Petries electronics week 6
MGMT 340
Chapter 10, 1-5
CH. 10: 1- Why don’t information systems projects work out as planned? What causes the differences between the plan and reality?
The cold hard truth is that projects always look better on paper; this is because in the development phase they are still lacking the human element. When projects are actually implemented you have to consider laziness, incompetence, and level of knowledge. In short you have to account for human error. There are systems glitches that can be unexpected as well. Just as with people, software does not always perform up to expectations. Files can get corrupted and will not run as planned. You can never plan for everything but through risk management you can help to mitigate the impact.
CH. 10: 2- Why is it important to document change requests? What happens if a development team doesn’t?
In the business world documentation is probably the most important resource a project team can have. First, it provides something to look back upon in the event of a mistake. You can learn from previous failures with proper documentation. Second, particularly with change requests, it helps to keep people accountable. As a project manager you can pull up the proper documentation and be able to say that this is what was agreed upon and from there you can decide whether or not those expectations were met. Formal documentation of change requests is similar to a contract.
CH. 10: 3- When a project is late, do you think that adding more people to do the work helps or not? Justify your answer.
Adding more people to a project is just asking for trouble. For one, more people means more people to get in the way. Brooks law states that adding more people to a late project only makes the project later. This is caused by two things. First, people require time to get productive and adjust to the project. Brooks calls this, “ramp up time”. Second, communication overheads increase as the number of people increases. This means that people
Chapter 10, 1-5
CH. 10: 1- Why don’t information systems projects work out as planned? What causes the differences between the plan and reality?
The cold hard truth is that projects always look better on paper; this is because in the development phase they are still lacking the human element. When projects are actually implemented you have to consider laziness, incompetence, and level of knowledge. In short you have to account for human error. There are systems glitches that can be unexpected as well. Just as with people, software does not always perform up to expectations. Files can get corrupted and will not run as planned. You can never plan for everything but through risk management you can help to mitigate the impact.
CH. 10: 2- Why is it important to document change requests? What happens if a development team doesn’t?
In the business world documentation is probably the most important resource a project team can have. First, it provides something to look back upon in the event of a mistake. You can learn from previous failures with proper documentation. Second, particularly with change requests, it helps to keep people accountable. As a project manager you can pull up the proper documentation and be able to say that this is what was agreed upon and from there you can decide whether or not those expectations were met. Formal documentation of change requests is similar to a contract.
CH. 10: 3- When a project is late, do you think that adding more people to do the work helps or not? Justify your answer.
Adding more people to a project is just asking for trouble. For one, more people means more people to get in the way. Brooks law states that adding more people to a late project only makes the project later. This is caused by two things. First, people require time to get productive and adjust to the project. Brooks calls this, “ramp up time”. Second, communication overheads increase as the number of people increases. This means that people