Project Management Methodologies Quiz

Chapter 1

• Project Roles: A systems analyst identifies how technology improves business procedures. A project manager ensures the system adheres to information system standards.

• SDLC Phase: Michaela, a systems analyst determining business needs, works in the analysis phase. Chang, determining how the system functions, is in the design phase. Joan, automating a manual process, is using business process automation analysis. Alice, calculating likely cost impacts, is working in the planning stage.

Evaluation

• Longest Phase: Implementation is typically the longest and most expensive phase of development.

• Critical Step: Testing is a critical step in implementation due to immense costs.

Chapter 2

• Project Cancellation/Abandonment: Systems analysis and design projects have high failure rates, with more than 3% being cancelled or abandoned.

• SDLC Key Person: The systems analyst analyses business issues to improve systems.

• SDLC Division: Analysis is generally divided into three steps for the SDLC: understanding the current system, cost-benefit analysis, and technical feasibility.

• Planning Phase: Determining business requirements is usually conducted during the planning phase of the SDLC.

• System Proposal: This document outlines the business rationale for a new system and its anticipated value.

Chapter 3

• Project Prioritization: IT project roles should be carefully selected and prioritized. Projects should provide positive returns on investment and value to the business.

• Prototyping Methodologies: Systems prototyping typically involves user involvement, rapidly developing a basic version of the system. Throwaway prototyping is more centered on assessing various design alternatives.

• Waterfall Method: This is the most time-consuming, used when requirements are clear, there is a reliable timeframe and technologies are understood.

• Parallel Method: Used when there are unclear requirements, and time is not a critical issue, reliable and complicated systems are developed in small chunks.

Chapter 4

• Use Case Components: Use cases are diagrams with components including selection, process, and iteration. Use cases are not process diagrams. They are data-driven models.

• Use Case Purpose: Use Cases define specific actions or steps that take place during a business process or system interaction, and thus are used to outline the requirements and procedures of a system that is developed from a business perspective.

Chapter 5

• ERD Diagram Lines: Lines on ERD diagrams represent the relationships between data in systems.

• Attributes and Entities: Entities and their attributes are used to show which bits of information are stored within a given entity structure, including the identifying features.

• Determining Entities: Use cases should list all possible entities.

• Top-Level Diagram: The top-level entity relationship diagram shows the structure of a business system.

Chapter 6

• Architecture Design Objective: Architecture design identifies which parts of application software should be assigned to various hardware and how these hardware components will ultimately work together.

• Primary Hardware Components: Client computers, servers and the network are the primary hardware components of any system.

Chapter 7

• Software and Hardware: The design phase identifies appropriate software for the project to operate, and defines the hardware for the system to use.

• Client-Server Hardware Considerations: Client-server scalability is generally considered greater than server-based scalability, and the architecture should be flexible for ease of adaptation.

• ATM Example: An ATM system is a client-based architecture typically used to avoid network overloading.

Chapter 8

• Content Awareness: A good example of content awareness is organizing related items in boxes in order to improve usability and user understanding.

• Color Blindness: Approximately 10% of men are color blind and using color improperly can impede their ability to read information.

• Design Icon: A diskette is a good icon for saving.

• User Interface Design Steps: Steps include designing standards, creating a prototype, interface evaluation and defining the interface structure diagram.

Chapter 9

• Interface Evaluation: A critical part of interface evaluation is using a structured walkthrough with users to find coding errors. This is helpful in identifying improvements that can be made to the software system

Chapter 10

• Testing: All testing should include production data and testing should rarely pay for itself; it is important when testing to consider all possible combinations of inputs and situations.

Chapter 11

• Implementation Steps: Building and implementing a system typically involves building user interfaces, developing algorithms or rules, and integrating different parts of the system.
• Key Steps in Implementation: Project managers should manage the development, the team and the data management designs.

Chapter 12

• Parallel Conversion Concerns: One concern with using parallel conversions is the need for separate systems to maintain data, as well as the added costs and complexity.

• Conversion Challenges: Issues that might arise during conversion include potential hardware failures as well as the need to convert multiple parts of the system.

Chapter 13

• Agile Principles: Agile emphasizes collaboration, working software, responding to change, and customer feedback.

• Features of Agile: Agile methods involve frequent interaction with customers and feedback, and involve frequent delivery of functional pieces of the system.

• Common Agile Method: Scrum is the most commonly used Agile method.

Chapter 14

• Prioritized Lists and Backlogs: Agile development uses a prioritized list of items (feature backlog) that are needed to be developed. This list defines things that are needed to be done for the system.