Digital Project Management 2016-17 – Emanuele Della Valle

2016-17 Course Syllabus

The course provides an overview of the roles, responsibilities, and management methods of the digital project manager. The course assumes no prior knowledge in management techniques and is intended to teach students how to develop approaches and styles of management for digital projects. The course assumes a basic understanding of software analysis, design and development techniques.

To provide students with a clear understanding of the unique risks, issues, and critical success factors associated with digital projects
To introduce students to the role and function of project management
To explain the stages and process of the project life cycle
To understand the various techniques for planning and managing a digital project
To examine basic methodologies for software design, development, testing, implementation and deployment
To examine various techniques for managing a team working on digital projects
To understand the need and techniques for managing users and user expectations
To learn project planning and tracking techniques
To understand SCRUM as a modern agile approach to Digital Project Management
To provide students with hints on how to handle the final stages of a project

Classes

Introduction – Monday 6 March 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Administrative items [slides]
digital transformation [slides]
Introduction & Fundamentals [slides]

Basics – Monday 20 March 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Digital Project Management (part I) [slides]
Homework-1 assigned [template]
Digital Project Management (part II) [slides]

Planning – Monday 27 March 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Planning Phase (part I) [slides]
- phases in details
- lifecycle planning

Planning – Wednesday 29 March 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

Planning Phase (part II) [slides]
- Matching Lifecycles to Project
- Project plans

WBS – Monday 3 April 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Work Breakdown Structures [slides]
- Introduction to Planning, Estimating, Scheduling
- Work Breakdown Structures: Types, Formats, Techniques and Guidelines

Homework-2 assigned

Estimation – Wednesday 5 April 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

Estimation [slides]
- Measuring size, complexity and effort
- Estimation Methodologies
- Issues & Guidelines

Scheduling – Monday 10 April 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Scheduling [slides]
- Fundamentals
- Techniques: Network Diagrams & Bar Charts
- Optimization Techniques
- Mythical Man-Month

Mid-term test preview [slides]

Open Project (part I) Wednesday 19 April 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

Open Project (part I) – Homework-3 assigned [slides]

Wednesday 3 May 17 – room VS7-A + VS7-B

Mid-term test [slides]

Requirements – Wednesday 10 May 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

More on Requirements [slides]

Monday 15 May 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A CANCELLED

Risk Management

Change Management – Wednesday 17 May 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

Change Management [slides]
- The Feature-Creep Phenomenon
- Feature Set Control
- Project Recovery

SCRUM – Monday 22 May 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

overall process [diagram]
user stories: story points and business value
roles: Scrum Team, Product Owner, and Scrum Master
Artifacts: product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Release Backlog
tools: Burndown Chart and Task Board
Meetings: sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review and sprint retrospective
Reference: P. Deemer, G. Benefield, C. Larman, B. Vodde (2009). “The Scrum Primer”.

Risk Management – Wednesday 24 May 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

risk management [slides]
- Risk Assessment: Risk Identification, Risk Analysis & Risk PrioritizationRisk Control: Risk Management Planning, Risk Resolution & Risk Monitoring

midTerm test review [marks]

Project Control – Monday 29 May 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

Project Control [slides]
- Progress Monitoring
- Status Reporting
- Earned Value Analysis [example1,example2]

People Dimension – Wednesday 31 May 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

People Dimension [slides]
- Project Roles
- Staffing profile
- Hiring
- Team models and successful projects
- Optimal team size
- Tools: RAM and Skill Matrix

Project Quality Management – Monday 5 June 17 – 10.15 – 12.15 room VS8-A

Project Quality Management [slides]
- Software Quality Assurance
- Integration
- Test planning
- Types of testing
- Test metrics
- Test Environments

Open Project (part II) – Wednesday 7 June 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B [slides]

estimating feature size
organizing the development in sprints

Open Project (part III) and Final Phases – Monday 12 June 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

open project III [slides]
- assigning resources to features
- scheduling featuresduring the sprint

homework III assignment

Final phases [slides]
- Final Steps: Migration, Roll-Out, Training,.doc, Shipping Details, and Installation
- Maintenance
- Post Project Reviews (Post-mortems)
- Success tips
- Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

Preview of the End-of-the-term test [slides]

Wednesday 15 June 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS8-B

time to work on Homework-3

Monday 19 June 17 – 10.15 – 13.00 room VS8-A

time to work on Homework-3

End-of-the-term test Wednesday 21 June 17 – 13.30 – 15.00 room VS7-A + VS7-B

End-of-the-term test [slides]

Homework Assignments

Why

Apply, in a simplified context, some of the points presented in class
Develop project related capabilities
Develop teamwork ability

What

Homework 1 (5 points): Statement of Work for your project [template]
Homework 2 (10 points): Initial Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for your project
Homework 3 (16 points): Get able to manage a project with open project

How

in order to communicate the groups, please use this form. You will recieve an email offering on our installation of Open Project. For any problem, please refer to lor.onofrio – at – gmail.com and cc emanuele.dellavalle – at – polimi.it.
work in team (up to 3 people)
Working alone is possible, but you should believe in the italian byword “Chi fa da se, fa per tre”; literally, “who works alone works for three”, more broadly, “If you want something done, do it yourself”

Due day

If you follow the classes
- Homework 1 – class 5 – 26.3.2017 evening
- Homework 2 – class 11 – 11.4.2017 evening
- Homework 3 – end of the course – 21.6.2017 morning

If you do not follow the classes
- Homework 1, 2, and 3 – 1 week before the exam session

Tests and Exams

For those that follow the classes
- Mid-term test: 3.5.2017 (1h30m) [slides]
- End-of-the-term test: 21.6.2017 (1h30m)
- If you like the mark you can register it at the first summer exam session

For those that do not follow the classes
- Any exam session will do
- The exam consists of a mid-term and a end-of-the-term tests
- it is not possible to do the two tests in separate sessions

Grading

The exam consist in a practical part (20% of the grade) and a theoretical part (80% of the grade).

The theoretical part will be evaluated with a written and (optionally) an oral test. The written test is composed of questions to be answered in free text, regarding any of the course subjects, and exercises, regarding the more technical content. The oral test consists of a discussion about the written test and the practical part of the exam. It can include also questions on any subject of the course.
The practical part consists in simulating the activities of a digital project manager. This activities will be partially conducted in class during the course and partially at home (as homework). The student will.doc those activities in written reports. The evaluation is based on the content of those reports and (optionally) on an oral discussion.

Textbooks

Recommended texts (not mandatory).

These provide two very different viewpoints: In-the-trenches vs. PMI textbook perspective

Acknowledgements

This course is largely based on Prof. John Musser class notes on “Principles of Software Project Management”. Original information is available at http://www.projectreference.com/. Reuse and republish permission was granted.