Software Development: It Project Assessment Answer

MAS501

IT project Management Assignment:

Software Development Case Description

Jiemba Software is a leading software development company delivering comprehensive solutions in
application development, systems integration and software testing. The name of the company is from the
Indigenous Wiradjuri language and means ‘Laughing Star’. The company’s headquarter is located in
Brisbane and the company has over ten years’ experience in custom software development for medium to large enterprises. The company specialises in developing games to engage Indigenous youth into the area of software development. The company has recently won a contract to develop a 2D-arcade games framework for a global entertainment company.You are appointed as a project manager to manage the development and production of the new software framework. Several people are involved in this project including you as the project manager, Ms Gurumarra as the Director of Software Development, and your project team members consisting of three software engineers, two technical writers and two test engineers.

Question:Part A

1. Use Microsoft Project to develop the project schedule. You must include the resource allocation details on the schedule as well as the WBS shown in Table 1. Develop the schedule and make sure that you:
i. Have an appropriate project name at the top of the task list as a summary task. Have all other tasks indented below the top summary task.
ii. Have the WBS shown in table 1.
iii. Include the milestones at the bottom of the task list (as this has been requested by senior management).
iv. Include the resource allocation details on the schedule.
v. Resolve any resource allocation issues.

2. Identify the critical path in your schedule:
i. Make sure that the tasks on the critical path are automatically highlighted by the software in the Gantt chart view (i.e. the software should highlight bars of the CP tasks in red in your .mpp file).
ii. List the tasks on the critical path in your answer to this question in the Word document.

3. a) Include three additional tasks in your schedule with a duration of 1 day each to do all the organisation for following meetings:
i. Design review meeting
ii. Test plan meeting
iii. Customer acceptance meeting
You must manually highlight these three tasks in yellow using the “background colour” icon on the task ribbon. This is to allow your marker to locate them easily.
b) Based on your schedule, when is the latest date that you need to begin organising the test plan meeting?
c) Based on your schedule, when is the latest date that you need to begin organising the customer acceptance meeting?

4. Write a memo to Ms Gurumarra, the director of software development outlining:
i. The expected duration and completion date of the project.
ii. The estimated labour costs of the project. This information must be presented in tabular form with the total cost for each of the work packages, the costs for any meetings and the final total for the whole project.

5. a) List two tasks you would target if you were asked to shorten the project duration.
b) Explain your reasons for choosing to target those tasks.
c) For each task, suggest what you would do to shorten the task.

6. List 2 important activities that the project manager needs to perform in the planning phase of the
project. Describe one of these activities in more detail.

7. Why is it necessary to calculate the earned value of work performed? How is this done?

8. Describe how you would calculate a cost performance index. What does it mean when the CPI is below 1.0? What does it mean when the CPI is above 1.0?

Question:Part B

Based on the additional information given above, complete the following tasks:
1. Copy your Part A .mpp file to a Part B file and amend the project schedule incorporating the new
estimated times for the tasks above (2.2 and 3.2). You need to resolve any resource over-allocation issues caused by the introduction of these changes. You also need to highlight the rows of these changes in green.

2. a) What is the duration of the project now?
b) When is the completion date of the project now?
c) Discuss whether the length of the project is now shorter/longer/the same in comparison to Part A

3. List two negative risks that could impact your project. For each state what type of risk treatment you
would use for the risk and describe the treatment action.During a lessons learnt meeting at the end of the project ethics was a key theme. You realise that your team does not understand how important ethics is to project management. Realising that you need to bring your team up to date with ethics you decide to provide some training for them. You have decided to develop a short handout based on the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

4. Develop a one page handout for your team outlining the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional
Conduct. You need to include a section on how the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
applies to your team.