APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

PROJECT
Week 6
Managing Application Development Project

President University
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• All projects are different and have unique

features, but there are elements that are
common to most.
• A generic framework of the project process – the
process model, can be helpful to a project
manager in planning the project.
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

A process model needs a set of features which:

• Are adaptable to a wide range of applications.
• Provide a complete and adequate definition of any project
to which they are applied.
• Are easy to assimilate, with the key tasks and points of
interest highlighted.
• Are suitable to act as a memorandum and checklist to
ensure that everything is covered.
• Do not impose any unnecessary constraints on the use of
tools, techniques or methods during a project
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• Typical process model of a software development project

• The project is divided into a number of stages that are

followed in sequence from start to finish of the project
(similar to waterfall).
• Each stage contributes one or more deliverables of the
project.
• The model does allow a number of different system
development lifecycles within the Development process
box.
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• The implementation of the model must be tailored to

meet the requirements of the project-not all of the
elements may be appropriate
• The model can be used as a checklist to ensure that
nothing important is missed from the project.
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• Pre-project work – including initial client contact,

evaluation of tenders and agreeing a form of contract.
• Start-up or Initiation stage – this includes the Project
Start-up stage on the process model.
• Development stage – this includes the Development
stage on the process model.
• Completion stage – this includes the Delivery to
Customer, Staff Training and Familiarization, Acceptance
Testing, System Commissioning and Customer Takeover
stages on the process model.
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• Operational stage – this includes the In-service Live

Running, Warranty Support and Maintenance, and
Enhancements stages on the process model.
• Post-project review stage – this involves auditing the
project after it has finished, to capture any lessons
learned from it
The Process Model
Information System Study Program

• Operational stage – this includes the In-service Live

Running, Warranty Support and Maintenance, and
Enhancements stages on the process model.
• Post-project review stage – this involves auditing the
project after it has finished, to capture any lessons
learned from it
1. Pre-project work
Information System Study Program

• Extensive discussions between the customer

and supplier to establish the objectives and
scope of the project and to agree a suitable
contractual framework within which the project
will take place.
• The customer prepare a specification of their
requirements and will have issued invitations to
tender (ITTs) to suppliers (mostly in the form of
proposal).
• The suppliers will then respond with their
tenders and the customer will subject these to a
detailed evaluation process, mostly the will offer
1. Pre-project work
Information System Study Program

• Once the chosen supplier has been selected,

negotiations will take place to agree a suitable
form of contract for the project.
(1) fixed-price contract – if the requirements are
tightly defined, otherwise
(2) A time-and-materials contract (T & M)
• Supplier may also have to agree subcontracts
with other suppliers.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

• Some also refer this as Project Initiation.

• Start-up is an important stage of the project as
it is the stage where the foundations for
success, or failure, are laid.
• There is often pressure at this point to start the
‘real’ work; this should be resisted as time spent
in getting the basic infrastructure of the project
correct is always time well spent.
• Many of the issues that has not appear in the
contract to be addressed and detailed covering
what, why, who, how and when!
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

• What is to be carried out?

• Why is it being done?
• Who is going to do it?
• How is it to be accomplished?
• When is it to be done?
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

What is to be carried out?

• We need to know what objectives, scope,
constraints and interfaces apply to the project.
• Most of this information can be gleaned from
other sources such as a feasibility study report,
project brief, project terms of reference and
contract documents.
• It is important to re-examine this information
and to confirm that it is still accurate and
consistent.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

Why is it being done?

• Every project should have a business case which
sets out the main problems or opportunities that
are to be addressed.
• The main part of the business case contains
details of the costs of developing and
maintaining the system as against the benefits
it is expected to produce. This provides a
justification for the project and can be used at
any point in the future to check that the benefits
can still be cost-justified.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

Why is it being done?

• This is important as circumstances can alter,
and changes to the business requirements or in
development costs can result in the project no
longer being a cost-effective proposition.
• Many projects in the past have continued with
open-ended development when a reappraisal of
the business case – assuming one existed –
would have made it obvious that the project
should have been terminated.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

How is it to be accomplished?
• These elements are covered in the plans for the
project that are developed at this stage.
• It is usual at the start-up stage of a project to
produce a high-level plan for the whole project
and a more detailed plan for the first stage.
• As each stage is approached, the overall plan is
revised and a detailed stage plan is developed.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

How and when is it to be accomplished?

In reality, there is more than one plan and the
following aspects should be covered in some form
or other:
• A general plan description which, as well as a
narrative description, details the project
prerequisites, the external dependencies and
the planning assumptions.
• A technical plan which sets out the products to
be delivered, the activities required to produce
them, the times, dates and durations of each
activity and the dependencies between
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

How and when is it to be accomplished?

In reality, there is more than one plan and the
following aspects should be covered in some form
or other:
• A resource plan which identifies the type of
resource – analyst, programmer, user and so on
– and the amount of effort required from these
resources to carry out each activity. ‘Non-
people’ resources, including the provision of
computers, desks, CASE (computer-aided
software engineering) tools and other items,
should also be included.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

How and when is it to be accomplished?

In reality, there is more than one plan and the
following aspects should be covered in some form
or other:
• A project quality plan which sets out the quality
strategy to be followed and cross-references any
quality management system, quality manuals
and development approaches which the
organization has decided are to be used. The
quality plan should also set out the quality
criteria that are to be applied to each of the
products.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

How and when is it to be accomplished?

In reality, there is more than one plan and the
following aspects should be covered in some form
or other:
• A risk analysis that sets out the probable risks to
the project and identifies actions to prevent
them occurring or minimize their impact if they
do occur.
• The configuration management plan that
defines how control is to be exercised on the
products of the project and how changes to
these products are to be managed.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

Products of project start-up:

• Project initiation document (PID)
• Project plan
• Quality plan
• Risk management plan
• Project organization structure
• Project administrative procedures
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

Project Initiation Document (Project Charter)

• The document issued by the project initiator or
sponsor that formally authorizes the existence
of a project and provides the project manager
with the authority to apply organizational
resources to project activities.
• It documents the high-level information on the
project and on the product, service, or result the
project is intended to satisfy.
2. Project start-up
Information System Study Program

Project Initiation Document (Project Charter)

A simple but effective format for a PID is given
through the mnemonic OSCAR:
• Objectives
• Scope
• Constraints
• Authority
• Resources
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

• The Development stage of the project is where

most of the supplier’s work is carried out.
Although the customer’s project director should
exercise overall control of the project, many of
the activities are under the day-to-day control of
the supplier project manager.
• If we assume that the system development
lifecycle approach in our project is based on a
waterfall model, then the analysis, design,
programming and system-testing activities
come into this stage.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

The Development stage has several distinct parts

and these have varying amounts of user/customer
involvement. The different parts of the
Development stage are typically set out below:
• Requirements definition
• Design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing
• System testing
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Requirements Definition
• Here, the customer’s requirements definition
are specified in detail. Much of this information
will have been supplied in some form in earlier
documents, perhaps the initial contract
documents, and confirmed in the Start-up stage
output document.
• The purpose is to ensure that all the
requirements are captured and documented,
that the requirements themselves are complete
and consistent with each other, and that they
are recorded in a precise and unambiguous.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Requirements Definition
• These requirements must be in a form such that
it is possible to tell at a later date whether they
have been met by the information system which
is delivered.
• The representatives of the customer, the users,
will be much involved in this part of the project
and it is imperative that these users are able to
commit the required time to carrying out the
work properly.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Design
• The design is the first part of the project that
addresses how the requirements of the project
are to be met. It is important that all design
work stems from the requirements specification
and that there is a clear link, an ‘audit trail’,
from requirements to the design components.
• The techniques used to produce the design and
the form which the documentation of that
design takes will be determined by the method
or approach being used.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Design
• The design will be broken down into smaller,
more manageable components that will form
the basis of the program or module
specifications. It must be possible to identify
easily how these low-level components fit
together to form the overall design – the audit
trail again.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Implementation
• The implementation part of the Development
stage is where the programming and unit
testing take place. This will depend to a great
extent on the programming environment to be
used on the project and is probably the part
where the customer has the lowest level of
involvement in the delivery of the products.
• The overall progress of the project is the project
director’s responsibility, even if the project
manager is carrying out the day-to-day control
of the technical work.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Implementation
• At the end of the implementation part there
should be a complete set of modules that have
been tested and signed off as conforming to the
specification to which they have been built
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Integration & Testing

• This part is concerned with integrating the
individual components and checking that they
work properly together. For instance, it is
essential that the data passed from one module
to the next is in the form that the second
module expects.
• Integration testing must be designed to ensure
that all components communicate in the
expected way.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Testing
• System testing is carried out by the supplier to
check that the whole system behaves according
to the specification in the design documents and
meets the requirements specification.
• The supplier should also check that the
acceptance criteria set and agreed in the
requirements definition have been met, as there
is little point in delivering the system to the
customer for deficiencies to be pointed out
when the system is subjected to acceptance
testing by the customer.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

• Change control is another important issue if the

project is not to be allowed to overrun its time
or cost constraints.
• The project should have a procedure for dealing
with change in all its forms. It should be
remembered that changes can arise at any
stage of a project.
• Changes may be required to products for other
reasons. Errors may be discovered during
integration testing or system testing, which will
result in reworking components, retesting them
and possibly revising estimates for other
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

• The total cost of implementing the change must

be calculated along with the probable delay to
the project. The authority for accepting changes
is generally the steering committee or project
board or whoever has been given executive
authority for the project.
3. Development stage
Information System Study Program

Products:
• Requirements specification
• Technical specification
• Module specifications
• Prototypes
• Completed and tested hardware and software
modules
• Acceptable systems test results
• Others such as: factory acceptance certificate if
applied
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

• The Completion stage begins when the

information system has been completed by the
supplier and has been subjected to the full
rigors of a system test and every error and
problem eradicated.
• The associated technical documentation, user
manuals, operating instructions and any other
documentation should also have been finished.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

• This stage is where the customer receives the

finished product and carries out a number of
examinations and tests in order to confirm that
the system meets the specification which was
agreed between customer and supplier.
• This culminates in the acceptance of the
completed system by the customer.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Number of steps in the Completion stage:

• Delivery to the customer of all the elements of the
system including software and documentation.
• Training and familiarization for the end-users,
system administrators and operators.
• Carrying out of acceptance tests by the customer
on the delivered products.
• Acceptance by the customer.
• System commissioning.
• Final takeover by the customer
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Delivery
• Delivery to the customer should take the form of a
formal handover with all the customer the
deliverables being held under configuration
management.
• Software should be available in an appropriate
electronic form together with paper records of
source code or whatever was agreed in the project
plans.
• All documentation should be handed over as
agreed, with appropriate numbers of copies, and
generally should be in electronic as well as paper
form.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Training & Familiarization

• Training and familiarization may have been taking
place over a period of time as it is generally
unwise to leave all training until the last minute.
• If the supplier is to be responsible for training and
for the production of user and operator
documentation, the numbers of staff involved and
the definition of the training will have been agreed
beforehand.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Acceptance Testing
• Acceptance testing involves the customer
applying a series of tests to the testing delivered
system and associated documentation to check
that they meet the specification. These tests will
take a number of forms and can be divided into
four categories:
(1) Functionality testing. This will check that
the functionality specified in the requirements
definition document has been delivered. The
customer will consider the requirements and the
acceptance criteria and carry out a full test to
confirm them.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Acceptance Testing
• (3) Interface testing. This will confirm that the
delivered system works with other systems with
which it has interfaces and that the
communications between the systems are
functioning correctly.
(4) Environmental testing. This relates to
power consumption, heat dissipation, noise and
other environmental factors.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Acceptance Testing
• (3) Interface testing. This will confirm that the
delivered system works with other systems with
which it has interfaces and that the
communications between the systems are
functioning correctly.
(4) Environmental testing. This relates to
power consumption, heat dissipation, noise and
other environmental factors.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Acceptance by the Customer

• When all of the above tests have been
successfully passed, or the number of the
customer faults is low enough to be acceptable –
this will have been defined in the acceptance
criteria – the system will be officially accepted by
the customer, probably through signing an
acceptance certificate.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

System Commissioning
• The system will be set up in its final environment
for live running, connected to other systems and
loaded with real data.
• Many of the tests previously carried out during
acceptance testing will be repeated as, in some
instances, these tests can only properly be carried
out in a production environment. For instance,
capacity and stress testing are better carried out
in conditions which are as close to live running as
possible.
• In some cases acceptance testing and system
commissioning will be combined in order to save
time.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Final Customer Takeover

• The system will be set up in its final environment
for live This is the point where the customer
formally accepts the system and the project
comes to an end. It is possible that the system will
be accepted with some minor faults on the basis
that they will be corrected within a specified time.
• The project director should prepare an end-of-
project report for the project board or steering
committee that is responsible for officially
accepting the system. The report should set out in
summary form information relating to the whole
project and whether the time, cost and quality
objectives have been met.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Final Customer Takeover

• The project director also prepares a second report
on the project, from the project management
point of view, in order that the organization
benefits from this experience. The focus of the
report should not be on allocating blame for
anything which went wrong but on lessons for the
future. This is sometimes called a project
evaluation report.
4. Completion stage
Information System Study Program

Products:
• Site acceptance certificate
The customer has retested the system in its
operational environment and declared it to be
satisfactory
• Trained staff
• Commissioned system.
5. Operational stage
Information System Study Program

• The Operational stage takes over when live

running begins.
• This stage requires some type of guarantee or
support arrangement has been negotiated
between the customer and supplier.
• During this stage:
(1) Business requirements may change, and it is
likely that the system will require maintenance
and enhancement.
(2) Faults will arise during live running that were
not discovered during testing of the system.
(3) Perhaps the system will be used in a way not
envisaged by the designers and this may lead to
faults becoming apparent.
5. Operational stage
Information System Study Program

• Products: Fixes, and enhancements

• No matter how thorough the testing, sometimes
minor and even major problems only arise once a
system is in live operation and, particularly, when
anomalous situations arise.
• In addition, once they start to use their system,
the users will begin to see additional ways in
which it could help their work and will request
enhancements and extensions. These could be
handled as part of the support work or maybe as
small follow-on projects.
6. Post-project review
Information System Study Program

• Arranged at some time after live running has

started, usually at about six months.
• The aim of post-project reviews is not to ‘hunt for
the guilty’, but to capture experience and make it
available for the improvement of later projects.
• It mainly reconsiders the business case produced
at the beginning of the project and assesses
whether the business objectives of the system
have been met.
• The main product of a post-product review is
usually some form of written report for senior
management plus, perhaps, a presentation of the
main issues and lessons learned.
6. Post-project review
Information System Study Program

The post-project review should address the following

issues:
• The technical methods and standards used, and how
effective these proved.
• Project risks – how effective were the methods used to
identify, assess and manage risks.
• Contractual issues – what they were and how they were
resolved.
• Customer/supplier relationship issues.
• Stakeholder management issues.
• Team resourcing issues.
• Project performance against plans, with a view to
updating and improving the planning and estimating
methods used.
Summary
Information System Study Program