph S. Valacich, and Joey F. George (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall).

Using Project Management Software

A wide variety of automated project management tools are available to help you

manage a development project. New versions of these tools are continuously

being developed and released by software vendors. Most of the available tools

have a common set of features that include the ability to define and order tasks,

assign resources to tasks, and easily modify tasks and resources. Project man-

agement tools are available to run on Windows-compatible personal computers,

the Macintosh, and larger mainframe and workstation-based systems. These

systems vary in the number of task activities supported, the complexity of rela-

tionships, system processing and storage requirements, and, of course, cost.

Prices for these systems can range from a few hundred dollars for personal

computer–based systems to more than $100,000 for large-scale multiproject

72 Part I Foundations for Systems Development

FIGURE 3-29

Establishing a project starting date

in Microsoft Project for Windows.

Source:

Reprinted with permission

of Microsoft.

systems. Yet, a lot can be done with systems like Microsoft Project as well as

public domain and shareware systems. For example, numerous shareware proj-

ect management programs (e.g., OpenProj or EasyProjectPlan) can be down-

loaded from the World Wide Web (e.g., at www.download.com). Because these

systems are continuously changing, you should comparison shop before choos-

ing a particular package.

We now illustrate the types of activities you would perform when using proj-

ect management software. Microsoft Project for Windows is a project manage-

ment system that has earned consistently high marks in computer publication

reviews (see www.microsoft.com and search for “project”—also, if you search

the Web, you can find many useful tutorials for improving your Microsoft Proj-

ect skills). When using this system to manage a project, you need to perform at

least the following activities:

쐍 Establish a project starting or ending date.

쐍 Enter tasks and assign task relationships.

쐍 Select a scheduling method to review project reports.

Establishing a Project Starting Date

Defining the general project information includes obtaining the name of the

project and project manager and the starting or ending date of the project. Start-

ing and ending dates are used to schedule future activities or backdate others

(see following) based upon their duration and relationships to other activities.

An example from Microsoft Project for Windows of the data-entry screen for es-

tablishing a project starting or ending date is shown in Figure 3-29. This screen

shows PVF’s Purchasing Fulfillment System project. Here, the starting date for

the project is Monday, November 5, 2012.

Entering Tasks and Assigning Task Relationships

The next step in defining a project is to define project tasks and their relation-

ships. For the Purchasing Fulfillment System project, Chris defined 11 tasks to

be completed when he performed the initial system analysis activities of the

project (Task 1—Start Analysis Phase—is a summary task that is used to group

related tasks). The task entry screen, shown in Figure 3-30, is similar to a fi-

nancial spreadsheet program. The user moves the cursor to a cell with arrow

keys or the mouse and then simply enters a textual Task Name and a numeric

Duration for each activity. Scheduled Start and Scheduled Finish are automati-

cally entered based upon the project start date and duration. To set an activity