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.
Reference
Guardian, (2006), Row Break Out Over Wembley Delay. Retreived from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/31/football.wembleystadium.
Hi Qin Chuan,
ReplyDeleteIt's true that we have very limited time for this project and I believe it's also a issue faced by all groups. So I agree that our primary task is to fulfill the basic requirements of this project and try to deliver them all in V0.1. However, I think we can still keep one or two credit components which are not in the project scope instead of cutting off them all. If everything is under control, we may deliver those challenge components in V0.2 so that we can have more time to work on the algorithm part. In addition, according to our progress now we have completed 50% of the coding, hence I'm confident that we can deliver our product on time. Let's work hard together to achieve our goal!
Hi Qin Chuan,
ReplyDeleteTime Management is evidently important for any project team to achieve their goals or expectations of a project. In our case, I believe that even though time is not our side, we will still be able to complete and produce the original intended product. This is because what we have done so far was basically stating an estimation of the time needed to implement the various functions or modules of the product. However from my experience, there will be times when our estimations are frequently over-estimated. Hence during such times, we would be able to save more time to implement the other features in which we may have excluded from the original project scope.
Hi Darren and Zhang Xi,
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of your view points. I believed that we have realized the importance of proper time management/scheduling with this project. This is more so when our group faces a lack of manpower. I would like to quote the words of Charles Rugirok (ENMAX Corporation President) in his interview with "National Post" in 2004 as he highlight the lesson learnt of having a well defined schedule from the start of the project:
"When you’ve underestimated the number of field construction hours and you’re limited in infrastructure and the number of people you can put on the site, you [can only] push out the schedule, and at $150 million [in capital spending] per month, it doesn’t take long for the project to escalate significantly. "