Project Tracking and Performance Measurement

Project Tracking and Performance Measurement

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Project Tracking and Performance Measurement

1st Reply to Discussion – Project Tracking & Performance Measurement (minimum 300 words reply)

Class,

Two of the methods for estimating costs are analogous estimate and parametric estimate. The first being the analogous estimate and it’s defined as “if a similar project cost a certain amount, this it is reasonable to assume that the current project will cost about the same.” (Darnall, 2010) I have seen this first hand in the military when they contract out their movers for Soldiers PCSing to new duty stations. They come and get a rough estimate of your weight and how my furniture you have and they already know about how much the costs should be. Because they move so many soldiers a year they have tons of historical data to look back on to know how much it should cost to move from a to b. The parametric estimate is “if the project consists of activities that are common to many other projects, average costs are available per unit.” (Darnall, 2010) A great example, as I always use, is building a house. If I build my house for $176,000 and someone wants to build the same house it is reasonable to think that I can build the same exact house for $176,000. Now the bigger the project with the longer amount of time elapsed since the completion of the project you would have to take into effect of the new costs of materials, labor ETC. But this should still give you an idea of how much of everything you should need. Earned value is comparing of budgeted and actual costs of a project periodically during the project. (Darnall, 2010). This would be used in big projects like building a skyscraper. There is an estimate of how much each thing should cost and as the building grows you look at the actual costs compared to the actual budgeted or estimated costs and compare. This is where you start hearing things like on budget, under budget or the dreaded over budget. Another example is if you have ever watched property brothers you can see that there can be unforeseen accidents that lead to extra costs that were not budgeted for. Understanding your budget and earned value is important because it lets you see the financial picture of the project and ensure that it’s running the way you think it is and it gives you snapshots of how things are going. Instead of having to all of a sudden save a ton of money on your project you can see where things are going wrong and fix them fast rather than wasting money.

2nd Reply to Discussion – Project Tracking & Performance Measurement (minimum 300 words reply)

Hello Class,

This week we discuss project tracking and performance, which is the natural progression of a project as we get into the execution phase of the project lifecycle.

Discuss two of the methods of estimating project costs – give examples

One method of estimating project cost is the analogous estimate, which uses a broad perspective when estimating cost and may rely more on personal experience than granular analysis of the project. Using a comparable project and assuming the impact on the price based on complexity and size (Saylor, 2012). For the project managers that do not have experience to apply against the estimate, the use of historical documents are encouraged.

An example of the analogous estimating method is when I have to calculate how much money it will cost my unit to deploy with all of our equipment and personnel I can use my previous deployments to create accurate estimate. However, this year resources have moved theaters and there is a backlog on aircraft as the entire military scrambles to meet Secretary of Defense James Mattis dwell time and get their troops redeployed. I can estimate based of my experience and supposition a week longer on the trip as we can expect delays so I would add an extra thousand dollars a day.

A second method is the parametric estimate which is similar to the previous method but bases the estimate on common activities throughout the industry. I can use the previous example but instead of relying on experience I am going to calculate the deployment cost based on the average cost of the aircraft, lodging (plus the week delay), meals and storage of equipment. Those parameters are used to develop a more accurate estimate.

What is Earned Value and why is it important in a Project?

Earned value is based off the project plan combining scheduled activities with cost estimates of each activity (Saylor, 2012). Earned value is important because it measures performance using the project trends against the project schedule and budget to determine if the project is on the correct path. EV is used to determine schedule variance and index as well as cost variance and index. It is also used to calculate the budget at completion which is used to estimate the final project cost.

3rd Reply to Discussion – Networks (minimum 150 words reply)

1. What are some of the benefits and challenges of business mobility?

     Business mobility is definitely common in most aspects of our personal and professional lives.  Look around and you can pick out mobile technology just about everywhere you go.  From smart phones to tablets to the navigation system in your car, they provide untethered access to information and data.  It is a crucial part of most business structures and I would even go as far to say that without mobile technology, a business would most likely not be competitive in today’s market.  In our text Baltzan (2012) list the following as benefits of business mobility; “enhances mobility, provides immediate data access, increases location and monitoring capability, improves workflow, provides mobile business opportunities and provides alternative to wiring”.  These are extremely important in providing an efficient means of supporting customers.  In my opinion, the most beneficial is enhancing mobility.  To be able to work from anywhere at anytime is a great benefit.  There are times when information is needed immediately to support vital decisions.  Without having immediate access to a system, businesses may be forced to make blind decisions and ultimately risk unprompted errors.  By providing mobile access, businesses can certainly gain the immediate advantages of efficiency, proficiency and accessibility.  But of course, with every good thing there are bound to be some adverse conditions as well.  Baltzan (2012) lists the following as challenges of business mobility; “protecting against theft, protecting wireless connections, preventing viruses on mobile devices and addressing privacy concerns with RFID and LBS”.  My fear has always been the wireless access points.  Being mobile means a signal must be detected to enter the network which can be seen by others as well.  Without proper security measures it is possible for unauthorized access to occur, which could ultimately be detrimental your data security.

2. What types of mobile business applications do you have personal experience with? Describe a positive and a negative experiences with mobile business applications.

     The first one that comes to mind is the mobile banking applications.  This gives me access to view my account information and pay bills through my cellphone.  I like it because I can view up to date information immediately from anywhere.  The only negative is that the mobile applications on most phones do not have the robust antivirus software like computers do to protect them.  This puts your banking information at risk to a wide variety of security threats.  Another that I like is the airline mobile apps.  These provide access to your itinerary, confirmation numbers and even boarding passes.  They can also provide immediate updates on flight delays or changes.  The downfall is if your cellphone is lost or loses power, your data is lost as well.  No boarding pass means no boarding!

3. In regards to the organization or company you have chosen to analyze this semester, what types of networking technologies are they currently using and how are they using them? What recommendations might you make in regards to their use of networking technologies?

     Sticking with the Lowe’s theme, they are using technology that includes augmented reality and chatbots (Stambor, 2018).  They use a Holoroom to give their customers visual ideas of how a room design can be accomplished.  They provide customers with the Oculus headgear and then give them virtual tours of what their design would look like.  It allows customers to look around and have a better idea of what they are purchasing.  The chatbots ask questions through their website or mobile applications and provides feedback prior to speaking to representative.  It also helps customers by gathering all the relevant information concerning a purchase or a return, prior to speaking with a customer service representative.  The only recommendation I could possibly think of, is that some people do not like the technology and want to speak to a person or look at the catalogs.  There should be a way to opt out of the technology aspect  quickly if requested.  This might retain some old school customers.

4th Reply to Discussion – Networks (minimum 150 words reply)

Hello class

            I hope that everyone is enjoying the course and was successful in writing their term paper last week. This course is almost at the end I can’t be happier as my degree will be 100% completed in 3 short weeks.

1. What are some of the benefits and challenges of business mobility?

            Mobility when it comes to a business in today’s world is a huge advantage, my wife for instance is able to work from home because of the technology that her company provides to her she is an equal opportunity analyst and has an important piece to the mission of her company under her care. The company she works for is located and Arizona and she is able to conduct her business from our home in Michigan. Not only does mobility give the company employees flexibility and empower them to work from anywhere but it also allow them to complete those spur of the moment tasks at a moment’s notice. Some of the down sides that is see is there are times within my wife’s daily grind that the in person interaction can be lost and the tone of certain things such as emails can get lost or misinterpreted sometimes, causing communication issues or failure.

2. What types of mobile business applications do you have personal experience with? Describe a positive and a negative experiences with mobile business applications. The main applications that I personally use are for my mobile banking and entertainment purposes. I normally have very good experiences with the apps that I choose to use. The one bad experience that I had was with the Facebook app I ended up deleting the app and the profile after a 2 month battle with them to gain access back to my account after it had been hacked. 3. In regards to the organization or company you have chosen to analyze this semester, what types of networking technologies are they currently using and how are they using them? What recommendations might you make in regards to their use of networking technologies? USAF recruiting service is currently using VPN servers out of Scott AFB and MI-Fi mobile hotspots to connect to their information. This is both in and out of the office the main issue that I see with the hot spots is communication through cell transmissions. At the very least for the internet connection and access to our share drive and other sensitive material I think that in the office converting over to something more secure such as an ASA coupled with the VPN would suffice to connect quickly and securely to the information that we hold.

5th Reply to Discussion – Web Deveiopment-Cross-Browser Compatible Forms (minimum 150 words reply)

Today there are many different browsers available. With that, I am sure everyone has experienced going to a website and it not working correctly. Then you go to the same website but from a different browser and it does not work. That is why it is important to have cross-browser compatibility in websites. For any website, it is important that your website is usable across all major media, whether it be popular browsers, mobile devices, or any other web browsing devices. Trying to gear your website to one popular browser will only cause headaches. When developing websites you need to think in the big picture of browsers.

                First thing you need to make sure is that you added the DOCTYPE in your HTML file. Doctype basically helps your browser to recognize in which language your website’s code is written.  Next, you will need to look at the applied CSS reset.  For example, you may have seen that many times, submit buttons look differently on different browsers; that is because of CSS. Therefore, if some of the elements are not rendering properly in different browsers then that can be because of CSS. When you apply CSS reset, you tell every browser to remove the styling to default CSS that causes cross-browser incompatibility. Another option is to use separate stylesheets for different browsers. You can link to the different stylesheet for every browser using conditional comments. So that Chrome will render chrome’s stylesheet, Firefox will go for its stylesheet and so on. Lastly, you need to use cross browser friendly libraries and frameworks. The reason for using these cross-browser compatible libraries and frameworks is that you can rely on them to know that they will not introduce some bugs, which you can avoid very easily.

6th Reply to Discussion – Networks (minimum 150 words reply)

Hello Class,

The purpose of cross-browser testing is to ensure that your page works well on all devices and all platforms.  With the mass number of devices people are walking around with today, you never know what device someone might be browsing your page on.  If you test the compatibility on multiple platforms, you should be able to develop a page that works properly on all devices.  The first web page I created, I did not do this process.  I created what I thought was an amazing page.  I went to show my boss in his office (who is on a different platform), and he wasn’t too pleased.  This process is very necessary to the production and profit of your web page.  You wouldn’t want people attempting to go on your web page and the format be very unpleasing to the eye.  You want to be aware how you page looks on multiple platforms early on in the building process.  Waiting too long could make it difficult to make the changes.  I would start making changes and it would seem to mess up the initial platform and it took me quite sometime to get them all working properly.  Knowing this back then would have saved a lot of time.

This week I’m going to add in a form to my web page.  This will be a page where people can contact me or send me information.  Some things I am going to try to incorporate are: button, date, checkbox, image, submit, a text box, and a few others.  Since my page is informative on sugar gliders, maybe I can have a page where someone can contact me in an effort to purchase one or possibly sell one.

For this portion of the discussion, read through the discussion, and please answer the question after the discussion pertaining to this discussion.

Hello class,

The business mobility encompasses the access to work experiences to many employees. This on the other side creates employees’ satisfaction and the sense of empowerment and enablement in general.Efficiency and productivity are improved with the ability to access content from anywhere. This as well leads to far better responsiveness. With mobility, employees are able to work from any place and any time. This phenomenon is rapidly becoming the replacement package to many workers. Research has shown that a good percentage of the younger people prefer using their devices to suit into this flexible schedule (Piva et al, 2017). Personal ownership of devices being used has emerged to make a big difference in business leading to reduced costs, higher rates of adoption as well as better employee’s management.

Security issues is one of many challenges, as much as employees are moving into quicker and easier work application and account information access, hackers, on the other hand, are taking advantage of this situation upon the tiniest cracks that can be located. The poorly performing application brings down all the activities that can be undertaken. All the way from access to control of the activities. Network intrusions can occur if access codes or passwords are stored on a device that is lost or stolen (Baltzan, 2011). Creation of a secure platform remains costly, making this activity very expensive.

The business app that has interacted with is the FlightAware. This is an application that allows one track flights and their respective places. Bad experience during interaction with this app is that one is able to track flight mileages and also you can’t send a push notification. The better part of it is that one is able to get mobile boarding passes, aces to flight timetable and also currency conversion is also made possible.

Pan Africa Company makes use of Wireless Local Area Network and Local Area Network technologies. LAN network is used in connecting the computers and other hardware devices like printers within the offices. My recommendations on the network users are that the company should make regular proper network assessment with respect to the environment that is to be used. Right applications and devices should be used. Secondly, I will recommend the use of secure networks. This will limit intruders whose major role is destruction activities and breaches.

References

Baltzan, P. (2011). ITMG498 IT Management Senior Seminar: Business Driven Information Systems (3rd Edition). McGraw-Hill.

Piva, M., Tani, M., & Vivarelli, M. (2017). The Productivity Impact of Business Mobility: International Evidence (No. 14). GLO Discussion Paper.

(minimum 150 words)

good remarks relating to this week’s subject of networks within a business environment. What kind of networks do you recommend for this setting?

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