Chapter 2
Discussion 1 – System View of a Project For a project to be successful, a project manager and their team must take a system view of a project. What that means is that they need to keep the big picture in mind when making discussions regarding the project. They need to truly understand how the project impacts all aspects of an organization.
In the 1950’s the term systems approach began being used to describe this approach. The systems approach integrates the holistic and analytical approach to solving complex problems. This includes the following:
Systems Philosophy: Thinking about the big picture. Understanding how all components of the project impact each other and the organization as a whole.
Systems Analysis: Problem solving approach. Understanding the scope of the system and defining issues, limitations and solutions to the problems.
Systems Management: Understanding every aspect of the system. Knowing how changes will impact the whole project and the organization.
Discussion 6 – Project Life Cycle
The project life cycle is a collection of categorized activities created to accomplish the project’s goals or objectives. These are grouped into steps called phases. A phase can be grouped by who is involved, by product, service needs or by change requests. Phases make a project easier for the project manager to measure achievement of goals and justify their decisions to make changes, corrections, or terminate a phase or the project in its entirety. A product life cycle is a theoretical idea of where a product’s sales are today and an educated guess on where the sales are heading. The five stages of a product 's life are development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. A project life cycle on the other hand, shows the steps needed to complete a project with specific targeted results. Such as enhancing, changing or stopping production of a product that has a decline in sales.
Exercise 5 –Importance of Top
References: "Difference Between a Product Life-cycle and a Project Life-cycle." Small Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2013. . "BELBIN®TEAM ROLES." BELBIN®: The Home of Belbin Team Roles. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013. . "The Magazine." MIT Sloan Management Review RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2013. . http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/how_virtual_teams_can_outperfo.html Schwalbe, Kathy. "Chapter 2." Information Technology Project Management. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Course Technology, 2011. 43-76. Print.