Reference no: EM132391810

MITS IT PM – IT Project Management

Lesson 3: IT Project Management – Working with Management

Exercise - 1

In this exercise, you will create an opening statement for a presentation to management. Recall that an opening statement should start at the end of the project—focusing on the project deliverables instead of the process to get there.

You are a network administrator for TriStar Manufacturing. Your network currently consists of two Windows 2000 servers and 287 Windows 2000 Professional workstations. Most of the workstations are Pentium 433 MHz machines with 512MB of RAM. Users are constantly complaining that the network, their computers, and new applications are very slow and often crash.

Management has asked for your opinion on the technology and what can be done to improve the situation. You’ve decided it’s past time for the company to upgrade. You have done some initial research and would like to recommend the following hardware and software upgrade for your company:

Hardware	Features
3 Windows Servers 2008	Each server equipped with four six-core 2.7 GHz processors, 64GB of RAM, and two 500GB of disk space configured as mirror sets for data redundancy
300 Windows Vista Business workstations	Each workstation equipped with a 2.0 GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, and CD-R drives
3 network switches	Used to segment the network

Based on this information, create an opening statement for your presentation. Your opening statement should be snappy, captivating, and focused on how this upgrade will increase productivity.

Exercise - 2

Congratulations! Your opening statement and presentation to upgrade the company’s hardware is a hit, and management wants you to proceed. They’ve agreed that you will be the project manager for the rollout, and you’ve handpicked 15 people to be on your project team.

You’ve completed the feasibility study, and are now ready for your project kickoff meeting. The following table will help you create an event for your kickoff. Management has allotted a whopping $500 for the event. Have fun, and make it exciting and inspiring!

Questions

Who should attend this meeting?

When will the meeting take place?

What is the theme of the project?

What type of project-related handouts will you have?

What fun things do you have planned?

How will you inspire the team?

Who will speak first?

Who should attend this meeting?

What are your opening remarks to the team?

What are some of the topics you’ll cover in your team presentation?

How long will your presentation take?

What will you spend the $500 on?

Exercise - 3

Excellent kickoff party, er, meeting. The project team and your project sponsor had a good time—everyone thought it was great. Well, everyone but Peter Abbot, the company crank and, unfortunately, your immediate manager. Peter is less than thrilled about your new project and thinks technology generally gets in the way of any real work getting done. Peter doesn’t believe that technology has made the company more efficient or more productive.

Your assignment in this exercise is to record how you would react to different scenarios regarding your manager Peter Abbot.

Scenario

Peter Abbot is getting increasingly cranky about the time you’ll need to be spending on your “pet” project. He’s insisting that you focus less on technology and help more users clean their workstation’s mouse, monitor, and keyboard.

Now you need Peter’s help. He has to make a decision about when you can have the testing lab for the new workstations and operating systems. You need to create workstation images, test software compatibility, and work with your new servers. The equipment has arrived, but Peter just doesn’t want to make a decision on when you can use the testing lab for your project.

Today is Frank’s turn to be in Peter’s doghouse. It was your turn last week, and next week it’ll be Mary’s. Every week someone on your team is in trouble with Peter. This whole cycle of Peter being angry with someone every week is demoralizing to your team, prohibiting progress, and generally frustrating.

Peter Abbot is becoming more rude and belligerent with you and your project team. He’s yelling at anyone who comes into his office, threatening to “write you up,” and acting very unhappy with any task you try to do. Yesterday he embarrassed Sam and made Jane cry.

Exercise - 4

Use the embedded Excel spreadsheet titled “Time Value of Money,” and you can use it to complete this exercise. The spreadsheet includes the future value and present value formulas and Excel will calculate the results for you. Follow these steps to use the worksheet’s formulas:

1. You can access comments about the formulas by hovering your mouse over the red dots in cells A4, A5, A6, A17, A18, and A19.

2. Navigate in the spreadsheet to cell B4.

3. Enter $890,000 as the present value in cell B4.

4. Navigate to cell B6 and set the number of time periods to three.

5. What is the value displayed in cell B11? Your answer:

6. What is the future value of $890,000? Your answer:

7. Navigate to cell B17.

8. Enter the future value as $625,000.

9. Change the interest rate to .05 in cell B18.

10. Enter the number of time periods as two.

11. What is the present value of $625,000?

12. You can use the formulas in the Excel spreadsheet to answer this scenario’s question. Assume that you present a project to management that will last for five years and will require an investment of $775,000. If the rate of return is six percent, what must your project be worth in five years to be worth the investment to management?

13. You can use the formulas in the Excel spreadsheet to answer this scenario’s question. Assume that Shelly has a project that promises to be worth $550,000 in three years. If the rate of return is six percent, what is the maximum amount management should invest in the project if they want to break even in three years?

14. You can use the Excel spreadsheet to test your comprehension of the formulas. Try to solve the formulas using just a pencil and calculator and then test your results in the Excel spreadsheet. Complete the following table:

Present Value	Interest	Time Periods	Future Value
$300,000	.06	4
$550,000	.06	2
$1,245,000	.05	4
Future Value	Interest	Time Periods	Future Value
$789,000	.06	3
$500,000	.05	4
$1,922,001	.06	5

Lesson 5: IT Project Management – Creating Budget

Exercise - 1

• Open the Microsoft Excel file called Estimating Worksheet by double- clicking it.

• The Excel document has several spreadsheets. The first worksheet is titled “Time cost analysis.” Navigate to this worksheet if you’re not there already.

• Hover your mouse over the comment marker in cell A1 and read the comments. Click in cell A3, enter Rick Gordon, and then press TAB to move to cell B3.

• Hover your mouse over cell B1 to read the comment. In cell B3, enter Rick Gordon’s yearly salary, 73500, and press TAB to move to cell C3.

• Rick Gordon’s hourly rate is calculated for you based on his annual salary, divided by 52 weeks, and then divided again by 40 hours. Press TAB again to move to cell D3.

• For this first task, enter 15 for the optimistic value time. Press TAB to move to cell E3.

• Enter 24 for the most likely value and press TAB to move to cell F3.

• For the worst time, enter 37 and press TAB. The time and cost for an activity is calculated. Press TAB to move on to cell G3.

• Notice that cell G3 has already calculated the average time for Rick Gordon, and the average cost for Rick to complete the assigned task is displayed in cell H3.

• Complete the remainder of the spreadsheet with the following information:

Member	Yearly Salary	Optimistic	Most Likely	Pessimistic
Samantha Murray	67500	20	25	34
Bradley Kiser	43200	25	32	42
Harriet Sutherland	37600	17	25	36
Fred Stephens	57600	40	55	75
Ruth Carze	67000	25	45	68

• Based on your entries, answer the following questions:

• What is the three-point estimate cost of Samantha Murray’s time on the assigned task?

• What is the cost of Bradley Kiser’s time if he takes the pessimistic amount of predicted time?

• What is the cost of Harriet Sutherland’s time if she beats the best time estimate by two hours?

• What is the average cost of Fred Stephens’ time?

• Review your work and then keep the document open, as you’ll use your answers and entries for Exercise 2. You can save the spreadsheet to your hard disk if you would like to review your work and complete Exercise 2 later.

• In this exercise, you will explore PERT and the three-point estimates in the Estimating Worksheet you used in the last exercise.

• In the Estimating Worksheet that you completed in Exercise 1 of this chapter, navigate to the worksheet called “3 Point Estimate.” This worksheet is based on the entries you made in Exercise 1. You will also use the worksheets in this file called “PERT” and “PERT versus 3 Point.”

• What is the three-point estimate result for Ruth Carze on this entry?

• Navigate to the worksheet titled “PERT.” This worksheet is based on the values you’ve entered on the “Time cost analysis” worksheet.

• What is the PERT result for Ruth Carze?

• Return to the “Time cost analysis” worksheet and change the optimistic values for Ruth Carze to 20.

• Compare the three-point result and the PERT result for Ruth Carze with this new optimistic value.

• Navigate to the worksheet titled “PERT versus 3 Point.”

• On this worksheet there are two charts that will compare the results of the three-point estimate and PERT. Hover your mouse over the first bar that represents Paul Samms in the 3 Point Estimate chart. What is the value that’s displayed?

• Now hover your mouse over the first bar that represents Paul Samms in the PERT Estimate chart. What is the value that’s displayed?

• Why is there a difference between the PERT value and the three-point value?

Lesson 6: IT Project Management – Creating Project Management Plan

Exercise - 1

• In this exercise, you will create a PND for a fictional company named Donaldson Investments and Holdings. You will be given the core information on the project and then create the diagram based on the information supplied. This is based on the WBS you examined in Chapter 5.

• As you have learned, the creation of a project network diagram can be a long and tedious process. If during this exercise you need some prompts to create the PND, you can refer to the Network Diagram Worksheet file. The worksheet has key tasks completed to help you develop the PND. To access the Network Diagram Worksheet, follow these steps:

• Open the document named Network Diagram Worksheet.

• Print the document.

• The worksheet has key assignments completed to coach you through the creation of the diagram. If you would prefer not to use the worksheet to receive any coaching, you can create your own network diagram.

• Scenario: Jennifer is the project manager for Donaldson Investment and Holdings. The project is an implementation of a new mail server and the mail clients on all of the workstations. Here is the project’s task list. To organize your PND, begin by mapping out the network diagram by identifying the sequence of tasks and the relationship between tasks.

Task Name

Install Windows Server

Install Exchange Server

Configure Exchange Server

Link to other servers

Create test user accounts

Set mailbox rules

Create client installation packages

Create Windows computer policies

Test Policies

Test policies

Develop installation procedures

Test installation procedures

Create CD image for remote access users

Test CD image

Host pilot users class

Create class workbook for training

Host pilot users training class (groups of ten)

Send image to pilot users

Hold pilot users forum to discuss usage

Analyze pilot user feedback

Finalize and test install image

Hold user training classes

Roll out based on attendance

Exercise - 2

• Another part of project planning is to evaluate the project risks and determine the risk contingency reserve. The following is a simple risk matrix where a few risks have been identified, their probability has been predicted, and their impact on the project has been assigned. Your job is to calculate the risk event value for each risk event and then to predict this project’s risk contingency reserve. Remember, both positive and negative risks must be accounted for.

• To complete this exercise, you will multiply the value of the probability by the impact of the risk for the risk event value. The sum of the risk event values will represent the project’s risk exposure, and the inverse amount of the risk exposure is the needed contingency reserve.

Risk	Probability	Impact	Risk Event Value
Accuracy of requirements	0.20	-$10,000
Resource availability	0.40	-$13,000
Errors and omission in requirements gathering	0.10	-$19,000
Delays from vendor	0.60	-$28,000
Delays from client approval	0.15	-$8,000

1. What is the project’s risk exposure?

2. What is the needed contingency reserve?

3. What risks have a greater impact than the total contingency reserve?

4. What should you do with these risk events that have a higher impact than the contingency reserve?

Attachment:- Assignment Data File.rar