Geog 463GIS Workshop

April 24, 2006

Outlines

• System requirement as scope statement

• Project management techniques– Work Breakdown Structure– Critical Path Method

• Project evaluation– Benefit/cost analysis

I. System requirement as scope statement

Scope statement

• Scope statement consists of the three core elements; they are hierarchically organized

• Goals/objectives or need-to-know questions– What your project is going to accomplish

• Deliverables or information products– The specific items or services that must be produced

in order to fulfill the goals of the project• Requirements

– Further breakdown of the deliverables– Describes the characteristics of the deliverable in very

specific detail

For example, if deliverables are a new car model, requirements would include the type of fabric, the model number, the color of the fabric, and so on

Critical success factors

• Understanding of and consensus regarding the project goals/objectives by key stakeholders

• Well-defined scope statement– Clearly defined requirements derived from goals and

deliverables• Involvement from the stakeholders

– Communication plan• Well-defined project plan

– Project schedule, risk management plan• The use of established project management

practice

II. Project management techniques

Applying project management techniques to project implementation plan (system requirements report):

• How do I assign roles and responsibility?

- Work Breakdown Structure

• How do I estimate the duration of project activities?

- Critical Path Method

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

• Graphically display the deliverables of the project in a hierarchical fashion

• Organizes the work of the project into logical groupings

• Helps assign resources and estimate time and costs

Organizing the WBS levels

• Level 1: the name of the project– e.g. annual conference project

• Level 2: deliverables or major milestones of the project or project phases– e.g. PCs set up

• Level 3: tasks or grouping of tasks– e.g. Obtain PCs, Set up PCs

• …• Lowest level: work packages

– e.g. Arrange delivery, Load software

Organizing the WBS levels- tree form -

From Heldman 2005 Project management jumpstart

Organizing the WBS levels- outline form -

Task list

• Deliverable is noun while task is action• Tasks (or activities) are a single piece of work,

or units of related work, that must be completed in order to satisfy a project deliverable or the requirement of a deliverable

Organizing the WBS levels

• Where to stop?– Keep adding levels of the WBS until you’ve broken the work out

to the point where responsibility for each unit of work can be assigned to a specific person or to a team

– work packages: the lowest level of a WBS where resource assignments and time/cost estimates are established

• Why identification codes?– allows you to uniquely identify each element of the WBS – serves as reference numbers to other planning information

• Link to scope statement?– Make sure all deliverables in scope statement are included in

WBS

Constructing the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)

• Similar to personnel requirement of P2• Assign roles and responsibilities to available resources

(staff)

• Row: types of resources needed• Column: WBS work packages• For resource assignments, use expert judgment and

historical information

Estimating activity durations

• Similar to timing requirements of P2

• Determine the number of work periods needed to complete the tasks defined in the WBS

• Use PERT to determine the duration of project and critical path tasks (more on this later in today’s class: critical path method)

Network diagram

• Tasks are dependent on one another, thus one task cannot start or finish until the previous task has finished or started

• Network diagram shows the tasks of the project in sequential order

• Visualizes the progress of the project, and determines how the work of the project must be performed

• Critical path: the longest full path on the project

PERT

Each box is a project task. Arrows show dependencies between

tasks. The tasks in red are on the critical path. If any tasks on the critical path take longer than planned, the whole project will slip unless something is done.

B

2 2 days

Mon 8/3/98 Tue 8/4/98

C

3 3 days

Mon 8/3/98 Wed 8/5/98

D

4 4 days

Tue 8/4/98 Fri 8/7/98

E

5 5 days

Wed 8/5/98 Tue 8/11/98

G

7 6 days

Thu 8/6/98 Thu 8/13/98

H

8 6 days

Wed 8/12/98 Wed 8/19/98

I

9 2 days

Fri 8/14/98 Mon 8/17/98

F

6 4 days

Wed 8/5/98 Mon 8/10/98

A

1 1 day

Mon 8/3/98 Mon 8/3/98

J

10 3 days

Thu 8/20/98 Mon 8/24/98

Source: Tom Nolan’s lecture note

Critical path method

• Is used to calculate the duration of the project• Critical path: the longest full path on the project;

when you change the duration of a critical path task, it always changes the project duration

• Float time: the amount of time you can delay the early start of a task without delaying the finish date of the project

• All tasks with zero float time are considered critical path tasks

Critical path method

1. List the tasks on the worksheet, WBS number, and task description2. List the dependencies of each task3. Record the duration of each task4. Calculate the early start date and early finish date for each task, beginning with i = min (task #) {

• Early finish date of the ith task = early start date + duration• Early start date of the (i+1) th task if dependent on other task i = (the early finish date of task i) + 1• Set i = i + 1}

5. Calculate the late start date and late finish date for each task, beginning with i = max (task #) {• Late start date of the ith task = late finish date – duration• Late finish date of the (i-1)th task if the ith task depends on the (i-1)th task = (the late start date of task i) – 1• Set i = i – 1}

6. Calculate float for each task where float = late start date – early start date7. Determine the critical path for the project by adding up the duration of every task with zero float

• Task # 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the critical path task and their durations total 144 days

1

2 3

4 5 6

7

III. Project evaluation:

Cost/benefit analysis

Image source: Tom Nolan’s lecture note

Why cost benefit analysis?

• Analysis involves weighing the costs of (proposed) projects against their projected benefits.

• It’s better to approve projects based on concrete measures (e.g. CB ratio), rather than vague assertions of needs or problems

• Reduces uncertainty during decision making• Provides a basis for comparing GIS options• Assess the advantages of a specific GIS application over

competitive solutions (i.e. not utilizing a GIS)• Public sector considers policy impact as well as financial

impact while private sector is only concerned with “bottom line”

How cost benefit analysis?

• Identify costs

• Identify benefits

• Compare costs and benefits

• Calculate cost-benefit ratios

Costs for GIS

• One-time cost– Hardware– Software– Data– Staff training

• Recurring cost– Maintenance– Staff salaries, rent, utilities, supplies

Costs for GIS

• Quite often training, consultancy, customization, maintenance, data, etc. are grouped into Services except Hardware and Software

Services: resources to fulfill the GIS project objectives (e.g. customization)

Benefits of GIS

• Benefits are much more difficult to quantify than costs– Costs can be expressed in dollars– Benefits are often intangible

• Are generally tied to the expected products• Benefit/cost analysis based solely on map output

is different from an analysis involving the spatial analysis– The latter type is much more complex– There is a need to understand how decision makers

use and value information

Type of benefits for GIS

• Tangible Benefits– Benefits that are capable of being appraised at an actual or

approximate dollar value– Cost reductions– Decreased operating costs– Staff time savings– Cost avoidances– Increased revenue

• Intangible Benefits– Benefits to which a dollar value cannot be assigned– Improve decision making– Decreasing uncertainty– Improving corporate or organizational image

 Classifying benefits

Direct

The savings from using GIS vs. current manual means. Staff savings. Reduced use of outside services. Increased revenues, if the information generates revenue and there's unmet demand for the information.

Departmental(Agency)

Reflects better outcomes from having better (more accurate, complete and timely) information. Increased revenues, if a higher price can be demanded for the information produced. Time savings, because more accurate and complete information avoids waste.

Companywide(Governmentwide)

If the better outcomes noted for the department/agency above would accrue to another department or agency, then it's considered a company wide or government wide benefit.

External

These benefits accrue to outside entities--other firms, the public and the environment--and thus are most difficult to quantify. They should at least be noted for the qualitative value. Where possible, a proxy for the benefit should be used, but noted in a separate benefit: cost ratio from that for the company-specific benefits.

Source: Geoworld Feb 2000

Examples of benefits• Total cost of producing maps by manual means was greater than total cost

of making identical maps using GIS – tangible benefit

• Use of GIS allows garbage collection company to reduce staff through better scheduling of workload and collection routes

– tangible, possible to quantify • Emergency vehicles reduce average arrival time by using GIS- supplied

information on road conditions – tangible if we can quantify the increased cost resulting from delayed arrival (fire

has longer to burn, heart attack victim less likely to survive, etc.) • Information from GIS was used to avoid costly litigation in land ownership

case – tangible but hard to quantify, implies we can predict the outcome of the case if

GIS information had not been available • Forest Service finds a better location for a campsite through use of GIS

– intangible, implies we can predict the decision which would have been made in the absence of GIS

Source: NCGIA GIS Core Curriculum 1990

Compare benefits and costs

• For comparison, benefits and costs must be comparable – measured in same units, over same period of time– Place them in an equal footing

• Value should be adjusted for by inflation– Cost/benefit ratio changes over time

• Graph cost and benefit over time

• Calculate benefit-to-cost ratio– B/C = PVB/PVC where B/C is benefit-to-cost ratio,

PVB is the present value of costs and PVC is the present value of benefits

– If a ratio greater than 1, benefits outweighs costs

Announcement

• Tom Nolan (GIS Director in the City of Seattle) will give us a talk this Wednesday (April 26, 2006)

• Topics include– Issues in project management – City’s GIS development issues– Tips on GIS jobs and skills