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CS414:

Computer Center

Management

Lecture #1: Importance of IT in Modern

Business and Project management

Dr. Ghada Abdelhady

الوعهد العالى لعلىم الحاسب و نظن الوعلىهات

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Instructors and Textbooks

Instructor: Dr. Ghada Abdelhady

TA: Eng. A. Salah

Textbooks:

Lecture notes + presentations.

Software Engineering, 8th ed,Ian Sommerville

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Course Assessment Assessment will be based on Class Work,

Midterms and final exam.

Assessment Weights

Midterm 10 marks

Attendance &Homework 5 marks

Project 5 marks

Final Exam 80 marks

Important Notice: The lectures and tutorials must be attended. The attendance will be taken weekly during the lecture and tutorial. Your attendance will support your course work

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Objectives

1. Administration and functions of computer center.

2. Planning and organizing computer operations

3. Staffing and personnel management

4. Computer selection and performance evaluation

5. Software evaluation and management

6. Microcomputer and office automation management

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Course plan

Week Date Subject Tutorial

1 Oct 14th Importance of IT in Modern

Business and Project management

2 Oct 21st Computer Applications

3 Oct 28th Computer Center Management

4 Nov 4th Acquisition of Computer Systems_1

5 Nov11th Acquisition of Computer Systems_2

6 Nov 18th Systems Development

7 Nov 25th Midterm Exam

8 Dec 2nd Managing System Development

Project

9 Dec 9th Data Management

10 Dec 16th Data Communication

11 Dec 23rd Networks

Computer & IT, and the Society

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Computer and Information Technology has changed the society in many aspects, which are such as:

Speed: Organizations need to:

Work faster

Move quicker

Make decisions faster

Communicate faster

Data

More data are collected

More information and knowledge are created

Information Overload:

Competition: As a result from such improvement, competition becomes

Stronger than before

More severe

Deadly, in some cases

Data vs. Information

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Data is absolute: it needs to be further processed, or

it can be used for further processes that will transform

it into a more meaningful form.

Information is relative: It is a transformed data

which are meaningful for some purposes.

Project Management

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Good management cannot guarantee the project success, but

bad management usually results in project failure.

Software Project Management The “software crisis” of the 1960s and 1970s was so called

because of a string of high profile software project failures:

over budget, overdue, etc.

The crisis arose in part because the greater power available in

computers meant that larger software projects were tackled

with techniques developed on much smaller projects.

Techniques were needed for software project management.

Activities in software project

management:

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Project planning

Project scheduling

Risk management

Managing people.

Project Planning

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The biggest single problem that afflicts software developing is that of

underestimating resources required for a project.

Developing a realistic project plan is essential to gain an understanding of

the resources required, and how these should be applied.

Types of plan Software development plan.

The central plan, which describes how the system will be developed.

Quality assurance plan.

Specifies the quality procedures &standards to be used.

Validation plan

Defines how a client will validate the system that has been developed.

Configuration management plan

Defines how the system will be configured and installed.

Maintenance plan

Defines how the system will be maintained.

Staff development plan

Describes how the skills of the participants will be developed.

The Software Development Plan

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This is usually what is meant by a project plan.

specifies the order of work to be carried out,

resources, responsibilities, and so on.

Varies from small and relatively informal to large and

very formal.

Developing a project plan is as important as properly

designing code

On the basis of a project plan, contracts will be

signed and careers made or broken. . .

Structure of Development Plan

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1. Introduction: brief intro to project references to

requirements spec

2. Project organization: intro to organizations, people, and

their roles

3. Risk Analysis, what are the key risks to the project?

4. Hardware and software resources, what h/ware and

s/ware resources will be required for the project and when?

5. Work breakdown, the project divided into activities,

milestones, deliverables; dependencies between tasks etc.

6. Project schedule actual time required, allocation of dates

7. Reporting and progress measurement mechanisms to

monitor progress.

Work Breakdown

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There are many ways of breaking down the activities in a

project, but the most usual is into:

work packages;

tasks;

deliverables;

milestones.

A workpackage is a large, logically distinct section of work:

typically at least 12 months duration;

may include multiple concurrent activities;

independent of other activities;

but may depend on, or feed into other activities;

typically allocated to a single team.

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A task is typically a much smaller piece of work:

A part of a workpackage.

typically 3–6 person months effort;

may be dependent on other concurrent activities;

typically allocated to a single person.

A deliverable is an output of the project that can meaningfully be assessed.

Examples:

a report (e.g., requirements spec);

code (e.g., tested product).

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Deliverables are indicators of progress.

A milestone is a point at which progress on the

project may be assessed.

Typically a major turning point in the project.

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Risks

When planning a project, it is critically important to know

what the key risks are, and is possible plan for them:

staff turnover;

management change;

hardware unavailability;

requirements change;

specification delays;

size underestimate;

technology change;

product competition.

Thank you for listening.

Dr. Ghada Abdelhady

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