Capstone Project

Name of the Institution]

Capstone Project

Generally, project management is distinguished from the general management of corporations by the mission-oriented nature of a project. A project organization will generally be terminated when the mission is accomplished. According to the Project Management Institute, the discipline of project management can be defined as follows:

''Project management is the art of directing and coordinating human and material resources throughout the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time, quality and participation satisfaction''[1].

By contrast, the general management of business and industrial corporations assumes a broader outlook with greater continuity of operations. Nevertheless, there are sufficient similarities as well as differences between the two so that modern management techniques developed for general management may be adapted for project management.

The basic ingredients for a project management framework may be represented schematically in Figure -1. A working knowledge of general management and familiarity with the special knowledge domain related to the project are indispensable. Supporting disciplines such as computer science and decision science may also play an important role. The representation in Figure -1 reflects only the sources from which the project management framework evolves.

Figure 1:  Basic Ingredients in Project Management

Specifically, project management in construction encompasses a set of objectives which may be accomplished by implementing a series of operations subject to resource constraints. There are potential conflicts between the stated objectives with regard to scope, cost, time and quality, and the constraints imposed on human material and financial resources[2]. These conflicts should be resolved at the onset of a project by making the necessary tradeoffs or creating new alternatives [3].

Main Requirements of the Project

To advertise and recruit required professionals.

To analyze and document the specifications for the required functionality.

To acquire the needed hardware and software as part of IT infrastructure facilities.

To design, implement, test and operate the entire system.

Next step is defining human resources in terms of category, seniority and hourly cost:

Functional expert(s) - Knows the business process

Technical support - Technical product knowledge

Workflow Business Analyst - Workflow tools expert

System Administrator- Maintain workflow environment

Business Analyst - assist in doing a business process analysis

The Number of Programmers and Designers Needed To Finish the Project

These days, the cost of the project is often fixed before the design is done, and sometimes even before design has begun. Estimation now becomes more of guesswork based upon experience that was gained by screwing up earlier estimates. Without the design, it was quite impossible to know how many lines of code/functions/components/objects would be required. The estimator should rely on data and documents available before one starts the design, such as the functional and non-functional requirements, workflows, and use-cases. Therefore, requirements gathering and analysis is very critical to the project's estimation (design, development, and testing).

Using these documents, the estimator may create an object hierarchy tree simultaneously. The object hierarchy tree can help identify different levels/types of objects to be created, what is expected from these objects, and even some attributes for the ...