Blog Post #2

Project management involves coordinating various aspects of a project in order to bring forth a positive result. Some of the aspects of project management that are particularly challenging are quality, manpower and scheduling. One notable example of project delays due to time mismanagement is the 2004-2006 Wembley Stadium project in London (Guardian, 2006).  After a few weeks into the CS2103T project, I believe that our team has met with a challenge (time management) similar to the example quoted. I feel that there are two main contributing factors to it, namely the underestimation of time needed and the setting of over-ambitious goals.

Firstly, as this is the first time we are undertaking a full-fledged software engineering project, we are unfamiliar with some of the tasks needed to be carried out. This causes our team to underestimate the amount of time needed to implement the various milestones of the project. For example, we assumed that we have sufficient time to complete the necessary subsystems by week eight. However, we are oblivious to the fact that we also have to carry out comprehensive testing on top of studying for our mid-semester tests.

Secondly, our team had initially set some over-ambitious goals that require a breakthrough to be made. For example, we had designed certain features that require complex algorithms to be developed. Thus we had to commit more resources to ensure the necessary algorithms were completed. As a result, other deliverable components of the project were neglected. This adds stress and demotivation to our team as the first deadline of the project is nearing.

Our team understands that we will miss deadlines and lose credibility if improper time management continues. Therefore our team has researched into proper scheduling and tactical time management techniques and came up with the following recommendations:

Step 1

Our team has to remove unnecessary components that were not part of the project scope. This is done so by breaking down  all the deliverable components  into activities and review them in full details. This procedure is needed to identify redundant, difficult-to-understand elements that take a long time to solve. The details of each activity may include:

-  Required actions to complete the project scope

-  Required resources and skills

-  Required hours of duration for activities

-   Known risks

-    Outputs of the work

-     Descriptions of the work packages

-     Supporting details

Step 2

After our team has reviewed the project scope, the team has to include time buffers into the new schedule to allow for project management administration, meetings, assurance testing, and the developing of supporting documentations. These factors may significantly reduce the time that we had for other modules. However our team finds it to be a worthwhile trade-off for the successful completion of the project.

In conclusion, I have gone through the factors that contribute to the time management challenge that we face and the possible solutions that we will adopt to ensure the successful completion of the CS2103T project.


Reference


Guardian, (2006), Row Break Out Over Wembley Delay. Retreived from  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/31/football.wembleystadium.