BCS - Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management

Curriculum

Module 1: Projects and Project Work

• The definition of projects, as opposed to other types of work
• Terms of reference for a project
• The purpose of project planning and control
• The typical activities in a system development life-cycle
• System and project life cycles
• Variations on the conventional project life cycle, such as the use of prototypes or an iterative approach (e.g. the creation and testing of a series of versions of a product that converge on the final deliverable) or incremental approach (i.e. the phased creation and delivery of a series of products to users)
• Implementation strategies e.g. parallel running, ‘sudden death’, use of pilots
• Purpose and content of business case reports; the use and significance of discounted cash flows in such reports (Note: knowledge of the method of calculation is NOT required)
• Types of planning document: project initiation documents; project and stage plans, quality plan, communications plan, risk plan
• Post implementation review

Module 2: Project Planning

• Project deliverables and intermediate products
• Work and product breakdowns
• Product definitions (including the identification of derived from, and component of relationships between products)
• Relationship between products and activities in a project
• Check points and milestones
• Lapsed time and effort required for activities
• Activity networks (using ‘activity on node’ notation)
• Calculation of earliest and latest start and end dates of activities and resulting float
• Identification and significance of critical paths
• Resource allocation, smoothing and levelling, including the use of resource histograms
• Work schedules and Gantt charts

Module 3: Monitoring and Control

• The project control life cycle: including planning, monitoring achievement, identifying variances, taking corrective action
• The nature of, and the purposes for which, information is gathered
• Collecting progress information - Timesheets, - Team progress meetings - Error and change reports etc
• Presenting progress information - Content of progress reports - Graphical presentation of progress information e.g. accumulative resource charts (also known as S-curve charts) - Use of earned value analysis, including where it would be applied in project life-cycle (Note: it is not expected that candidates be able to calculate and interpret earned value figures)
• The reporting cycle - Reporting structures in projects - Timing, personnel and purpose of different types of reporting meetings
• Corrective action - Tolerance and contingency - Exception reports and plans - Management procedures involved in changing plans - Options, including extending or staggering deadlines, increasing resources, reducing Functionality or quality requirements, cancelling the project etc.

Module 4: Change Control and Configuration Management

• Reasons for change and configuration management
• Change control procedures - Role of change control boards - Generation of change requests - Change request evaluation (e.g. its impact on the business case) - Change request authorisation
• Configuration management - Purpose and procedures - Identification of configuration items - Product baselines - Configuration management databases: content and use

Module 5: Quality

• Definitions of the term ‘quality’ e.g. ‘fitness for purpose’
• Quality control versus quality assurance
• Defining quality: definition and measurement
• Detection of defects during the project life cycle
• Quality procedures: entry, process and exit requirements
• Defect removal processes, including testing and reviews
• Types of testing (including unit, integration, user acceptance, and regression testing)
• The inspection process, peer reviews
• Principles of IS0 9001:2000 quality management systems
• Supplier evaluation

Module 6: Estimating

• Effects of over and under-estimating
• Effort versus duration; relationship between effort and cost
• Estimates versus targets
• Use of expert judgement (advantages and disadvantages)
• The Delphi approach
• Top-down estimating - Identification of size drivers (e.g. function points etc) - Identification of productivity rates (e.g. function points per day) - Need for past project data to establish productivity rates - Factors affecting productivity rates (e.g. staff experience) - Estimation of effort for new projects using productivity rates and size drivers
• Bottom up approaches to estimating
• Use of analogy in estimating

Module 7: Risk

• Definition of the term ‘risk’; components of risk: risk events (or triggers), probability, impact
• Ways of categorising risk, e.g. business versus project
• Identification and prioritisation of risk
• Assessment of risk exposure (i.e. combining consideration of potential damage and probability of loss)
• Risk responses and actions: risk prevention, reduction, acceptance, transfer and contingency planning
• Typical risks associated with information systems development
• Assessment of the costs/benefits of risk reduction activities
• Maintenance of risk registers and risk logs

Module 8: Project Communications and Project Organisation

• Relationship between programmes and projects
• Identifying stakeholders and their concerns
• The project sponsor
• Establishment of the project authority (e.g. project board, steering committee etc.)
• Membership of project board/steering committee
• Roles and responsibilities of project board, project manager, stage manager, team leader
• Desirable characteristics of project manager
• Role of project support office
• The project team and matrix management
• Reporting structures and responsibilities
• Management styles and communication (including same time/same place; same time/different place, different time/same place, different time/different place)
• Team building (including phases of team cohesion e.g. forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning)
• Team dynamics