What Is a Project Management Life Cycle?
Need
to review project management life cycle for an information management
strategic plan and want some practical timesaving suggestions?
A project management life cycle is a set of standards and processes
,
which are adopted by IT departments to ensure successful implementation
of application software.
These processes usually include a series of phases, which include:
- Requirements Analysis;
- Design;
- Development;
- Testing;
- Release to production; and
- Production support/maintenance.
Types of projects
There are many types of software
development projects including:
- Management information systems;
- Weapon support systems (for military
applications);
- Process control systems (for energy
sector applications); and
- Computer operating systems.
Although
all types of software development follow some form of methodology, we
are primarily interested in the lifecycle
for:
- Management
information
systems (which support business functions); and
- Information
management or data management software development, which support business
intelligence applications.
How are information management
projects different?
There are several key differences between information management
projects and traditional projects such as:
- Requirements
analysis,
traditional
software development projects are primarily concerned with
defining business
functional requirements.
Information
management projects are primarily concerned with analyzing
data quality and defining data
requirements.
These
are “data
centric” projects
and it is critical that data
requirements
be completely understood during the requirements
analysis phase.
Information management projects do
have some functional requirements
such as:
- Convert existing reports;
- Report distribution; or
- Allowing users to create master copies of
queries which might be used by other people.
In
general, however, information
management project requirements are really data requirements.
- Architecture and design,
traditional
software architecture and design involves designing software to satisfy
functional requirements
Information
management architecture and design mostly involves database
design and
data movement. Usually
data is extracted from
source
systems and moved into a staging area. It is cleansed,
integrated
and subsequently moved into a data warehouse or data mart.
The
key
difference
is that information management architecture and design
is concerned primarily with data structure and design and data movement.
- Testing,
traditional
software development projects require extensive testing to ensure that
the solution meets
business functional requirements.
Information
management projects require extensive
technical testing; including
regression testing, data load testing, and load optimization to ensure
that large volumes of data can be loaded within the “load window”
They
also need to test technical processes like load managers
and data warehouse managers and these kinds of tests are
frequently
best handled
by data architects, database administrators and date movement
specialists.
- Release
to production. It
is imperative that data centric projects test the “release
process”.
Data
structures may change with new information management software and
the process to back-up data, change the data structures, and reload the
data needs to be carefully
tested to ensure that the release process
and instructions work flawlessly.
Data
centric solutions also may
involve new data interfaces. While
these can
be tested in a test environment, it is vital that they be tested as
part of a release process to ensure no problems occur during the
release.
It is critical to test the overall
release process
prior to actually moving code into production and this testing must
involve the production
support staff that will be responsible for the
release.
Roles
and responsibilities
Information
management projects are technical projects. These should be managed by
a data
architect (or
technical architect) with
sufficient knowledge to provide technical direction to the
entire
team, and with sufficient
management experience to handle project management.
On very large projects, it is
desirable to consider having a project
administrator support the technical architect.
The rest of the team should be
comprised of an appropriate mix of
information management professionals.
Project management life cycle
checklist
I
generally look at some of the following to see what changes might be
required to ensure a successful information management project
management life cycle.
Is the
current
software development
lifecycle methodology a waterfall approach? Is there any flexibility
for
things like:
- Iterative development?
- Prototype development?
Do
existing project deliverable templates consider data centric
things
like data models, source to target mapping, data quality
analysis?
Can
they be augmented to add special
templates
required for business intelligence?
Does
the requirement
analysis phase include provision for gathering data
requirements in sufficient detail to commence architecture
and design?
Is
data
quality
analysis part of the
requirements analysis phase?
Does
the test planning process account
for
testing
large volumes of data?
Does
the
release test
process adequately
account for data centric issues?
Are
project roles and responsibilities
clearly
defined?
Can
roles and responsibilities be modified to incorporate
changes
required for
information
management projects?
Does the
project management life cycle clearly define information management
specific project management phases
?
Does a project
management framework exist?
Are project
information management job descriptions available and consistent with
roles and responsibilities?
Are project
management procedures clearly documented and followed?
Does a project
management checklist exist?
Can project
management methodologies or project management method be modified to
incorporate information management requirements?
Can the
software development life cycle (SDM) be be modified to incorporate
information management requirements?
Is a data
warehouse methodology included in the project management framework?
Are data
warehouse projects and data warehouse lifecycle part of the project
management framework?
Are project
management processes clearly defined?
Do the project
human resource management plans specify roles and job decriptions needed for data warehouse projects?
Are project
management best practices documented?
Are project
management practices followed?
Do the
best practices specify practical
project management techniques?
Do project
management standards exit?
Are information
management projects included in the project management framework?
Do project
management techniques account for information management specifics such
as integration testing?
Summary
Traditional
software development lifecycle projects create solutions to meet
business functions.
Information
management projects create data solutions and are highly technical in
nature—It is important to consider the difference in order to assess
what, if any, changes are required to the existing project management
life cycle to ensure successful information management implementation.
