Project Selection and Portfolio Management

• Decision makers consider several factors when initiating a project like size, cost, purpose, length, risk, and scope.
• A key consideration is the economic value CICS (C=C-попасION OfICCISI on ait tinaitiytu iu stiCLL which projects that return the most on IT investments.
• Project portfolio management has become essential for IT departments and involves selecting, prioritizing, and monitoring project results.
• System development projects need a thorough project management process, which includes planning and controlling time, cost, and desired output.
• Critical project management entails managing it to the plan and beginning with a realistic assessment of the work.

Project Selection

• Systems projects are evaluated in the context of an entire portfolio of projects, reinforcing the need for a feasibility study.
• Portfolio management considers the variety of projects within a company.
• An approval committee must be selective about where to allocate limited resources.
• If several high-payoff projects have the same risk, only one may be selected.

Waterfall Development

• Advantages: Identifying requirements early and limiting changes during the project.
• Disadvantages: Long time between analysis and system delivery, loss of purpose, and ignoring changes.
• A completed design must be available before programming begins.
• An expanse of time may pass between the system proposal during analysis and final delivery.
• Testing is often overlooked in the implementation phase.
• The Project teams may be required to engage in expensive post-implementation programming if important requirements are missed.

Parallel Development

• Advantages: Reduces the time for delivering a system
• Disadvantages: Leads to voluminous deliverables, and integrating subprojects can be difficult if they are not fully independent.

V-Model

• Advantages: Attention to testing, simple, straightforward, and results in a high-quality system.
• Disadvantage: Rigidity of waterfall model.

Rapid Application Development: Iterative Development

• Advantages: Improved speed and quality.
• Disadvantages: Managing user expectations

Rapid Application Development: System Prototyping

• Advantages: Suitable for users who have difficulty expressing requirements
• Disadvantages: Lack of careful analysis before design and implementation.

Throwaway Prototyping

• Advantages: It helps build a stable and reliable system
• Disadvantages: Increases the time needed to deliver the final system.

Agile Development

• A programming-centered methodology streamlines the SDLC, and includes interactive face-to-face communication.
• Extreme Programming (XP) prioritizes customer satisfaction and teamwork.
• User stories are needed to describe what requirements the system needs to meet when beginning an XP project
• Programmers code in simple modules and test those modules to guarantee success.
• Standards are needed to minimize confusion and help the team use the same set of names, descriptions, and coding practices.
• XP projects deliver results sooner than RAD approaches and avoid getting bogged down in gathering requirements.
• With motivated and stable teams, XP should work perfectly fine.

Agile Development Process Cycle

• Begin with the build, configure, test, release and then design again
• This creates a continuous improvement cycle
• Flaws are exposed faster
• Reduce waste

Methodologies - Usefulness in Developing Systems

Estimating Project Time Frames

• There are two basic ways to estimate the time needed to build a system.
• Use the amount of time spent in an initial step like the planning phase to predict the time to complete the whole system project.

Typical Industry Standard Percentages to Complete the System for Business Applications

• Planning = 15%
• Analysis = 20%
• Design = 35%
• Implementation = 30%

Model of Actual Time Spent on Estimates

• Actual time in planning is 4 person-months
• Estimated time in analysis is 5.33 person-months
• Estimated time in design is 9.33 person-months
• Estimated time in implementation is 8 person-months