[MUSIC] Hi, welcome to the course, IT Project Management. My name is M Rammohan Rao. I am a former Dean and Professor Emeritus at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, where I teach a course on project management. My teaching and research interests are in the area of operations management. This course is about information technology, or IT for short, project management. The duration of this course is four weeks, with each week consisting of several modules, with a total of about one hour of presentation for each week. Each module will have a presentation for a maximum of about 12 to 15 minutes. This is the first module of the first week, and it consists of an introduction and outline of the course. There is no universally accepted definition of a project. But generally a project is considered as a temporary endeavour with specified start and end. For example, building the Taj Mahal was a project. Discovering a queue portfolio started as a project. Putting a man on the moon and bringing him or her alive is also a project. An IT project is a project related to IT. These project includes software development, including system software such as Windows 10. Development of a new laptop, hardware installations, network upgrades, implementation of business analytics that require the management of large databases etc. IT projects are the subsets of all projects. IT project management involves managing IT projects using project management tools, techniques and methodologies. There are typically three parameters, or three metrics, that one looks at for project management to evaluate how well the project has been done. The three metrics are time, cost and performance, which is sometimes referred to as scope. Project scope is a statement of work. It includes all elements of a project plan, such as project objectives, deliverables, milestones, schedules for major segments of work, an estimate of cost, time and resources required. Technical requirements for performance of the output of the project are also defined. The boundaries for the project, including the limits and exclusions are spelled out. Project scope should be reviewed with all the stakeholders before it is finalized. A major issue, especially in software projects in the frequent changes in scope, referred to as scope creep. This arises essentially because before the start of the project the customer is unable to articulate all the requirements for the output of the project. Another important functions of the project manager or project management is to maintain a delicate balance between scope creep and the rejection of the additional functionality that the customer decides for the product which is outcome of the project. A project is not routine work. It involves a unique set of activities, with some precedential relationships among the activities. There is some activities can be done only after some others have been completed. The idea is to complete the project within the specific time, and within the budget and meeting the performance characteristics. Why are projects important? If you look at a business organization, the current processes and products produced are as a result of projects undertaken earlier. As far as the future is concerned, it is through projects that the organization grows. The existing assets are the result of projects that have been undertaken earlier are currently in progress. Future assets that enable the organization to grow are acquired through projects that are to be implemented in the future. The value of a firm is dependent not only the assets that the organization currently has, but also on the assets that the organization is likely to acquire, through projects currently in progress, and the projects likely to be undertaken in the future. It is not enough to have ideas on projects, but they need to be implemented well. In India, some companies that execute projects well are Reliance and L&D. In 2008 CIO.com cited a Dynamic Markets survey of 800 IT managers that showed 62% of IT projects fail to meet their schedules. 49% suffered budget overruns, 47% had higher than expected maintenance costs, and 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI. During the period since the last survey, I'm sure that there has been some improvements in meeting the time and budget deadlines, and perhaps in delivering the expected business value. Nevertheless, there's a need for substantial improvement. An important aspect to keep in mind is that, if the success of a project is measured only by the performance matrix that we talked about, namely time, cost, and scope, we may have the situation where the project is a success, but the product fails. As doctors may say, the operation was successful, but the patient died. In the above cited survey, 41% of IT projects failed to deliver the expected business value. But there is no mention of how many of those 41% IT projects were considered to be a success in terms of project performance metrics which are time, cost and scope. It's also possible that the project is a failure in terms of time and cost but the end result is so outstanding that one forgets the time and cost overruns. Some notable examples of this phenomena, although not IT projects, are The Sydney Opera House project and the Vidhana Soudha project in Bengaluru. Duration of a project life cycle is a time interval between the start of the project and the completion of the project. There are four phases to the project management life cycle, which differs from the product life cycle, which is the time interval between the time the product is conceptualized and the product is withdrawn from the market. Typically, a project life cycle is a subset of the product life cycle. Project life cycle has four phases. Although we'll be talking about the four phases as sequential in nature, there's considerable overlap among the different phases. The first phase is the so called defining or initiation [INAUDIBLE]. The second phase is the planning phase. Similarly, the third phase which is that implementation or execution phase can start before planning is completed. The final phase is the closure or termination of the project. Each phase will have it's own set of activities. In the defining phase, you have to specify the goals, classifications, task and responsibilities. Project charters is a deliverable from this phase. The recent development and IT project management is the consideration of the value of flexibility and real options thinking for evaluation and implementation of IT projects. And the overview of this approach will be covered in the second module during the first week. The different forms of the organization structure and communication plans are also discussed as part of the defining phase. In the third and the fourth modules respectively, on the first week. The planning phase will be covered in details during the second week. The deliverables for this phase are project scope, network diagram, estimation of time, cost and resources required. First assuming that required resources are available, we show how one can arrive at a schedule of the activities. In this module, we'll show how to calculate the so-called earliest completion time of the project. We then define the critical part in the network, and show how the set of critical activities can be identified. The activities in the project require various types of resources. We then have to overlay the resources onto the project activities and the schedule may get affected because some of the resources may be in short supply. Two types of problems, namely resource labeling and resource limitation problems are covered. Risk management, which is part of the planning process, will be covered during the third week. As part of risk management, three estimates for each activity duration, and the use of simulation in program evaluation and review technique, or PERT for short, will be recovered. The execution phase is where you monitor the implementation of the plans, and make changes if necessary in the plan, including the schedule of the activities that are in progress, or not yet started. It is important to note that a plan for the activities yet to be started is not binding and maybe changed if necessary. So, every time an ongoing project is reviewed, the revised, if it's necessary, budget and project completion time are calculated. Consequently, one should be clear whether the budget overrun and delay in completion of the project are stated with respect to that original budget and date of completion, or if difference, the revised budget and date of completion. The use of tracking Gantt chart and earned value analysis for project monitoring and control will be covered during the third week of this course. A primary reason for delays in the completion of the software projects, is what is referred to as scope creep. This arises because typically, the client is not able to articulate all the desired requirements for the software to deliver. As a result, the so called agile project management in sometimes preferred over a traditional waterfall model for software project management. This will be covered during the last week of this course. Now final phase is the closure or termination of the project. As part of this phase, a performance audit is needed, and the learnings from the project should be recorded. The various aspects pertaining to project audit and closure will be covered during the last week. [MUSIC]
