MGMT8772 – IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Assignment – 2

Name: Kapila Ravichandran

Student ID: 8918716

1. What is involved in project scope management, and why is good project

scope management so important on IT projects?
 Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project
and the processes used to create them.
 A deliverable is a product produced as part of a project, such as hardware
or software, planning documents, or meeting minutes.
 Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and
controlling what is or is not included in a project.
 It ensures that the project team and stakeholders have the same
understanding of what products the project will produce and what
processes the project team will use to produce them.

Project Scope Management involves:

 Planning scope management: determining how the project’s scope and
requirements will be managed.
 Collecting requirements: defining and documenting the features and
functions of the products produced during the project as well as the
processes used for creating them.
 Defining scope: reviewing the project charter, requirements documents,
and organizational process assets to create a scope statement.
 Creating the WBS: subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller,
more manageable components.
 Validating scope: formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables.
  Controlling scope: controlling changes to project scope throughout the life
of the project.

Importance of Project Scope Management:

For a project manager, managing the expectations of stakeholders and clients is
one of the most challenging tasks. With a definite project scope, managers can
easily stay on track and ensure that all the deadlines are being followed
throughout the project lifecycle.
The Project scope management avoids the following issues:

 Constantly changing requirements

 Pivoting the project direction when you are already mid-way
 Realizing that the final outcome isn’t what was expected
 Going over the discussed budget
 Falling behind project deadlines.
Effective project scope management gives a clear idea about the time, labor, and
cost involved in the project. It helps to distinguish between what is needed and
what is not needed for accomplishing the project. Scope in project management
also establishes the control factors of the project to address elements that might
change during the project life cycle.

2. What is involved in collecting requirements for a project? Why is it often such

a difficult thing to do?
Collecting requirements involve defining and documenting the features and
functions of the products that are initiated and delivered during the project
processes used for creating them. The project team also creates requirements
documentation and a requirement traceability matrix as outputs of the
requirements collection process. Collecting requirements also involves
interviewing stakeholders, questionnaires, and surveys for a project.
For projects that are related to information technology, it is helpful to divide
requirements development into categories called elicitation, analysis,
specification, and validation. It is important to use an iterative approach to define
requirements as they are unclear early in a project.
Below are the reasons why collecting requirements is difficult:
1. Work underestimation
2. Unknown requirements
3. Relying on users
4. Analysis paralysis
5. Inadequate requirements
Hence, collecting requirements is an essential process because if the
requirements from the stakeholders are not collected properly, the scope of the
project may risk being faulty. Suitable techniques to gather requirements are
selected and implemented by the project managers to have successful scope
management. Every detail is considered important in judging and finalizing the
main requirements.

3. Discuss the process of defining project scope in more detail as a project

progresses, going from information in a project charter to a project scope
statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary.
Defining scope of the project helps to document various scope related
information such as:
 Project boundaries, constraints, and assumptions
 Supporting document references for example: project specifications
As the project progresses, the scope of a project should become clearer and more
specific.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS):
  Work Breakdown Structure is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work
involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project.
 Foundation document that provides the basis for planning and managing
project schedules, costs, resources, and changes.
 Decomposition is the main tool or technique for creating a WBS.
Subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces.
 A work package is a task at the lowest level of the WBS.
 Outputs of creating the WBS are the scope baseline and project documents
updates.
 Scope baseline includes the approved project scope statement and its
associated WBS and WBS dictionary.
Work Breakdown Structure dictionary:

A WBS dictionary is where the details of the tasks, activities, and deliverables of
the work breakdown structure are located. The content includes whatever
milestones are related, the project scope and in some instances dates, resources,
cost, and quantity. The WBS dictionary allows you to define each of the steps on
the WBS and how to execute them to reach the final deliverable of the project.
The document includes a work package, which defines the related tasks, and
control accounts, which integrate the scope, budget, actual cost and schedule for
those tasks.
4. Consider the following table. All duration estimates or estimated times are in
days, and the network proceeds from Node 1 to Node 9.
a. Draw an activity-on-arrow (AOA) network diagram representing the project.
Put the node numbers in circles and draw arrows from node to node, labeling
each arrow with the activity letter and estimated time.

Below is the activity-on-arrow (AOA) network diagram representing the project:

b. Identify all of the paths on the network diagram and note how long they are,
using Figure 6-8 (also available in the slide deck) as a guide for how to represent
each path.

Path 1: A – B – E – H – K Duration: 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 10 days

Path 2: A – C – F – I - J – K Duration: 2 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 2 = 16 days

Path 3: A – C – F – H – K Duration: 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 10 days

Path 4: A – D – G – J – K Duration: 2 + 4 + 6 + 1 + 2 = 15 days

c. What is the critical path for this project and how long is it? What is the
shortest possible time needed to complete this project?

Critical path is the longest path through the network diagram.

Here, Path 2 which has duration of 16 days is the critical path for this Small
project.

Also, the shortest possible time needed to complete this project is Path 1 with
duration of 10 days.