Document Type

Closed Project

Publication Date

Fall 2004

Instructor

Dragan Milosevic

Course Title

Project Management in Engineering and Technology

Course Number

EMGT 545/645

Subjects

Computer software -- Development, Project management -- Analysis, Business planning, Engineering -- Management

Abstract

As we all know anything that starts with a good plan has always the big potential of success whereas without an appropriate plan it is very likely to fail. Project Planning is an integral part of any project management process and has to be done with great care. Establishing project plan at start will help companies succeed in many projects. In order to investigate project planning as well as project plan concepts and see how they are applied in business life, we have studied a small software company, Trillium Software Inc. (TSI), and one of its projects called Kent Floral & an EDI implementation.

In this analysis, we have analyzed the whole project management cycle and specifically project planning practices in TSI. We used questionnaires to find out how the company implemented the project plan document and how its employees evaluate that. The information we gathered was able to give us a good picture of the current situation and show potential areas in the process to improve. Based on our findings, TSI had a good technical analysis and planning phase of any project but they lacked certain elements or did not implement totally right. Since the company is small and has limited resources, it could not afford (or did not want) to spend too much time on detailed project plan and only implemented the sections that they thought it was necessary. One of our goals in this study is to share our conclusion with TSI and to show them what is currently implemented and what is missing. By looking at our analysis, we feel confident that TSI can develop a better project plan that can be generic enough to be used in all software projects.

In our analysis, we did an extensive literature research for project planning, specifically, project plan, later on, used certain concepts in the recommendation. We are hoping that our findings can be used by all small to medium sized companies and help them improve their Project Management Processes.

Note: The presentation associated with this report is included here as a supplemental file.

Rights

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Comments

This project is only available to students, staff, and faculty of Portland State University

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/23446

Additional Files
2004-F-545-04-2.pdf (178 kB)
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