Use Case: Project Progress Reports One of the biggest problems with project management is updating, monitoring, and communicating the progress of a project. How often should progress be updated? How often should progress reports be distributed? To whom should the progress reports be distributed? In what form should the progress reports be distributed? What software programs can or should be used? What is the security level of project progress? As part of developing the need in the initial investigation step in the systems development life cycles (SDLC) process, a constructive method is use case. Use case is a technique for capturing requirements with written scenarios in non-technical terminology that describe how a system interacts with a user or another system (University of Phoenix, Course Syllabus, 2006). There are two fundamental pieces, along with how they relate, to bear in mind: the actors and the goals. The actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by the project progress reports, and the goals, which are what the actors want to achieve. The use case will describe the goals achieved by the actors who perform tasks (Carr & Meehan, 2005). Use Case Application to Project Progress Reports Project progress reports allow those bringing about the progress on a project to record what and how much has been accomplished on the project, managers to monitor the progress for decision-making, and those that rely on the status of the projects progress for interrelating tasks, to inform and be informed about the projects progress. The actors tasks include accomplishing project work, recording and editing project work accomplished, and reviewing project progress for goal accomplishment, along with administra... ... middle of paper ... ...oject progress? were addressed. References Carr, N. & Meehan, T., (2005). What¡¦s the Problem? Retrieved October 14, 2006, from http://alistapart.com/articles/whatstheproblem Cockburn, A. (2006). Use Case Fundamentals. Retrieved October 14, 2006, from http://members.aol.com/acockburn/papers/AltIntro.htm Stair, R. & Reynolds, G. (2003). Fundamentals of Information Systems, Second Edition. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. Boston. MA: Course Technology, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Retrieved October 1, 2006, from University of Phoenix, Resource, CIS564 ¡V Information Management in Business Course Web site. University of Phoenix. (2006). Course Syllabus. Retrieved September 26, 2006, from University of Phoenix, CIS/564.4 - Information Management in Business Web site, https://classroom.phoenix.edu/afm203/secure/view-thread.jspa?threadID=1176244
Proper metrics must be in place to measure the progress of each step along the project.
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There should be a project review committee to serve as an additional set of checks and balance to weigh out the pros and cons of both sides. This committee should follow the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process in implementing these systems. The SDLC process is used in systems engineering, information systems and software engineering for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. (Wagner et al., 2013, p. 211) A comprehensive cost vs benefit analysis and proposed vendor analysis must take place.
The system development life cycle, also know as the SDLC, is the process of designing and developing a system or software to meet certain requirements. (“System development life,”). This cycle involves many different phases, in which the system is planned, analyzed, designed, implemented, and tested. There are five major phases in the system development life cycle: systems planning, systems analysis, systems design, systems implementation, and systems security and support. Each of these phases has a particular responsibility and certain tasks are perfumed in each phase.
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The system development life cycle starts with having a plan and deciding exactly what you want to do and the problems you’re trying to solve. Analysis of the system is to understand the business needs and the processing needs. Design is the solution to a system that’s base on requirements and analysis decision. Implementation process is to construct, test, train and install. The maintenance process is continuously evaluating system’s performance.
What are their costs and benefits? Answering these questions requires extensive information gathering and research; sifting through documents, reports, and work papers produced by existing systems; observing how these systems work; polling users with questionnaires; and conducting interviews. All of the information gathered during the system study phase will be used to determine information system requirements. The systems study stage describes in detail the remaining life cycle activities and the tasks for each phase.
Requirements engineering begins during the communication activity, continues into the modeling activity, and builds a bridge from the system requirements into software design and construction. Through requirements engineering, there is an examination of the context of software work performed. It is essential for the software engineering team to understand all requirements of a problem before the team tries to solve the problem. An identification of specific needs that the design and construction must address is also included. Further is a need for the identification of the priorities that guides the order for the completion of work. This i...
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.
A Use-case diagrams are usually referred to as behavior diagrams used to describe a set of actions (use cases) that some system or systems (subject) should or can perform in collaboration with one or more external users of the system (actors). Each use case should provide some observable and valuable result to the actors or other stakeholders of the system. Use-case diagram contains the actor and the use case symbols, along with connection lines. Actors are similar to external entities; they exist outside the system. The term actor refers to a particular role of a user of the system. The main purpose of a use-case diagram is to show what system functions are performed for which actor. Roles of the actors in the system can be depicted.
Laudon C. & J. Laudon (2003: 5th edition) Essentials of Management Information Systems. London: Prentice Hall International Limited