IT project management: start from the discussion about "supper"

Nowadays, project management systems in IT industry are emerging in endlessly. All kinds of training courses and certifications mushroom, which forecasts a very prosperous future.

IT project management no longer denotes the inscrutable theories and sparkling certificates, but it becomes a basic element in daily work and penetrates into our daily life. Even everyday activities such as cooking and shopping will be conducted with something related to project management.

It is unbelievable? Please carefully recall the procedure of cooking in our daily life, which is a standard example of project management. First of all, according to the definition of project, "A project is a one-time effort to produce a unique product, service or task." A supper should be prepared with uniqueness, independency and non-repeatability, so it is a typical project. Secondly, the ideas and spirits of project management are implemented in every step of cooking. Next, we will take "dinner project" for example to show how the profound PM theory strutting its stuff through the most common thing in everyday life.

There are many systems of project management theories, but here we will only analyze through the major three theories. First, let's see what the "dinner project" will be in different theoretical models.

According to the software lifecycle theory, "dinner project" can be divided into several phases as the followings:

1. Project initiation: decide to dine at home tonight and make a rough time schedule;

2. Requirement survey: ask what the families want to eat for dinner;

3. Requirement analysis: decide dishes by thinking about the factors of season, weather and weight control, etc;

4. System design: design the main ingredients and spices for each dish;

5. Development: go sourcing for preparation and then cook;

6. System test: have a taste of the dish;

7. Implementation: lay the table for the dinner;

8. Project closure: clean up the plates.

According to the theory system of CMMI (Level 2), the "dinner project" can be divided into these following process domains:

1. PP (Project Plan): design the dinner menu, ingredients needed and a rough time schedule;

2. PMC (Project Monitor and Control): check whether the actual work is done as the original schedule after finishing each task, if not, make the adjustment accordingly;

3. RM (Requirement Management): manage the requirements of the families for dishes to ensure every requirement is managed, satisfied, canceled or changed;

4. CM (Configuration Management): manage every completed product, half completed product and by-product during the process of preparing for the dinner;

5. MA (Measurement and Analysis): estimate, track, measure and analyze the index of raw materials, working hours, products and etc;

6. PPQA (Process and Product Quality Assurance): evaluate the preparation process regularly to ensure it is in terms of the schedule and every result from each phase is in accord with the quality requirement;

7. SAM (Supplier Agreement Management): if you outsource part of the preparation, for example, to order some ingredients online, then you need to monitor and manage the service and products delivered from the provider.

According to PMP project management system, the "dinner project" should be divided into 9 kens:

1. Scope management: finalize a recipe;

2. Quality management: ensure the ingredients are fresh and the taste of dishes can meet the families' demands;

3. Sourcing management: if you order wine and other ingredients online, you need to manage the goods to be delivered and the delivery time;

4. Time management: during the whole process of "dinner project", make sure it is carried out as the schedule;

5. Human resources management: if you are not the only one to prepare for the dinner, you need to assign tasks to everyone and manage them;

6. Risk management: pay attention to identify and monitor the possible suddenness during the preparation and study out the solutions;

7. Cost management: ensure the expense of the dinner within the budget;

8. Communication management: during the preparation, keep everyone concerned (e.g. the families) updated with the progress. If they change their requirements, you also need to communicate with them immediately;

9. Overall management: as the chief director of the project, you should monitor and control the tasks of all the above aspects.

By this token, the "dinner project" can be totally managed just as a project, and the only thing you need to do is to choose an appropriate method of project management to plan, control and evaluate the project.

Although there is no need for us to prepare a dinner so complicatedly, but if you are going to hold a big event or you are a chief cook of a well-known restaurant, you should adopt a suitable project management to prepare for the event or dinner. For example, if you are going to prepare a high level dinner with various high demands, you can use the "waterfall model". You should prepare the dinner step by step, at the same time, you should strengthen the quality assurance effort to achieve the expected quality and avoid any damage to the project process and restaurant's reputation. However, if it is a small dinner and you are running out of time, you can choose the "fast development model". You can carry out tasks which can be done simultaneously, lower a little the quality demands under the premise that the majority of the guests are satisfied. In this way, you can save as much time as you can and ensure the guests will not feel hungry at the beginning of the dinner.

It is obvious that project management method can definitely remove its luxurious appearance and totally be adopted in various fields, even in our most common daily life. As a project manager, you can use project managing methods and theories not only to manage software development, but also to advance a bit the level of managing "projects" in everyday life.