2.2 The Project Design Phase

A Project Manager s initial responsibility is to create the project team. Once Phase 1 is complete and the executive staff agrees to fund the project, it is the responsibility of the Project Manager to coordinate and manage the process of creating, developing, testing, and releasing the project. At first the Project Manager works with the executives who funded the project to assure that each of the core functional areas has a team member assigned to it. Each of these members is the point person, representing his function or department. It is the responsibility of the team member to provide his functional area with documents, updates, and issues presented in the team meeting. The team members in turn provide the team with documents, updates, and issues from their functional area. Team members are responsible for providing documents and status to the project team. If a functional area cannot make their estimated dates, it is the team member s responsibility to notify the project team of the problem before the date slips. The Project Manager s responsibility is to understand where there are slippages and come up with a plan that minimizes the effect of any slippage.

Each of the company s core functional areas assigns a member to represent the department in a weekly team meeting. If a member s organization is unable to meet a requirement, the member is responsible for informing the Project Manager before the deliverable s due date. If a team member is unable to make a team meeting he or she is responsible for sending an informed replacement and notifying the Project Manager before the scheduled team meeting.

As soon as the team is formed , each team member receives a copy of the Business Requirements Document and Feature/ Functionality List created in Phase 1. From these documents, they begin to scope out what will be required of their organization to make the project a success. If the project requires software development or integration, or an upgrade to a new release of software, the IT organization spends Phase 2 designing the application. This step will be discussed in detail later in this chapter. By the end of this phase, IT provides their Design Document to Quality Assurance, Help Desk, and Documentation. These departments use this information to create their own documents outlining how they will test, document, and support the project. If the project requires that hardware or software be purchased and integrated, the Project Manager and IT review the requirements, identify the solution, and come up with a proposed integration and release plan. They provide these plans to the team so each department can create their own plan. Once the plans are completed, an integrated schedule and a more accurate pricing document can be created.

2.2 in a Nutshell

A project is reviewed for feasibility in Phase 1. In Phase 2 the project is funded.

• The team is formed from members of individual departments.

• The estimates created in Phase 1 are turned into a detailed schedule and an executable plan.