IS483: Week 2 Review
Date: 2021-08-30 16:44:42 +0800
Hi. Today I would like to clarify again the Requirements Catalogue. I have also done some scanning of PM tools out in the market that can help the overall delivery of successful projects.
Requirements Gathering
Just to emphasize again that this is a very important part of delivering an IT system. It cannot be a rolling phase where requirements keep getting added and there is no end to it. There has to be a finality to it and that forms the baseline (with user signing off on it). Any other new things that come up will have to be put into the next phase.
The baseline of the requirements is encapsulated in the Requirements Specification document. It should provide sufficient details to design the system. There are functional and non-functional requirements. Frequently the functional requirements are written using a use-case approach. See the sample in the link below. In particular, look at Section 5.
Requirements Document Example (ohio-state.edu)
These use-cases can then be extracted, given and ID and then placed into a list/catalogue format for easy tracking. This sample document is already quite brief, but enough to proceed with the design.
Section 3 highlights the non-functional requirements which can also be put into the catalogue.
Project Management Tools
Project Management used to be called an art. Very often, the PM relies on soft skills to get the project through. Tracking is done via pen and paper using the tried and. tested Gantt Chart (yes, created on Excel).
Under the CITPM (an IT PM Certification programme of the Singapore Computer Society), the following 12 areas of IT Project Management are recognised About Certification in IT Project Management (CITPM) - Singapore Computer Society (scs.org.sg)
- Project Integration Management
- Project Scope Management
- Project Time Management
- Managing Project Costs
- Managing Project Quality
- Project Human Resource Management
- Project Communications Management
- Managing Project Risks
- Project Procurement Management
- Interpersonal
- Client/Customer Relations
- Managing Complexity
But in today’s demand for rapid roll-out of IT systems, tools and techniques need to be better utilized. This ties in well with the recent transformation to agile project management. Some features of PM tools include:
- Project scheduling and task management
- Budgeting and cost control
- Risk management
- Developing team coordination and collaboration
- Project report creation
Traditional enterprise level tools focuses on the top 3 features. However, the success of a project lives and breathes by the cohesion of the team as well as its stakeholders. Modern PM tools try to support this by providing functions for collaboration and sharing. These are targeted at small to medium size projects. Some of the top ranking ones are:
- Trello
- Asana
- Wrike (free for education)
- Basecamp (free for education)
- monday.com
Some are free for students while other provide a freemium tier. More info here: Most Widely Used Project Management Apps Compared (simplilearn.com)
Go try it out. My interest currently is in Wrike.