Project Management and Quality Assurance Assignment in PDF

Project Management and Quality Assurance Assignment Sample in PDF

1.0 TASK ONE: PROJECT EVALUATION

Project evaluation and control involve several steps related to the stages of the project; Discussing and defining the aims, collection of data following the objectives of the project and the subject of the evaluation, analysis and the interpretation of this data leading to informed conclusions, Amendments of the project in the light of the evidence acquired.

The economic assessment compares the proposed system’s expected cost of development and operation with its expected benefits.

Net profit = Gross Profit – Overheads – Interest Payable

Payback refers to the period required for the return on an investment to “repay” the initial investment sum.

Return of investment (ROI) the return on investment formula:

Net Present Value (NPV) discount factor = 1/ (1 + r) t

Internal Rate of Return is a rate of return used in capital budgeting to measure and compare the profitability of investments.

Project Alpha – reasonable startup cost with a productive net profit after the 5^th year. The initial investment cash was ripped during the 1st year of initiation and showed excellent output under the economic discount rate changes. The internal rate of return of the project is 31%; it is not the best project, but it can initiate with careful monitoring.

Project Iota– the highest amount of startup investment; even though the payback period was in the 2^nd year, the project is already flagged as a “risk” because of the huge amount that sank at the beginning of the project. It forwarder failed to produce a reasonable Net profit and Net present value. The project also bears the lowest internal return rate amongst the entire projects; the project should only be initiated if the projected business benefits out-weight the development, maintenance and running costs; therefore, Project Iota is liable to fail if initiated.

Project Eta – a large amount of money has been invested as a start-up investment, which can be a liability if it doesn’t pay back soon. At the end of the 5^th year, the business produces a good net profit. The payback period of the initial investment cost is at the 3^rd year of initiating the business. The net present value showed positive output even after undergoing several discount rates. Internal rate of return of 39% ranked it the best project to initiate; hence the project with an IIR greater than current interest rates will provide better returns than the bank itself.

2.0 TASK TWO: PROJECT ANALYSIS

Stages in the development of project Eta

Label	Name	Pre-requisite	Duration (weeks)
A	Analysis module 1		3
B	Analysis module 2		4
C	Analysis module 3	C	4
D	Implement module 3	B	3
E	Implement module 2	A	2
F	Implement module 1	E	5
G	Test module 2	D	4
H	Test module 3	G, H	1
I	Integrate modules 2 & 3	D, F	3
J	Integrate modules 1 & 3	J	3
K	Document module 1	J	3
L	System test	I, K	2

Project Crashing Considerations

Project crashing is a method for shortening the project duration by reducing the time of one or more of the critical project activities to less than its normal activity time. The object crashing is to reduce project duration while minimizing the cost of crashing.

The following should be considered before crashing a project;

• To reduce project duration while minimizing the cost of crashing, the project team should estimate require time, require the cost, the crash time, and the crash cost for each activity. And then, the team can estimate the total crash time, total crash cost, and the crash cost per week to reduce project duration at minimum cost.
• More resources are needed to speed up a part of a project, even if resources may be withdrawn from one facet of the project and used to speed up the section lagging behind.
• Crashing usually depends on what slack is available in a non-critical activity; thus, resources can be reassigned to critical project activity. Hence, utmost care should be taken to make sure that appropriate activities are being crashed, and that diverted resources are not causing needless risk and project scope integrity.
• Another solution may be fast-tracking, which involves overlapping tasks initially scheduled sequentially. Or optimization of schedule in other areas. For example, splitting long tasks into smaller chunks to squeeze more work into a shorter period of time, reducing lag times between tasks or reducing the scope to eliminate less important tasks.

It is, therefore, advisable to first crash activities early in the project to have a leeway to crash other activities in the later stages. Nonetheless, it is imperative that all project guidelines, resources and costs are diligently tracked and aligned with the client’s and senior managers’ aspirations.

References

St Norbert college. 2000. Stone project management. [ONLINE] Available at:http://home.snc.edu/eliotelfner/333/stones/page4.html. [Accessed 10 April 13].

ViXra.org. 2009. ViXra. [ONLINE] Available at: http://vixra.org/pdf/1008.0032v1.pdf. [Accessed 09 April 13].

pmstudent. 2013. Crashing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pmstudent.com/crashing-a-project/. [Accessed 09 April 13]

Scribd. 2013. An Explanatory note on Project Crashing. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.scribd.com/doc/44230423/Project-Crashing. [Accessed 09 April 13]

Software testing Software. 2010. All types of software testing. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.softwaretestingsoftware.com/tag/black-box-testing/. [Accessed 09 April 13].

Mr What. 2011. What is functionality testing in software testing? [ONLINE] Available at:http://mrwhatis.com/functionality-testing-in-software-testing.html. [Accessed 09 April 13].

Guru99. 2013. Tutorial 29: Black box testing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://mrwhatis.com/functionality-testing-in-software-testing.html. [Accessed 09 April 13].

QA solution hub. 2012. Black-box testing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://qualityassurance.solution-hub.net/page/8/. [Accessed 09 April 13].

Software Engineering. 2012. Can you explain what is usability testing? [ONLINE] Available at: http://soft-engineering.blogspot.com/2010/12/can-you-explain-what-is-usability.html. [Accessed 09 April 13].