Introduction
The manager of a certain project would consider the job well done if the project gets completed within the estimated time, according to its specified performance and within its budgeted costs. Generally, the three goals or objectives (time, performance and cost) are traditionally the basic parameters for measuring project success or failure. The objectives are chiefly related to the execution stage of the project, which is the period of most direct interest to the project manager and the main contractor. A project that is completed within the prescribed time, within its estimated budget, and in line with its specifications provides the contractor with a good return, profitable publicity and a warm glow of satisfaction. In this project, the focus will be on these situational factors in an IT project of designing (Lock, 2007, p. 17).
IT project constrains
These are all the factors that may hinder the performance of the project, the main ones including: a predestined budget for the project, an inflexible deadline, limited availability of computer hardware, and locating a resource with a specific skill. These factors normally limit the options of the project. The work of the manager is to plan on how to meet the project objectives with the identified factors after they have been documented and their risks examined. During the planning of the activities, there are other factors that may be created on the relations assigned to activities. For instance, FS relationship is constrained by the completion of the predecessor before the successor can begin; this comes as a natural constrain and is sometimes referred to as the hard logic. Hard logic illustrates the matter of fact order activities, for instance, one must install the operating system before installing the application. Soft logic on the other hand is when the project manager decides to carry out tasks in a particular order based on experience, conditions in the project, time, or any other reason. This logic is also referred to as discretionary logic, for instance, it is significant to complete all the coding before starting the test phase.
Time factor/ constraint
The project has preset deadlines that require project managers to work backwards from the assigned completion date. However, the main problem occurs when the person establishing the deadline does not know the amount of work required to be done before the project is completed by that date. When assigned a deadline, one has to figure out how to complete the project by that date. The time factor is normally of three types: 1) not-earlier-than constraint specifies that a task may be completed any time after the specified date but not earlier than that date – this is a positive constraint when the task demands more time; 2) not-later-than constraint is deadline oriented; that is to say that the project must be completed by that date but not later; 3) on-this-date constraint is the most time oriented, here, there is no margin for adjustment, since the task must be completed within that time frame. Basically, the latter two factors have negative effect on the performance of project team.
Management constraint
These are factors that are dependency relationship-imposed due to a decision made by the management, for instance, a project manager spearheading the development of a web based learning management system where the site will enable the students to register for classes, check grades, and pay for their tuition online while the e-commerce portion of the project and the database development portion of the project are planned to happen simultaneously. Due to the uniqueness of the relationship between the two tasks, the manager may decide to rearrange the work schedule so that the database portion may be completed first and then the e-commerce portion completed later. This is a negative effect to the performance of the team; the best way of solving this is by the manager allowing the team to work according to the plan so that they can overcome the negative effects of the time constraints.
Technical factors
These factors emanate from FS relationships. Within an IT project, tasks will flow in a logical sequence from the beginning to the end. When building a network diagram, one is likely to encounter these two technical constraints. First, discretionary constraints allow the project manager to change the relationship between activities based on educated guesses; this is a negative effect to the project team. Second, resource constraint is where the manager elects to schedule two tasks as Finish-to-Start (FS) rather than Start-to-Start based on a limitation of a particular resource.
Organizational factors
In an organization, there may be a number of projects that are loosely related. Basically, completion of one project may be a chief milestone for your own project to continue. If there is a project that is interrelated with the current and is lagging, it may hinder the success of such current project. This affects performance negatively and one has to complete it first so before starting the current (Phillips, 2004 p. 255).
Overcoming negative factors
When faced with the negative time factor where the task must be finished before or on the specified date, the best thing to do is to build a working team plan so that there can be good coordination of the events. Where the manager changes the schedule, it is good to redesign the plan so as to adjust accordingly and save time. It is also good to liaise with the manager when planning for the work schedule. Moreover, it is always good to drive the scope of the project before it starts (Stellman and Greene, 2005, p. 17).
Conclusion
Team development is a crucial management function that should be well handled, more so in regards to the understanding of the core requirements of the project, as well as ensuring that the task is completed within the required time, quality and cost. It is simple to generate big software that solves the wrong problems, but the only way to achieve this is for everyone in the project to understand and agree on both why and how that software will be built before the work begins.
References
- Lock, D. (2007). Project management. Hampshire, Gower Publishing Ltd. Web.
- Phillips, J. (2004). IT project management: on track from start to finish. CA, McGraw-Hill Professional. Web.
- Stellman, A. and Greene, J. (2005). Applied software project management.CA, O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2005. Web.