Common Project Management Issues

Project Failure Factors

• Projects may fail due to irrelevant problems, lack of success metrics, or outcomes that don't contribute to success.
• Wrong team members can hinder progress and quality due to lack of relevant skills, experience, or expertise.
• Poor team dynamics can lead to conflict, trust issues, communication breakdowns, and reduced productivity.
• Lack of measures for evaluating success makes it impossible to assess progress, identify issues, or manage expectations.

Project Phases

• 5 Process Groups or Phases:
  • Initiating: Defines the mission and objectives of the project through the Project Charter.
  • Planning: Develops the project plan, outlining scope, schedule, budget, resources, and quality requirements.
• Agile SDLC model phases:
  • Requirement Gathering and Analysis
  • Planning
  • Design
  • Implementation (Coding)
  • Testing (Unit testing and Acceptance testing)
• Phases are conducted in short bursts of work called sprints.

Agile Principles

• Establish close contact with the customer during development.
• Rely on working software deployment rather than comprehensive documentation.
• Frequent delivery of incremental versions of the software.
• Encourage requirement change requests from the customer.
• Emphasize efficient team members and enhanced communications.
• Recommend small development team size (5 to 9 people).
• Agile development process usually deploys Pair Programming.

Agile Advantages

• Customer Satisfaction: Early and frequent delivery, adapting to evolving needs, and continuous feedback.
• Quality & Risk Reduction: Focus on quality, early issue detection, and scope management.
• Team Collaboration: Emphasis on communication, empowerment, and rapid feedback.

Common Pitfalls

• Hole Creep: Project team members falling behind schedule but reporting they're on schedule.
• Effort Creep: Team members working but not making progress proportionate to the work expended.
• Feature Creep: Arbitrarily adding features and functions to the deliverable without client specification.

Project Cost Management

• Focuses on planning, estimating, budgeting, monitoring, and controlling project costs to stay within approved budget limits.
• Key processes:
  • Plan Cost Management: Establishes the cost management framework.
  • Estimate Costs: Predicts resources and costs needed for each project activity.
  • Determine Budget: Aggregates activity cost estimates into a total project budget.
  • Control Costs: Tracks actual costs against the budget and identifies variances.

Critical Path Method

• Calculates the longest sequence of dependent tasks to determine project duration.
• Steps:
  • Forward pass: Calculate earliest start time (EST) and earliest finish time (EFT) for each activity.
  • Backward pass: Calculate latest start time (LST) and latest finish time (LFT) for each activity.
• Analyze float and slack to manage buffer time and priorities.

Task Block Notation

• Advantages:
  • Clear focus on tasks impacting project completion.
  • Realistic scheduling based on task dependencies and durations.
  • Proactive planning for potential bottlenecks.
  • Improved communication for stakeholders.
• Disadvantages:
  • Requires effort to set up and analyze.
  • Assumes task certainty, which may not be realistic for high-risk projects.
  • Often requires specialized software.

Risk Management

• Identifying and understanding potential risks reduces project uncertainty and allows for better decision-making.
• Addressing risks upfront helps prevent costly setbacks and schedule delays.
• Open communication and proactive risk management build trust and confidence with stakeholders.

Why Projects Fail

• Planning and goal-related factors:
  • Unclear goals.
  • Unrealistic or ambitious scope.
  • Inadequate planning.
• People and team-related factors:
  • Incompetent or unmotivated team.
  • Poor communication.
  • Leadership issues.