SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTING, &

ENGINEERING
Submission instructions
Cover sheet to be attached to the front of the assignment when submitted
All pages to be numbered sequentially
All work has to be presented in a ready to submit state upon arrival at
the ACE Helpdesk. Assignment cover sheets or stationery will NOT be
provided by Helpdesk staff
CN6112
Module code
Project management
Module title
Module leader

Dr. Shareeful Islam

Assignment tutor

Dr. Shareeful Islam, Ian Tindale, and Dr. Aloysius

Adotey Edoh

Assignment title

Portfolio

Assignment number

Weighting

50%

Handout date

23/10/2014

Submission date
18/12/2014
Learning outcomes
assessed by this
assignment
1,3,5,6
Turnitin
submission
Yes
Turnitin GradeMark feedback No
requirement
(partial) used?
Moodle
Assignment
Moodle
Assignment No
submission used?
feedback used?
Other
electronic
Are submissions / feedback Yes
system used?
totally electronic?
Additional information

Form of assessment:
Individual work

Group work

For group work assessment which requires members to submit both individual
and group work aspects for the assignment, the work should be submitted as:
Consolidated single document

Separately by each member

Number of assignment copies required:

1

Other

Please specify

Assignment to be presented in the following format:

On-line submission
Stapled once in the top left-hand corner
Glue bound
Spiral bound
Placed in a A4 ring bound folder (not lever arch)
Note: To students submitting work on A3/A2 boards, work has to be
contained in suitable protective case to ensure any damage to work is
avoided.
Soft copy:
CD (to be attached to the work in an envelope or purpose made wallet
adhered to the rear)
USB (to be attached to the work in an envelope or purpose made
wallet adhered to the rear)
Soft copy not required
Note to all students
Assignment cover sheets can be downloaded from UEL Plus via the following
pathway.
UEL Direct My Record My Programme Assessment log dates with Barcoded Frontsheet

All work has to be presented in a ready to submit state upon arrival at

the ACE Helpdesk. Assignment cover sheets or stationery (including
staplers) will NOT be provided by Helpdesk staff. This will mean
students will not be able to staple cover sheets at the Helpdesk.

Introduction
This coursework consists of group and individual part. The course works is about
making a portfolio that is made up of five parts shown below. Each part has a
corresponding weighting which collectively adds up to 50. This course work should
be completed in groups of 3 students.

Preliminary tasks (Group work) 10%

Regular Blog postings by the group 10%
Deliverables 1-6 (Group work) 50%
Deliverable 7 (Individual work) 25%
Group Presentation 5%

Getting started
Group member must be selected from the same tutorial group. It will be easier to
coordinate your work if the members are from the same tutorial group. Each
coursework group should elect a group leader who will be responsible for the
management of the group. You should agree the membership of your group through a
contract of participation (see appendix 1). Keep a copy of this contract for your own
records as you will need to submit it with your portfolio documentation.
How you manage your group is something that you will need to decide between
yourselves. Tutors will not get involved in disputes over membership or other
minutiae, such as lack of commitment from individual members. If such disputes
occur then it is up to the group to resolve. If a member is not participating and the
group decides that it wants to exclude that particular member from the assessment,
each member of the group will need to document the reasons for this in their Portfolio
Review (Deliverable 7).

Project Scenario Context:

Scenario 1
You can decide your own project scenario based on any real life problem that could
faced by the organization. This chosen scenario must be agreed with the tutor.
Scenario 2
Digital Camera Society(DCS) set up by a group of photography enthusiasts. The
society's aim is to help members buy sell or exchange film cameras with other likeminded photographers on a non-profit basis. The society asks for a small subscription
to cover running costs, but that's all.
The membership has grown rapidly over the last three years from 50 or so to about
4000. The paper-based recording system that DCS used when they started now
struggles to cope. A recent bid for funding has been successful and they now plan to
computerise and migrate into cloud for saving hardware and maintenance cost.

A small sub-committee of active members has been set up to oversee the project. DCS
invites proposals for the development of a suitable system that will support the
following tasks:

Membership: The system should record member details, manage

subscriptions and allow members to join and leave.
Buying, selling or exchange: The system should allow members to offer or
request items for sale or exchange. It should also keep a record of agreed sales
or exchanges, although the practical arrangements are the responsibility of the
members concerned.
Information exchange: The system should support a question-and-answer
forum for members to exchange information.
Online presence: All the facilities listed above should be provided on a
website that conforms to web accessibility guidelines. This website should
also help to publicise the society and attract new members.
Cloud migration: The system-to-be developed needs to be migrated into
cloud so that the DCS can minimize the hardware and maintenance cost.
Therefore it is necessary to select appropriate cloud service provider to support
the DCS needs.

Preliminary Tasks - these must be completed no later than week 5.

(8marks)

Establish your group (no less than 3 and no more than 5 people) and elect a
group leader. The group leader will be responsible for coordinating the group.

Set up a blog (using Wordpress or any publicly accessible blog) for your
group. Make sure that each group member has access to the blog and that you
restrict viewing permissions to prevent other people seeing your work,
however make sure that you let your tutor know the password! You will us the
blog as the medium for communication between group members. You should
ensure that date and time stamps are shown against each posting.

From the project scenario above, identify potential stakeholder groups who
would have an interest in the project.

Again, from the project scenario identify high-level business risks associated
with the project. These are the risks the project poses for the client group, not
the risks faced by the software developers during the course of the project.

Write a scope statement for the DCS project and then draw a work breakdown
structure (WBS). After setting up your blog, post the answers to preliminary
tasks 3, 4 & 5 as your group's first post.

Blog Postings

( 8 marks)

After posting preliminary tasks 3 - 5 to your blog, you should document all of the
discussions that take place between the group members in relation to your work in
your blog. Everyone needs to contribute regularly to show that you are engaging with
the work. You will need to show your blog to your tutor at your progress meetings.
Do not include answers to any of the deliverables in your blog, these must be
completed as part of your portfolio documentation.

Deliverable 1 Planning

(8 marks)

(Assesses learning outcomes 1, 3& 3)

For the first deliverable you will work on the planning phase of a project. The Project
proposal for scenario gives the high-level description and you should assume your
group has been presented with this. You are required to agree a proposal for a suitable
process model for the project scenario. You should refer to the project scenario to
justify your choice of process model. What matters is that the team comes up with a
suitable model and a thought out justification for it.
Individual evaluation
Each group member will take one of the process models outlined in the lectures and
consider whether it would be an appropriate choice for the proposed project. Although
this is an individual evaluation there needs to be some teamwork at the start because
there is an organisational issue to be resolved. The team needs to make sure all the
different process models are covered by at least one member of the team. Each team
member should look at the process model allocated to them and write a short
evaluation of whether or not it is suitable. You will need to begin by making an
assessment of the project characteristics. Then decide whether the process model fits
the characteristics, with a short justification giving reasons for your decision. Each
member's evaluation and associated justification should be posted in your group's
blog.
Team evaluation
The whole team now needs to arrive at a collective decision on the most suitable
process model. This will require reconciling the views of the individual members of
the team on the models evaluated. The organisational issue here is more complicated
because you will have to decide how to combine the views of the whole team. You
may decide, after looking at everyones evaluation and justification, that coming to a
joint decision is straightforward. Or you may find that a period of negotiation and
discussion is required before a decision can be made. At the end of this activity for
this part of the deliverable the team should produce a short report identifying the
process model that was chosen and the reason for choosing it. Your reasoning should
be based on the project characteristics, and make reference to any additional reading
you have undertaken.
Arguments can be made for different choices and what matters is providing a good,
well-written justification that makes objective arguments and draws on what you have
learned so far.

The report should have the following structure:

An analysis of the project characteristics
A discussion of how the project characteristics affect the suitability or otherwise the
potential process models
A brief conclusion, summarising the arguments and reaching a definite choice of the
type of process model to be used

Deliverable 2 - Scheduling, Monitoring and Control

(10 marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 5,6 )

The table below shows the durations for seven activities in a hypothetical project. The
last column of the table shows which activities, if any, have to be completed before
the activity concerned can start, for example C cannot start until A and B are
complete.
Activity

Duration (Weeks)

Dependent on

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

5
10
15
20
15
5
10

None
None
A,B
B
A
C,D,E
E

1. Draw and analyse an activity-on-node precedence network for the project,

assuming that the project is to be completed in 35 weeks. Your analysis should
show the results of the forward and backward passes and the activity floats in
the same form as illustrated in the lecture. You do not need to consider the free
or interfering floats.
2. Use the conventions and notation used in the example provided in the lecture
and make sure your network includes a single start node and a single finish
node.
3. Your diagram should include a key showing the meaning of the compartments
in a node.
4. Identify and label the critical path through the network.
5. Imagine that after preparing the initial precedence network for the project
described the project team identifies some changes to the dependencies
between the activities. It turns out that:
Activity C cannot start until 10 weeks after activity B has finished
Activity E cannot start until at least 10 weeks after activity A has started
6.

Redraw an activity-on-node network for the revised project, assuming that

the project is to be completed at the earliest possible time.

Deliverable 3 - Risk assessment & contingency planning (10marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 5,6 )
Identify five potential risks involved in the chosen project scenario. These risks
should be scenario specific that could go potentially provide negative consequence
within the overall project context. Analyse the risks and provide a complete control
for the risks mitigations. For each of the five risks suggest an appropriate way of
dealing with them.

Deliverable 4 Tendering, Contracts & migration (8 marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 3)
Your group have been asked to produce a short briefing paper outlining the main
points to consider when tendering for IT contracts generally. You are only required to
prepare notes under the following headings, but you should ensure that you use your
own words and show that you understand any terms and definitions that you use.
The headings are:

Methods of determining the contract price

Different ways of specifying the importance of time for completing the stages
of a contract, or the contact itself
Three failures that could result in changes to contracts with reasons why these
can cause problems with the contract itself
Three key point for the service level agreement with a cloud service provider

Deliverable 5 Estimation

(10 marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 5 and 6)

Your team have been asked to help in providing a resource estimate for a
supplementary project written in Java with back end data base. An initial requirements
analysis has identified 20 use cases and 12 core classes that represent business
objects. In addition 9 interface classes are needed.
The group should share out the sub tasks (a-d) for this deliverable to ensure that each
member of the team participates.
(a) Use function point analysis (FPA), as discussed in the lecture to calculate the
unadjusted function points (FP) for the project, making the following assumptions.
The use cases are of high complexity and should be given a weighting of 7.
The classes are of medium complexity and should be given a weighting of 11.
(b) Next use your answer to part (a) to calculate the adjusted function points FPadjusted.
Assume that values have been assigned to the 14 complexity factors described in the
lecture and from these values. Fj has been calculated as 45.
From FPadjusted you should then work out how many lines of Java code will be
required.
When calculating FPadjusted make sure you follow the correct order of
operations.
(c) Use COCOMO to calculate the required effort E, assuming the project is classed
as semi-detached. Show your working.

(d) Would 25 person-months be an adequate amount of effort for testing, integration

and debugging? Justify your conclusion on the basis of your answer to part (c) above
and the figures given under Work breakdown and scheduling from the example given
in the lecture. Don't forget we have assumed requirements analysis is already
complete, so it is excluded from the value you found for E.

Deliverable 6 Quality (8marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 2)
Based on the chosen case study, identify two key external quality characteristics (i.e.
functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability and portability) that are
particularly relevant for this project. Suggest an appropriate measure for determining
the 'level' of quality according to each of your chosen characteristics.

Deliverable 7 - Portfolio Review (25 marks)

(Assesses learning outcome 8)
Each member of the group should produce a post portfolio review and you should
complete this when your group has completed deliverables 1-6. Your review should
consider as an individual piece of work 400 words by including the followings:
Your review should include the following:
A reflective account of what you learned from undertaking each of the
deliverables
An assessment of how well you team worked as a cohesive unit? Did you
encounter any difficulties during the project with either the group you were
working with or your own contribution? If so, how did you resolve these? If
any difficulties remain unresolved what do you intend to do about it?
How well did you keep to your planned schedule? Were there periods of
slack or scope creep? How were these dealt with?
Identify two ways in which the methods you used for managing your work
were similar to the Guide to Project Management BS 6079-1 guidelines.

Group Presentation Weeks 11 & 12 (5 marks)

Each group is required to make a short presentation (no longer than 5 minutes) on the
following:
What the group learned from undertaking the deliverables and studying
project management particularly.
Any difficulties encountered while working together as a group and if so how
they were resolved
Sources of reference used in planning and answering the deliverables and how
they were chosen

Mark Distribution
Preliminary task 8 marks
Blog postings 8 marks
Deliverables
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Presentation

8 marks
10 marks
10 marks
8 marks
10 marks
8 marks
25 marks
5 marks

Total 100 marks

Appendix 1
CN 6112
Coursework Contract of Participation
Tutorial Group

Tutorial Tutor

We, the undersigned, agree to work as a group towards fulfilling the assignment
deliverables as part of our course work for this module. We understand that, with the
exception of Deliverable 7, the mark awarded will be for the group and each member
of the team will share the group mark.

We have nominated (student ID): _____________ as our group leader.

Chosen scenario:

Student ID

Name

Signature

10