Sample Project Plan

This page presents the results of planning performed for a mythical sample organization.

The project plan presented here make use of modern project management best practices such as organizing the entire project as a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) with phases at the highest (top) level:

• 1. Initiation (Inception)
• 2. Planning / Design (Elaboration)
• 3. Execution / Development (Construction)
• 4. Close-out / Transition (Launch)

Tasks in the Gantt charts shown below for each of these phases are based on the generic explanations of Options for Building Websites

Site Map  
About this site  

Sound: Hit and cheer

Introduction

Gantt charts and reports for this project were created from this "mpp" file created using Microsoft Project (MSProject) 2003 software after some customizations:
• Summary bars are illustrated with white instead of solid black bars.
• On Gantt charts, start dates have been added to the left of task blue bars.
• On Gantt charts, resource names have been added to the right of task blue bars.
• Maps controlling the format of reports have been changed to ensure consistence of column names and arrangement among reports.
• Since MSProject doesn't total items on its reports, totals from Gantt charts on this webpage are summarized in the Top Level Tasks List (TLT) report generated by MSProject. This we nickname the "Phase Summary" report because the top level of the WBS are phase names.

  Totals from that page for the entire project is:

  Duration (Calendar)	Start - Finish (Schedule)	%Complete (So Far)	Cost	Work (Hours)
  77.5 days	11/20/01 to 3/8/02	3%	$57,320	626 hrs

• The above information is given for each Resource in the Who Does What (WDW) report. Note that MSProject does not maintain "Duration" by Resource.

• The resources associated with each task in the WBS for this project is presented by the report titled "Tasks" generated from the "Task and resource PivotTable" map. We nickname this the "Pivot report" because it has complete details, allowing it to be coverted it into a Pivot Table within Microsoft Excel for further exploration.

Phase 1. Initiation / Conceptualization (Inception)

Concept Development: Project Strategies

Purpose

The purpose of the website being developed is to
help potential users (managers and technicans at non-profit organizations) make informed decisions about fulfilling their office automation needs. If appropriate, encourage prospects to become users of the system offered by the production website, which has a different URL.

The site being built also aims to convert visitors into volunteers and donors by informing and motivating them.

Stakeholders

Those involved in the project include:
• The Agency Director, the key decision maker for this project.
• Agency Managers, who will provide input, then review and approve the site.
• Agency Constituants and potential users of the site. Some of them will be part of the pilot group and participate in “friendly user” testing before going live.
• Potential Volunteers to work on the website.

Since they are over 400 miles away, communication with them would be only through email and phone.

Organization

This project is for Office Please Foundation, which inherited assets from the Office Please corporation (“OP”) which closed when they lost their funding during the 2001 downturn.

Some former members of OP continue to support the product on a voluntary basis to assist the non-profit organizations that use the product.

Nonprofits use the OfficePlease website to perform administrative tasks. The value is that users do not need to spend hundreds on Microsoft Office.

Initial Requirements

Each organization has a set of biases and limitations. For example, an organization with all Sun servers may not need nor want to evaluation alternative operating systems. Here are some areas:

1. 1.A. Executive Requirements -- Risks, Tracking, Productivity Metrics
2. 1.B. Business Benefits and Goals (What's the pay-back to investors)?
3. 1.C. Implementation Requirements -- Marketing, Advertising, Sales, HR, Finance
4. 1.D. Functional Requirements -- What should it accomplish for consumers/users?
5. 1.E. Infrastructure Requirements -- Reuse, Performance & Scalability
6. 1.F. Technical Analysis and Design -- What tools are needed? How do they work together?

Each of these are explained in its own section below.

1.A. Executive Requirements

A website would take the place of the expense, hassle, and delays of product brochures. The link will point potential users to the link. As new features are added, site visitors would see them listed.

One concern is a conumdrome -- the site requires the very technology offered to potential customers -- web access. If people can get on the web, they wouldn't need the site.

However, the site is also intended to motivate and coordinate volunteers (staff), to serve the administrative aspects of the organization.

The questions used to develop this section

1.B. Business Benefits and Goals (What's the pay-back to investors):

The closest Business Model for this endeavor (as described in professor Michase Rappa's Digital Enterprise site) is a Voluntary Contributor model. Visitors would not be charged for content on the site, but they can contribute. The website can also called be called a “vanity” site.

Initially, the site will reduce demands on the director's time to answer the same basic questions of inquirers. One concern is that the site may reduce phone contact necessary to build a personal rapport required to build a donor/volunteer base. Those who only read about the organization are less likely to help than those who actually talk to a person.

In the second stage of the site, donations could be accepted online 24x7. The amount of money collected this way is not anticipated to be large. So the donor link may send the donor to a site that performs that function for many organizations.

The questions used to develop this section

1.C. Implementation Requirements

The availability of the website will be advertised. Emails will be sent out.

Ideally, emails will use the new website address. This is a big part of the requirement and the project.

Device interoperability:

• Printer parallel port 1,2
• Serial port 1,2,3,4
• USB port
• Firewire (IEEE 1394)

...

1.D. Customer Functionality Requirements -- What it has to accomplish for consumers/users:

The design of the website is based on review of other sites in the same industry and similar technologies in other industries.

Others in the Workflow software market

The acknowledged originator of workflow software is Costa Mesa, Calif.-based FileNet Corp. with its flagship product, Visual WorkFlo, a dominant program that offers tools to both design and build a full workflow system. "Ensemble" is its entry-level product at $299 per seat.
• Lotus Domino server / Notes client, with its proprietary database.
• InConcert (Xerox);
• Action Technologies
• SAP offers a workflow engine
• PeopleSoft.
• Incodea
• Cold
• Keyflow from Keyfile rides on top of the Microsoft Exchange platform, as does Adapsys
• DMOZ list of products

  Others serving customers in the NonProfit industry

  Other web service providers

Graphical User Interface for Websites
• Tutorial on Workflow systems at George Mason University's HyperLearning Center
• The Workflow Imperative by Thomas Koulopolous (John Wiley & Sons, 1997)
• Business Process Implementation: Building Workflow Systems by Michael Jackson and Graham Twaddle (Addison-Wesley, 1997).
• Guide to Workflow Software: A Visual Comparison of Today's Leading Products by Bruce Silver (BIS Strategic Decisions, 1995)

1.E. Requirements for Hardware and Software Tools

• Operating System
• Hosting
• Web Servers
• Content
• Interactivity
• Personalization

.

Options for Web Server Operating System Software

The website will use technologies the existing team is already familiar with: Microsoft Windows NT/2000

.

Options for Hosting Web Sites

The website will be hosted on machines in the same space as production servers.

Web servers will use redundant RAID-5 drives. The two servers will use Cluster Services to hot swap with each other.

.

Options for Web Server Software

To keep things simple, the website will be built with HTML4 and CSS for cross-browser compatiblity among browsers (IE 4 and Netscape 4.7 and above).

In the second stage, the site will have a Verisign certificate for HTTPS/SSL for login pages containing user passwords.

.

Options for Creating Web Content

In the second stage, the web server backend will make use of Java2 and BEA Weblogic for visitor personalization.

.

Options for Providing Interactivity

This website will use these ways to add interactivity:
• Provide forms for users to fill out. Most "free" websites help you send form input as email to webmasters.
• Use animated graphics by creating/using graphic files which show variations of similar graphics quickly in succession (but not in reaction to something a unique computer user does).
• Code JavaScript which only runs on the user's browser (on the "client" side).
• “server-side” code for processing by web servers:
  • Not CGI
  • Active Server Pages

• Java applets (used by Front Page)

• For streaming sound and video in a continuous flow using the following products:
  • Microsoft Wav files for short sounds
  • Real Audio files from a Real Audio/Video server (requiring a separate license).
  • .AVI files

Options for interactivity

Options for Providing Personalization

People don't want clutter.

Custom-construct web pages tailtors to the needs and desires of each user:

• Offer related topics based on prior selections.
• Make offers related to user decisions, such as selections and items purchased.
• Send follow-up emails with additional information related to user selections.

Personalization Software Vendors

1.F. Infrastructure Support Requirements

Considering the costs and levels of acceptable risk, computer operations can commit to a "Reliable" level of service.

1.1.3 & 4 Storyboard

Here the project team lays out the basic elements of the website, and map out how they fit together. The deliverable out of this step is usually a flowchart of user interactions (Site Map).
• Referrals from prior URL's
• Home Page / Welcome
• Table of Contents hierarical outline

This is defined by looking both inward at internal desires and outward at the web sites of other organizations:

• in the same industry (direct competitors)
• in the same function serving other customer industries (professional colleagues)

Levels of Service defined

1.2 Risk Evaluation

This is a critical aspect of the project, when the project manager and his/her team defines the various risks faced by the project. This is the point when the project team balances time, cost, and quality tradeoffs.
• Lowest Common Denominator for common usage or State-of-the-art?
• Availability of personnel and resources: How much of this project have to share people and equipment with other projects?
• Expectations of users: How judgemental or hostile are users? If the site is aimed at artists, it may require more sophisticated artistic work than other sites.
• Security: Site offering financial transactions require more security than pure informational sites.
• Methodology:

Prototyping

To reduce development time, this project will, whenever feasible, use pre-built components from other sites.

Risk Management

Phase 2. Design (Elaboration)

To handle complexity efficiently, this project uses an Object Oriented design approach

More to come (revise Gantt) ...

Book: Applying OMT: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Using the Object Modeling Technique by Kurt W. Derr

Phase 3. Development (Construction)

Construction: Bulk Programming

To achieve a radically fast development schedule, this project uses what is called the extreme programming approach — where working prototypes are refined with incremental additions integrated on a daily basis throughout the life of the project.

Tasks traditionally reserved for a later phase, such as programming and performance tuning, will occur as small parts of programs are solidified. In fact, teams of two programmers work side-by-side

Progress is tracked by the amount of functionality available to users and the back-office operations group. and defined by Use Cases

Functionality	Performance Metric
Default home page from URL	Network Latency baseline
Menu Navigation	Menu Transition baseline
Data entry forms and database processing	Database Response baseline
Interactive Editing & Error Correction	Mixed Client Operations
Imports, Exports, Reports processing	Batch file processing baseline
Background processing (Backups, Restores, DB Reorgs)	Operations run time baseline

Reports may be categorized by the complexity of data access:

• Physical List
• Single Keyed Reports
• Multiple Keyed Reports
• Foreign Key Reports

...

Functionality Testing

Programmers rush to complete their Initial Handoff, they then make refinements.

QA Test Plan

Tester plan their approach using design documents.

QA Test Suites

An important part of the extreme programming approach is that as each bug is found, automated tests are written to quickly detect the same bug in the future.

Configure QA environment

Bug Database

Writing Defect (Bug) Reports

Usability Testing

This includes testing of browser and plug-in compatibility.

Handoff Installation

Scalability and Performance Tuning

Performance timings are obtained for each functional part of the system as development is completed. Several aspects of performance are analyzed: Memory consumption, memory leaks, and racing conditions. Server failover testing is also performed. Security testing is also performed here.

Milestone: PreLaunch Decision

...

Phase 4. Launch (Transition)

1. Acquire Training and Support Capabilities

   This begins when the project is approved. This includes establishment of office space and telecom facilities; recruiting, and hiring of support staff.

2. Train Training and Support Capabilities

   This begins when the production environment is stable.

3. Internal Announcement/Promotion

   Party and celebration planning.

4. Delivery to Customer

   This includes installation of production software at customer sites. Examples are remote administration client software to control SQL databases, etc. This is needed to establish a platform for user training.

5. User Training

   • Course developers
   • Learning Objectives
   • Course Design
   • Product Documentation
   • Curriculum Materials
   • Training facilities
   • Instructors
   • Training logistics (scheduling, room reservations, evaluations, etc.)
   • Phone Support
   
   

6. External Announcement/Publicity

   • Getting noticed by web crawlers (keywords in META tags)
     • Submit-It.
   • No cooperative advertising or banners for external sites will be shown on this site.
   
   

7. Initial Operation and Maintenance

   This includes switching of DNS entries to activate the site.

8. Review Initial Webtrends stats

   This allows tuning of performance in each area: marketing, telecommunications network performance, and site performance. The methodology includes consolidation of logs, summary of data, charting, and comparison of actual versus baseline performance.

9. Post-Implementation Analysis

   This includes interviewing of all those involved in the project and impacted by it.

10. Post-Implementation Review (Budget vs. Actual, Traffic Stats, Lessons Learned, Extensions)

11. Upgrading (next cycle of phases)