INF11103 Assessment Brief Proforma 1. Module Number, Year and Trimester 2. Module title 3. Module leader 4. Tutor with responsibility for this Assessment 5. Assessment 6. Weighting 7. Assessment size limit 8. Learning Outcomes 9. Submission Deadline 10/ "Fit to Sit" and extensions. 11. Arrangements for submission 12. Assessment Regulations 13. Assessment Requirements 14. Special instructions 15. Return of work and feedback 16. Assessment criteria Pritam Chita INF11103, 2023/34, Tri-2 Management of Software Projects Pritam Chita Pritam Chita Edinburgh Napier UNIVERSITY (Students first point of contact) Coursework Assessment One Management of Software Projects 40% of module assessment. (Assessment 2 addresses 60% of module assessment) 2500 words (+/- 10%) LO1, LO2, LO3 3pm on 22nd March 2024 (Friday - week 10). Submissions after the deadline are capped at P1. Submissions more than 5 days late are capped at F5. Deadline extensions may only be given by the module leader. If you are not "Fit to Sit", you should submit the appropriate request form – Extenuating circumstances All assessments MUST be submitted using Turnitin on Moodle. By submitting the assessment, you are confirming that it is your own work. See below. All assessments are subject to the University Regulations. The University rules on Academic Integrity apply. See below. Feedback on submissions will normally be provided within three (3) working weeks after submission date. General feedback will be offered to the class at the same time. See below. 1 Assessment One - January 2024 INF11103 Assessment Introduction This assessment takes the form of the management of the first part of a software development project. Importantly its objective is to address the investigation, analysis, design and planning aspect of a project only. The aim is to reduce uncertainty as far as is possible. There is no coding or programming involved and the focus is always on the “management" aspects of software delivery. Management of Software Projects The assessment will require you to generate a portfolio of management & technical documents. You will have to cope with and address typical problems associated with software development projects such as uncertain and limited information and difficult and fuzzy situations. Assessment Scenario Advanced Management Training (AMT) is a commercial training company based in central Scotland. It has successfully offered a wide variety of commercial management courses. It now seeks to leverage its presence in the marketplace and take the next step of expanding its course offerings and aims to become a leading centre of project management training in the central belt of Scotland. To assist in this endeavour senior management have established that marketing and promotion is going to be key. Fundamental to the promotional elements is the establishment of a comprehensive web site that would provide the following basic functionality. 1. Display details of all courses run. 2. Display status of courses such as open, closed or booked up. 3. Provide details on the topic of each course as well as days & exams etc. 4. Provide pricing, venue details and physical locations (there are 3 venues in Scotland Aberdeen, Edinburgh & Glasgow). 5. There are five courses that are run at the moment PRINCE2, Programme Management, Management of Risk, Change Management and ITIL. You have been appointed Project Manager for this task and your time & cost is to be paid for separately and is not included in any part of this exercise. AMT have limited funds for expansion and the business case will be finely balanced. In order to mitigate risk and minimise expenditure, AMT have decided that the delivery team will be a group of their own software developers and business analysts who will work part-time on the project The first step towards the production of a fully functioning web site is to reduce uncertainty by undertaking substantial research, analysis and design as well as planning things out for the delivery stage of the project (similar to combining the SU/IP steps in PRINCE2). The project will be delivered according to the usual mix of conventional project management (PRINCE2) and agile methods which is a typical arrangement in industry today. Pritam Chita 2 Assessment One - January 2024 INF11103 Scenario: Required Project Deliverables Table 1: Client Requirements & Key Advisory Points. No. Description 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Full conformance with all usability criteria. A Usability Report is required which outlines these criteria and shows how the proposed web site conforms to them. Management of Software Projects A Report is required indicating your recommendations for a cost-effective hosting and maintenance solution that the client can use. Web site pages should use whichever style sheet and logos you wish. It's up to you to make it as user friendly and attractive as possible, Client is very open to layout, style and other suggestions regarding the web-site interface as well as functionality. You are the technical expert – use your knowledge and skills acquired. An administrator facility must be provided to easily update the web site with new courses etc. This should be password protected. Also, an appropriate level administrator manual (Report) is required so that the non-technical client can administer the web-site on his own without further assistance. Web site elements and functionality should be tested on all normal browsers - Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari. Effort should be expended on testing this and a fully tested system is a significant deliverable. Web site should accept credit card and PayPal payment methods. Web site should allow potential course delegates to register for a course. To do this they would first have to complete a registration form on-line and only thereafter register for a particular course. The business needs these important details before letting people book a course, How the web-site could be optimised for Google rankings should be addressed. So if a potential delegate types in Edinburgh + PRINCE2 then how can this web site be the first one on the Google page? A Report is required to show how this would work and what steps have been taken up to this point and what would need to be done further to achieve this objective. There are 3 venues – Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Each course identified above is run once a month at each venue — preferably on different weeks of the month - although some overlap is inevitable. A paper registration form in pdf format is required. This is so a potential delegate (who may not want to book online) could print-off, complete and then post in a registration form The web site administrator should be able to view the booking status of all courses. This means he/she should be able to see how many people are booked onto all the provided courses at all locations. When a potential delegate books a course then he/she should receive an email acknowledgment from the system and this should also be copied to the administrator. Each course can have a maximum of 15 delegates and needs a minimum of 5 in order to run. When a booking is made then a counter value for the 15 maximum number attending the course should be decremented by one. All courses have a two week cut-off point where if less than 5 delegates have booked then the course should be cancelled. The administrator should receive an automatic warning three days before this two week deadline occurs. The course administrator can then contact any booked delegates to inform them verbally of the situation. You should ensure that all data is validated i.e. no course should start on the 30th February; no delegate should be booked on to a non-existent course; no course should start on a Sunday etc. Also, the administrator should not be able to easily delete a course accidentally if delegates are booked on to it. There have to be validation checks. Course venues are hosted by a service company Regus (http://www.regus.co.uk/) and their locations should be easily identified and displayed on a web site page using Google maps etc. A well-structured discussion forum for registered potential and past delegates would be useful to discuss any course topics and areas of interest. Additionally, a news function that provides the latest specialist information about the course topics as well as reduced offers and discounts on courses would be of interest and could run as a banner or a side bar on the web site. Pritam Chita 3 Assessment One - January 2024 INF11103 Scenario: Delivery Team 1. The delivery team is a mix of software developers and business analysts who actually have very little specific web development experience. Most of their expertise is in the audio-visual, multi-media & games domain which may indeed come into play at some point in the future when the company aims take its courses online (but not part of this project). Management of Software Projects 2. The delivery team are extremely busy, and they can only each give a maximum of five hours a week towards this project and so you have decided to recruit five of them. 3. You estimate that on this basis the project will take six weeks and to help identify a realistic budget you have decided to cost their time on the project as follows. Systems Analyst (1) - £120 per hour. Business Analyst (2) - £110 per hour. Software Developer (2) - £90 per hour. Whatever is produced by the developers will be treated as an initial version capable of extension and further development. This budget is not enough to produce a full-blown multi- function web-site but should be enough to provide all the required functionality elements that the organisation needs to have in the immediate future. Scenario: Senior Management - AMT Roles and Personnel 1. Chief Executive Officer: Jack Daniels. Jack started the company a few years ago as he led the spin-out from a large organisation he had previously worked for. He has a broad view of the business and the industry in which it operates. He is very interested in the whole training and education market and is particularly focussed on where the future of commercial training lies in online and virtual environments. As CEO he is in overall charge of the company and its resources and objectives. He is extremely busy horizon scanning and dealing with the strategic aspects of the business. 2. Training Delivery Director: Jed I. Knight Jed oversees the smooth and effective delivery of all training courses within Amaflix. He has an eye on what the market is likely to need in the future and will assess training requirements as and when they come in. The proposed web-site will streamline much of his business function. 3. Marketing Director: Rollo Koaster: Rollo has been with the company for 2 years and is charged with building the profile of the business with both public customers and with large organisations who have diverse training needs. She has authority to commit resources from the business marketing budget. She also is charged with monitoring the expected benefits from the web-site and is keen to ensure value for money. 4. IT Director: Harry Driver: Harry is responsible for the IT function that looks after all the IT and information systems that the company relies on and which needs to be constantly updated and upgraded from the legacy systems that the Amaflix inherited from the host organisation. There are a varied mix of about 20 employees within this department that look after networks, systems and application. Pritam Chita 4 Assessment One - January 2024 INF11103 5. Finance Director: Kash Register Kash is responsible for all the financial accounting processes within the organisation both manual and electronic. She is responsible for ensuring the efficient and cost- effective running of the organisation. 6. Director of R&D: Chrystal Ball Chrystal manages an innovative and highly motivated team that are constantly looking to push the boundaries of the electronic delivery of education and training. Currently they are focussed on mobile devices such as smart phones using both IOS and Android and are also exploring cloud-based delivery approaches as well as gaming and virtual reality. Chrystal has an excellent understanding of IT systems overall and their ability to deliver business benefit. 7. TechIT Account Manager: lan Boring. lan works for TechIT who are a major supplier of IT solutions and services that Amaflix turn to on many occasions. Ian has managed the Amaflix account for several years and has also often provided consultancy and feasibility assessments. Ian's organisation has all the necessary skills and resources to deliver web-based projects - for a fee. Assessment Deliverables The output of this exercise will be the production of plans & documents preparing for project delivery and the output of your endeavours will be a Project Brief type of document. At no point in time will you need to develop software or assemble any of the identified deliverables in the scenario. You are researching and planning the delivery of these items only. The deliverable is a Project Brief to be presented to the Project Board for their approval before the project can proceed to the delivery stage. The constituent elements of the Project Brief are listed below and templates for some of these sections are available separately on Moodle. As these templates have been provided, they MUST be used. Also, please note that these templates and the Project Brief itself may differ from any that you may have encountered in your previous experiences. Remember this assessment is about researching, analysing, designing and planning project delivery. Management of Software Projects A. Introduction An introductory narrative providing a justification and explanation of your work and the benefits of producing it. B. Project Management Team Structure: Examine the above AMT Senior Management Roles & Personnel section. Using the recommended PRINCE2 management structure construct a project management team fulfilling the following roles. It is not enough to simply insert names & roles for each position. You have to provide a justification & explanation of your selection as to why the chosen individual is the best person for these roles and what equips them for that role. The roles to be filled are: ● Pritam Chita ● ● All three roles on the Project Board Project Assurance role. Project Support role. C. Business Case: Use the templates provided in the Templates doc on Moodle. This business case should be from the organisation's perspective for going ahead with a web presence option instead of some other activity to boost sales. It should be between one & two pages of A4 in length. Essentially it should make some assessment as to the likely benefit versus the cost of delivery of the project as well as other elements (see Assessment One - January 2024 5