Analyze and reflect on factors that commonly lead to the success or failure of a project
Scenario
You have reached the end of Release One of the XYZ Business Workflow project, and your team has faced some challenges during the development process.
One software tester and one developer from your team resigned. You found replacements for both of them. But, the new developer had to be trained by one of your other team members. This affected the team’s productivity.
Also, during one of your status meetings with the client stakeholders, their product owner requested a change in a feature that was almost complete. They were also very resistant to give any additional time for the first release. As a result, you had to add extra hours to your development time.
To accommodate these changes, your team worked extra hours and even some weekends to complete the project. Finally, you managed to deliver the first release according to schedule.
Although the release goes fairly smoothly, after a few days, the customer reports that their users are facing some issues with the software. They also have a list of changes and two new features they would like to see in the software before your final rollout in Release Two.
Analysis and Recommendations
Your executive team has asked you to prepare a report summarizing your analysis of the first release of the XYZ Business Workflow software and recommendations for how you think Release Two of the project should be planned.
Think about the project charter, the initial project plan you created in Project One, and the challenges the project team has faced so far. What steps did you take to manage these challenges? In retrospect, can you think of some other strategies you could have used during project planning and/or risk mitigation for better results? Specifically, your report should include the following:
Reflect on the project so far and provide your analysis of what went well and what could have been better.
Outline what you think were the successes and failures of the project.
Identify major challenges your team faced in completing this project and describe how you handled them.
List some alternate strategies you could have used during project planning and/or during risk mitigation for better results.
Based on your experience with Release One, provide some recommendations for managing the second release of the XYZ Business Workflow software, including the methodology, change management, and quality control strategies.
Use information from the scenario, Project One and Project Two, and make reasonable assumptions as you complete these tasks. Be sure to explain your assumptions.
