Project Management Framework: Business Case / Why Do a Project?

• Market Demand
• Strategic opportunity or business need
• Customer request
• Technological advance
• Legal requirement
• Ecological impact
• Social need

Project Management Framework: Project Stakeholders

• Individuals and organisations involved in the project
• Those who will be directy and indirectly impacted
• Stakeholders should be identified throughout the project
• They may have a positive or negative influence on the outcome
• Stakeholder influence goes down as the project progresses
• Key stakeholders include
• Project Manager
• Customer / User
• Performing Organization
• Project team members
• Project management team
• Sponsor
• Influencers
• PMO

Project Management Framework: Project Life Cycle / Project Phase

Typical Project Life Cycle

• Projects are divided into phases.
• The project will have at least a beginning, intermediate and ending phase.
• Number of phases depends on complexity and size of the project. Phase Examples - Analysis, Development.
• Reviews are conducted at the end of each phase to measure performance.
• Phase end reviews allows to decide if the project should continue.
• The collection of phases is called project life cycle.
• The project life cycle defines the beginning and end of project.
• Fast tracking is running the project phases concurrently. Example of phases - Analysis, Design etc. 

Characteristics of Project Phase

• Project Phase are marked by completion of one or more deliverables.
• Deliverables are reviewed and formally accepted by customer at phase end. 
• Phase end reviews are also called phase exits, stage gates or kill points. 
• Rolling wave planning summarizes the future phases at high level. 
• Project phases are collectively called project life cycle.

Project Phase Relationships

• Sequential: a phase can only start once the previous phase has completed. 
• Overlapping: a phase starts prior to the completion of the previous phase.
• Iterative: only one phase is planned out at any given time and the planning for the next phase is carried out as work progresses on the current phase.

Project Management Framework: The Triple Constraint Theory

The Triple Constraint Theory

• The Triple Constraints are scope, time and resources, with it all centred around quality. 
• If you take away from one of these three areas, it affects the other two, in addition to quality of the deliverable. Thus the name - The Triple Constraint Theory. 
• For example:
• If you need to make the schedule shorter, you may need more resources to accomplish this and the quality of the end project may decrease.
• If you need to add this to the scope of the project, then your schedule and resources will be affected because you’ll need more time to complete the new scope and possibly more resources to do the task. 
• If you lose resources on a project, it will affect your schedule and scope because you may not be able to get all the anticipated tasks completed in the given time with less resources. 

Project Management Framework: Project vs Operation

Project	Operation
Temporary	Ongoing
Unique	Repetitive
Closes after attaining the objectives	Objective is to sustain business
Prototyping the new Car Model	Assembly line production

What is Project Management?

• Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. 
• Accomplished through the application and integration of PM processes - Initiating, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing
• Establishing clear project objectives and requirements
• Balancing the competing demands of scope, time, cost and quality 
• Manage uncertain events

Project Management Framework: Definition of Project

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.

• A temporary endeavor - means that every project has a definite beginning and end.
• Unique means that the product or service or result is different from other product or service or result. 
• Progressively elaborated - proceeding in steps.

Examples of Projects

• Designing a new bridge / highway
• Developing a new Drug
• Conduct Elections for the State / Country
• Managing Marriage
• Designing a new Automobile
• Building hospital for the community

Quotes along the Project Management path

"Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together" - James Cash Penney

Portfolio, Program and Project Management

Portfolio - Collection of programs which may or may not be related. They are all part of an organization goals / plans. An organisation maintains a portfolio of all the programs that it has undertaken in order to meet their strategic business goals. The portfolio handles the governance of the project lifecycle, maintains the programs standards, a document repository for all the paper-work generated by the programs and any portfolio management tools.

Program - Group of related projects that are grouped together. Doing them together provides a benefit to the organization (or for whatever reason, to the organization, it just makes sense). Programs are used to categorize works to smaller set of related projects. These projects may be done sequentially or parallel.

Project - A temporary enterprise that will produce a deliverable, service or result. Projects are how the new work in a organization gets done. Projects can be as complex as writing a new software as Operating System, building a high-rise office building at down town metroplex or as simple as finding an answer to a question or making a spaghetti dinner to your family.

When organization combine Portfolio, Program and Project management under one organization umbrella, this is call Organizational Project Management (OPM). OPM is the highest level of project management and it provides a systematic management approach to projects, programmes and portfolios to achieve organization overall strategic goal.

Portfolio Management, Project Management and Project Management are different and may require separate skillsets and authority roles. Defining them may be a little complicated as these terms and roles may mean different things in different industries. Regardless of what these terms are called in any industry, they all use the fundamental discipline of project management as a way to successfully meet their business needs and objectives.

Installing Selenium IDE

Goal of this post is to walkthrough on how to install Selenium IDE. 

Note: Selenium IDE is a firefox plugin, means it will only work for firefox as of now. 

1. Goto seleniumhq.org/doc/.

2. Navigate to 2nd chapter - Selenium-IDE > Installing the IDE

3. Under the Installing the IDE topic, click on the "downloads page" link. 

4. In the download page, click on the latest release for Selenium IDE. 

5. Firefox will prevent the installation to proceed directly as a prevention of malware, etc. However, as we are aware that this is a Selenium installation that we initiated. Just click "Allow" button to proceed. 

6. The package will be downloaded and then a software installation pop-up will prompt displaying the add-on that will be installed along. Click "Install" to proceed.

7. In order for the installation to be completed, you need to restart the firefox. Click on "Restart Now" when the pop up below display. 

8. Once the installation completed and firefox restarted, firefox will display the latest release note page. 

9. To invoke the Selenium IDE tool. Goto to Firefox menu > Web Developer > Selenium IDE. 

10. Selenium IDE is now installed successfully and ready for usage. 

ref:web_app_testing_w_seleniem-Udemy-Lec4

Learning Android 101 - Q&A

Android has always been something that catching my interest. While my work and life schedule doesn't allow me to venture much into it (yet). I enjoy researching about it on and off, these are some of the Q&A gathered during the process. Let's note:-