It Project Management Essay

Submitted By Phennie
Words: 747
Pages: 3

ITCO299 – 1302B – 01

Professor Duane Ramirez

Phenecia Mayeaux

June 12, 2013

The scenario:

In this scenario for the first discussion board, a company is in need of a software program that will allow the company to coordinate and maintain records of the professional development of their employees. The company has over 30,000 employees in four sites: Texas, Illinois, Florida and Colorado. The system needs to have the ability to allow the employees locate and schedule professional developmental activities that are relevant to the employee’s positions. Sophisticated search capabilities are required and the ability to add scheduled events to the employee’s calendars is needed. The system also needs to have the ability to support social networking allowing employees to see who will be attending certain conferences and events. This social networking site will also promo professional relationships and make sure that important conferences will be covered. This system will also need to have the ability to allow employees to submit documentation showing an activity has been completed and notifies the employee’s managers to receive notice of the completed event to be added to employee records and notify employees of impending events and deadlines for completion.

The difference between an agile approach in project management and a traditional approach in project management is that a traditional approach is more structured with guidelines and rules (Hass, 2013). Each step or phase of the project is followed in a certain sequence or order (Hass, 2013). An agile approach to project management calls for less structure and for more flexibility (Hass, 2013). Projects entailing software or hardware elements, traditional project management or iterative project management can be ineffective as the requirements are intangible, unpredictable and can change at any moment (Hass, 2013). Technology changes constantly and as a project manager initiating something like an IT project would have to be prepared for the continuous changes throughout the projects life-cycle (Phillips, 2010). In a case scenario such as the one discussed in the first part of the posting, I would chose the more agile approach for the flexibility and the existing risk factors in dealing with a project of this size (Phillips, 2010). During this type of project, many things are expected to happen from updating the hardware or software parts needed to replacing servers, computers and cables as well as other parts or components (Phillips, 2010). This approach also allows for the flexibility of working on more than one step of the project at the same time or adding another person to work on one step for faster completion (Phillips, 2010). For these reasons, the agile approach to project management would be best suited for the needs of this project especially on such a large scale. According to Kathleen Hass of Project Smart, there are more companies now using the blended approach of traditional and agile project management approaches being that both approaches are similar (Hass, 2013).

When evaluating