CS4557 - Final Report - Group B2 20150605 2342

CS4557 - Project Management in Practice

Final ReportGroup B2

Patrick Butler (11126035)Allyn Dalton (11125179)Brian Greene (11042141)Tom McGreal (11135417)

Pádhraig O’Donoghue (0350788)

AY 2014/2015 S2

CS4457 - Final Report Group B2

i

i Contents1 Group Section2 Stakeholder Analysis3 WBS Diagram4 WBS/Gantt Chart5 CPA Precedence Diagram6 Communication Flow7 21-Point Project Analysis9 Reflections11 Timesheet Summary (Feb)12 Timesheet Summary (Mar)13 Timesheet Summary (Apr)14 Timesheet Summary (May)15 Timesheet Module Totals16 Individual Section (Patrick Butler)17 Stakeholder Analysis18 WBS Diagram19 WBS/Gantt Chart20 CPA Precedence Diagram21 Communication Flow21 21-Point Analysis Revisited23 Lessons Learned25 Individual Section (Allyn Dalton)26 Stakeholder Analysis27 WBS Diagram28 WBS/Gantt Chart29 CPA Precedence Diagram30 Communication Flow30 21-Point Analysis Revisited32 Lessons Learned

33 Individual Section (Brian Greene)34 Stakeholder Analysis35 WBS Diagram36 WBS/Gantt Chart37 CPA Precedence Diagram38 Communication Flow38 21-Point Analysis Revisited41 Lessons Learned42 Individual Section (Tom McGreal)43 Stakeholder Analysis44 WBS Diagram45 WBS46 Gantt Chart47 CPA Precedence Diagram48 Communication Flow48 21-Point Analysis Revisited50 Lessons Learned51 Individual Section (Pádhraig O’Donoghue)52 Stakeholder Analysis53 WBS Diagram54 WBS55 Gantt Chart56 CPA Precedence Diagram57 Communication Flow58 21-Point Analysis Revisited62 Lessons Learned63 References64 Declaration

Contents


1

Group Section

CS4457 - Final ReportGroup Section

Group B2

2

Stakeholder AnalysisGroup MembersThese are the most important stakeholders in the module. Each group member must contribute both indi-vidually and collectively to each assignment. This gives eachmemberastronginfluenceonthesuccessofeachof these assignments. If one member does not contrib-ute to the projects as much as the others, the workload fortheotherswillbeincreasedandthefinalgradeofthegroupmaysufferduetoinconsistentteammanage-ment. For this reason, regular group meetings and con-stant group communication are essential for the group tobemanagedeffectively.Somemembersofthegroupare motivated predominantly by the grade while others bywantingtolearnhowtomanageteamsefficientlyor get better at this skill. Members of the group gen-erally recognise the potential to hinder one another’s performance and why it is important to try and avoid letting one another down in this way by contributing fairly. The actual level of interest, however, may vary amongst group members, but it is understood that all 5 have equal legitimacy (cf. interest) (Mitchell et al 1997, p.866). In principle, all 5 members have equal power (influence).Inpractice,however,thisisredistributedunevenly. This is due to variances in both engagement and management experience amongst the members, and the inevitable politics of social organisation.

LecturerThis stakeholder could be considered equally as impor-tant as the individual group members. The lecturer pro-vides the group members with the information needed to complete assignments, and will also be grading these assignments. Therefore, the lecturer has high power andinfluenceoverthemodule,andmustbemanagedclosely through communication and consultation to ensure the group receives the maximum grade possible for each assignment. Also, if the grades of the class are

not satisfactory, the reputation of the lecturer may be damaged. For this reason, it is in the lecturer’s interest to have each group perform to the highest level.

TutorThis stakeholder has less power over the project than the lecturer or group members. The opinion of the tutor doesnotaffectthegradingofthemodule.However,thetutorhasmorepowertopositivelyinfluencesuccessona micromanagement level, i.e. through tutorials when direct interaction with the group is possible. As with the lecturer, but to a lesser extent, the tutor’s reputation may also be damaged due to unsatisfactory grades. Therefore, it is in the tutor’s interest to support stu-dents in their assignments.

Other GroupsThese could be considered minor stakeholders to the group. They do not have any power over, and are not affectedbyanyothergroup’sassignments,butcanofferadvicetoensurethateveryoneisontherighttrack. Competition among groups would not be condu-cive to success because the course represents a non-zero-sum game and interests do not oppose (Chen et al 2015). It is more in their interests for groups to coop-erate, e.g. sharing information.

FYP Co-ordinator and FYP SupervisorsThe FYP co-ordinator and all respective FYP supervisors of group members should be considered stakeholders in the project. They do not have power over this project, butthesuccessofthegrouponthiscoursemayinflu-ence the success of each member respectively in their FYP’s,benefitingthesestakeholders.

3

GROUP (PM COURSE)

Notes

N/A

Project Management in Practice

1.1 Lecture and tutorial

attendance

1.2 Project manage-ment of PM course

1.3 Timesheets

1.3.1Individually track time

1.3.2Create summary

sheet

1.3.3Submit all timesheets

1.4.1Establish group

contact

1.4.2Hold kick-off meeting

1.4.3Individually form 21

questions

1.4.4Hold interim meeting

1.4.5Answer questions

1.4.6Discuss answers

1.4.7Write FYP summaries

1.4.8Write discussion

section

1.4.9Compile and format

1.4.10Proofing

1.4.11Submission

1.4.12Assignment 1 done


1.5.2Complete individual tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis,

WBS, etc.)

1.5.3Hold interim meeting

1.5.4Complete group tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis, WBS,

etc.)


1.5.6Proofing

1.5.7Submission



1.6.2Complete individual tasks

(namely communication flow and tasks for FYP)

1.6.3Complete group tasks

(namely communication flow and tasks for PM course)


1.6.5Submission


1.7.1Agree on preferred

topics and presenta-tion slots

1.7.2Individually survey

topic area

1.7.3Meeting to define subtopics

and assign duties

1.7.4Research

1.7.5Meeting to present

findings and structure presentation

1.7.6Develop presentation

1.7.7Meeting to finalise

presentation

1.7.8Formatting

1.7.9Rehearsal

1.7.10Delivery

1.7.11Presentation done

1.8.1 Complete individual tasks (e.g. revisited 21 questions,

lessons learned, etc.)

1.8.2Complete group tasks (e.g.

PM course 21 questions, assignment 2 and 3 material,

etc.)


1.8.4Proofing

1.8.5Submission

1.8.6Report done

1.4 Assignment 1

1.5 Assignment 2

1.6 Assignment 3

1.7 Presentation

1.8 Final report

1.9 Module finished

Level 1 - Entire Project

Level 2

Level 3

WB

S D

iagr

am

4

ID WBS Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors

1 1 Project management course 70 days Thu 29/01/15

Wed 06/05/15

2 1.1 Lecture and tutorial attendance 52 days Thu 29/01/15

Fri 10/04/15

3 1.2 Project management of PM course 64 days Fri 06/02/15 Wed 06/05/15

4 1.3 Timesheets 69 days Fri 30/01/15 Wed 06/05/15

5 1.3.1 Individually track time 69 days Fri 30/01/15 Wed 06/05/15

6 1.3.2 Create summary sheet 12 days Tue 21/04/15

Wed 06/05/15

7 1.3.3 Submit all timesheets 4 days Fri 01/05/15 Wed 06/05/15

5,6

8 1.4 Assignment 1 6 days Sat 07/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

9 1.4.1 Establish group contact 4 days Sat 07/02/15 Wed 11/02/15

10 1.4.2 Hold kick‐off meeting 1 day Thu 12/02/15

Thu 12/02/15

11 1.4.3 Individually form 21 questions 2 days Thu 12/02/15

Fri 13/02/15

12 1.4.4 Hold interim meeting 1 day Fri 13/02/15 Fri 13/02/15

13 1.4.5 Answer questions 2 days Fri 13/02/15 Sat 14/02/15 11

14 1.4.6 Discuss answers 2 days Sun 15/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

13

15 1.4.7 Write FYP summaries 2 days Sat 14/02/15 Sun 15/02/15

16 1.4.8 Write discussion section 2 days Fri 13/02/15 Mon 16/02/15

14,15

17 1.4.9 Compile and format 2 days Sun 15/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

13,16

18 1.4.10 Proofing 2 days Sun 15/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

17

19 1.4.11 Submission 1 day Mon 16/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

18

20 1.4.12 Assignment 1 done 1 day Mon 16/02/15

Mon 16/02/15

19

21 1.5 Assignment 2 5 days Tue 24/02/15

Mon 02/03/15

22 1.5.1 Hold kick‐off meeting 1 day Tue 24/02/15

Tue 24/02/15

23 1.5.2 Complete individual tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis, WBS, etc.)

3 days Tue 24/02/15

Thu 26/02/15

24 1.5.3 Hold interim meeting 1 day Fri 27/02/15 Fri 27/02/15

25 1.5.4 Complete group tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis, WBS, etc.)

2 days Fri 27/02/15 Sat 28/02/15 24

26 1.5.5 Compile and format 2 days Sat 28/02/15 Sun 01/03/15

23,25


Mon 02/03/15

26


Mon 02/03/15

27

29 1.5.8 Assignment 2 done 1 day Mon 02/03/15

Mon 02/03/15

28

30 1.6 Assignment 3 3 days Thu 12/03/15

Mon 16/03/15

31 1.6.1 Hold kick‐off meeting 1 day Thu 12/03/15

Thu 12/03/15

32 1.6.2 Complete individual tasks (namely communication flow andtasks for FYP)

3 days Thu 12/03/15

Mon 16/03/15

33 1.6.3 Complete group tasks (namely communication flow and tasks for PM course)

3 days Thu 12/03/15

Mon 16/03/15

31

34 1.6.4 Compile and format 1 day Mon 16/03/15

Mon 16/03/15

33,32


Mon 16/03/15

34

36 1.6.6 Assignment 3 done 0 days Mon 16/03/15

Mon 16/03/15

35

37 1.7 Presentation 49 days Tue 24/02/15

Fri 01/05/15

38 1.7.1 Agree on preferred topics and presentation slots

6 days Tue 24/02/15

Tue 03/03/15

39 1.7.2 Individually survey topic area 19 days Wed 04/03/15

Sun 29/03/15

38

40 1.7.3 Meeting to define subtopics and assign duties

1 day Thu 12/03/15

Thu 12/03/15

39

41 1.7.4 Research 32 days Fri 13/03/15 Sun 26/04/15

40

42 1.7.5 Meeting to present findings and structure presentation

1 day Thu 19/03/15

Thu 19/03/15

43 1.7.6 Develop presentation 4 days Sun 26/04/15

Wed 29/04/15

41

44 1.7.7 Meeting to finalise presentation 1 day Thu 26/03/15

Thu 26/03/15

45 1.7.8 Formatting 4 days Sun 26/04/15

Wed 29/04/15

43

46 1.7.9 Rehearsal 6 days Sun 26/04/15

Fri 01/05/15 43

47 1.7.10 Delivery 1 day Fri 01/05/15 Fri 01/05/15 45,46

48 1.7.11 Presentation done 0 days Fri 01/05/15 Fri 01/05/15 47

49 1.8 Final report 12 days Tue 21/04/15

Wed 06/05/15

50 1.8.1 Complete individual tasks (e.g. revisited 21 questions, lessons learned, etc.)

12 days Tue 21/04/15

Wed 06/05/15

20

51 1.8.2 Complete group tasks (e.g. PM course 21 questions, assignment 2 and 3 material, etc.)

12 days Tue 21/04/15

Wed 06/05/15

52 1.8.3 Compile and format 1 day Wed 06/05/15

Wed 06/05/15

50,51,36,29


Wed 06/05/15

52

54 1.8.5 Submission 1 day Wed 06/05/15

Wed 06/05/15

53

55 1.8.6 Report done 0 days Wed 06/05/15

Wed 06/05/15

54

56 1.9 PM course done 0 days Wed 06/05/15

Wed 06/05/15

55

06/05Project management course

16/07Lecture and tutorial attendance

03/08Project management of PM course

06/05Timesheets

10/08Individually track time

21/05Create summary sheet

12/05Submit all timesheets

16/02Assignment 1

11/05Establish group contact

06/05Hold kick-off meeting

07/05Individually form 21 questions

06/05Hold interim meeting

17/02Answer questions

17/02Discuss answers

07/05Write FYP summaries

18/02Write discussion section

18/02Compile and format

18/02Proofing

17/02Submission

17/02Assignment 1 done

02/03Assignment 2


08/05Complete individual tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis, WBS, etc.)

06/05Hold interim meeting

03/03Complete group tasks (e.g. stakeholder analysis, WBS, etc.)


03/03Proofing

03/03Submission

03/03Assignment 2 done

16/03Assignment 3


08/05Complete individual tasks (namely communication flow and tasks for FYP)

17/03Complete group tasks (namely communication flow and tasks for PM course)


17/03Submission

16/03

01/05Presentation

13/05Agree on preferred topics and presentation slots

30/03Individually survey topic area

12/05Research

30/04Develop presentation

05/05Formatting

07/05Rehearsal

04/05Delivery

01/05

06/05Final report

04/03Complete individual tasks (e.g. revisited 21 questions, lessons learned, etc.)

21/05Complete group tasks (e.g. PM course 21 questions, assignment 2 and 3 material, etc.)


12/05Proofing

07/05Submission

06/05

06/05

S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M W F S T T S M26 Jan '15 02 Feb '15 09 Feb '15 16 Feb '15 23 Feb '15 02 Mar '15 09 Mar '15 16 Mar '15 23 Mar '15 30 Mar '15 06 Apr '15 13 Apr '15 20 Apr '15 27 Apr '15 04 May '15 11 M

Task

Split

Milestone

Summary

Project Summary

Inactive Task

Inactive Milestone

Inactive Summary

Manual Task

Duration-only

Manual Summary Rollup

Manual Summary

Start-only

Finish-only

External Tasks

External Milestone

Deadline

Critical

Critical Split

Baseline

Baseline Milestone

Baseline Summary

Progress

Manual Progress

PM Course WBS/Gantt ChartDate: Wed 06/05/15

GROUP (PM COURSE)

Notes

N/A

WB

S/G

antt

Cha

rt

5

GROUP (PM COURSE)

Notes

N/A

CPA

Pre

cede

nce

Dia

gramLegend

ES Dur EFLS Float LF

0 3 392 92 95

7 2 993 86 95

95 0 95

7 1 894 87 95

14 5 1990 76 95

28 7 3588 60 95

42 5 4790 48 95

28 15 4380 52 95

84 11 9584 0 95

End

Assignment 3

1.7Presentation

1.8Final Report

1.5Assignment 2

1.1Lectures and tutorials

1.6

WBS No.Description

1.2PM of course

Start

1.3Timesheets

1.4Assignment 1


Group B2

6

Communication FlowHow does your group organise communication and change?We created a Facebook group in order for our group to be able to communicate easily. This is used for arrang-ing meetings, progress updates and general discussions outside of meetings. Our group meets once a week to discuss our assignments. During these meetings, previ-ous assignments and feedback are discussed, and sug-gestions are made for improvement. Current assign-ments are discussed and broken down into tasks, which are then delegated to each member according to our individual strengths and preferences. This time is also used to set realistic deadlines for task completion and submission of deliverables. The minutes of these meet-ings are then uploaded to OneDrive. To a lesser extent, Microsoft OneDrive is used for communication. This is where our documents are compiled before submission. This system helps us to review and critique each other’s work while keeping a record of all of our work to date.

How are tasks specified and delegated within the group, especially in regards to communication?Whenever we get an assignment, we set up a meet-ing in order to discuss exactly what we need to do and when to do it by. Once we realise exactly what we need to do, we delegate each task. If the task requires the whole group to write about it, this is explained and each member of the group must participate. Some group work could also be split up, i.e. if 5 or 6 ques-tions were given, then each of us could take a single one to answer. There are also the individual portions of our assignments, which everyone must do for them-selves.

During the group meetings, we assign the tasks. We each get a say on what we want to do or would most likely be best writing about. From here we agree on which tasks are assigned. If someone is missing from the group, they get no say in the matter and are left with whichever task is not picked. No disagreements have ever arose from two people wanting the same task as of yet. After each meeting, the minutes are kept and uploaded to a share which we can refer back to in case we have forgotten something

How is communication to the outside handled?Communication to outside entities is facilitated through a team leader. Our team leader was not nominated, nor did this individual put himself forward for the role. Our team leader just started doing the tasks of facilitating communication within the team. During the initial stage of the project we started out without much direction, however our team lead set in place a basic frame-work for team communication initially by creating an online repository for the group’s deliverables. Following assignment 1 it was agreed that more group commu-nication was required to complete tasks correctly and implementamoreefficientworkstrategy.Toachieve

this a weekly team meeting was scheduled, during this firstteammeetingourcurrentteamleaderinadvert-ently became the chairperson of the meeting, since this meeting this person is now recognised as team lead. The responsibilities of this role is to act as the groups point of contact, this aspect of the role reduces the communication overhead for the rest of the team allow-ing them focus on tasks they are required to complete. Also our team lead acts as a facilitator, if there are external requirements for assignment completion our team lead researches these requirements and presents them to the team. The delegation of tasks is not a re-sponsibility of our team lead this happens organically at team meetings, the only aspect of delegation the team lead takes on is to suggest tasks for an individual based on their strengths or subject matter expertise. The responsibility of writing meeting agendas and meeting minutes is also a responsibility of the team lead these are basic admin tasks however they greatly improve the productivity of team meetings and thus yield great-erproductivityinthefinaldeliverables.

What has changed in your communication organi-zation since deliverable 1?Since deliverable 1 we have shifted our focus from using Facebook as our main means of communication. The Facebook system has proven to be overly time consumingandinefficientforeffectivecommunication.Instead, we have decided to arrange weekly meetings at a set time, day and location that suits everyone in the group. This will also avoid the problem of group members missing meetings, a problem that has oc-curred for most meetings to date.

How are you now organising these aspects for deliverable 2 (i.e. the preparation for the group presentation)?Initially we started using Facebook as our communica-tion tool. After using this for 2 weeks we realised that it was actually quiet time consuming to use, Internet accesswasnotalwaysavailableanditwasdifficulttokeep track of group member’s comments and inputs. Wedecidedthatweneedtofindanalternativemethodofcommunicationthatwillfitintoourbusytimesched-ules to allow us discuss preparation for the group presentation. As we are trying to reduce the amount of time spent on Facebook we decided to organize weekly meetings. In these meetings future deliverable are discussed, what needs to be done and assigning roles to each member.

WealsouseOneDrivetouploadfilesandsharefiles.OneDrive is an online collaborative tool that allows us to share material. This will be used to upload relevant material for the presentation as well as sharing the presentation slides so all group members have online access. This is how we are organizing aspects for deliv-erable 2, the group presentation.


Group B2

7

Scalability íssues: Size matters. For the course, if you were the lecturer/the TA, how would you organize communication so that students have a realistic experience of life in a large, evolv-ing context? (over 100 students, 22 Groups, 4 Tutorials: 1 Lecturer and 1 Tutor)Most large organisations expect the people working for them to assume a share of the responsibility of stay-ing informed about the ever-changing, mission-critical goalsoftheorganisationandtheirrespectivespecificroles as individuals in achieving them, i.e. organisations expect individuals to be pro-active about obtaining this information rather than be mere passive receivers of instruction from their superiors. This applies in almost all situations, regardless of organisational culture. Moreover, it is in the individual’s interest to be pro-ac-tive in this manner: otherwise, they risk appearing incompetent in the eyes of their peers and superiors. In other words, they must, of their own volition, adopt the interests of the organisation as their own (take its perspective) and act accordingly, i.e. take initiative by taking responsibility.

The incentives to do so, e.g. holding onto the job, pro-fessional pride, etc., however, do not apply in the con-text of the PM course, and may have only weak equiv-alents, e.g. achieving or maintaining a certain QCA, “professional” pride (here placed in inverted commas because the career stakes are not as high), etc. The situationthestudentfindsthemselvesinappears,infact, to be about as much like that of the customer in a project management situation as it does that of a project team member (or even manager)! This would seem bizarre in any other context, but, at university, thestudenteffectivelypaystowork.Theyalsopayfornot working, i.e. they, and not the organisation or its

shareholders,suffertheconsequences(broadlyspeak-ing). Therefore any pretence to real-world contexts will beconstrainedbytheartificialityofthesituation.

Fortheexercisetowork,thestudentsmustfirstbuyinto the idea. As the lecturer or TA (and as was ac-tually done), I would explain the experiment and the motivation behind it to the students via lectures. With thebenefitofhindsight,however,Iwouldalsoseeksomesortofconfirmationthatthestudentsclearlyunderstood the arrangement, e.g. a small assignment or perhaps a declaration to sign (ethics-related red tape notwithstanding). It has been my experience that students often misinterpret or outright miss what is announced at lectures. This is symptomatic of the cul-ture of “spoon feeding” information to students in the University. It would take some drastic measure such as the “scene-setting” assignment to overcome the cultur-al habituation to “push” communication to “pull”, as is usually the case in the real world. Once this inertia is dissipated, the existing arrangement of using Dropbox wouldsuffice.Itisa“pull”communicationmethodandso obviates the need for micromanagement of all the students and groups. As lecturer or TA, it would be impractical to verify whether each individual received the information they needed since scaling the process would increase my workload geometrically. It would also defeat the purpose of the simulation of real-world conditions.

I would also discourage students from emailing with requests for information that was already distributed via other methods such as lectures, tutorials, Dropbox, etc., because this kind of helplessness is not appreciat-ed in professional contexts.

21-Point Project Analysis[Original answers identified in italics.]

01. What were your criteria for determining pro-ject success?Project success criteria are determined by the grades we receive for each deliverable. We consider a success-ful grade to be in the A to B band.

02. What were the project drivers, constraints and degrees of freedom you could identify in rela-tion to the PM course?ThekeydriversinrelationtothePMcoursearetofirst-ly satisfy our lectures expectations by delivering assign-ments that are of a high quality in relation to content and aesthetic value. The constraints are to work within the given deadlines & follow the guidelines outlined in deliverablespecifications.Wedidnotidentifyanyde-grees of freedom as the module progressed due to the firmoutlinefordeliverables.Howeverinretrospectthismay have been an oversight with respect to the pres-

entation. After viewing other group’s presentations we noted that the most distinguished presentations were thosethatdidnotadhereasstrictlytothespecificationas we did. Allowing them to put a spin on their chosen topic,benefitingboththecontentanddeliveryofthepresentation

03. What were your criteria for determining whether the product was ready for consumption (i.e. PM deliverables)?This criteria depended on the deliverable, any written content such as reports were proof read by the team before submission also the team analysed the content to ensure the content was on target with our objective. This also applied to the more technical aspects of deliv-erables such as WBS, CPA and Gantt creation. Criteria for the presentation included a number of rehearsals before presentation day with all the team giving feed-back on delivery & content improvements to ensure the standard was high.


Group B2

8

04. What commitments did you have to make on this project were they achievable?The team commitment included attending regular team meetings to discuss the deliverables and also to be available for online discussions. On an individual level each team member was responsible for various contributions to group content. Each individual was also responsible for their individual FYP content which accompanied PM tasks on each deliverable.

05. What were your main considerations in writ-ing your project plan?We considered communications between team mem-bers as the most important aspect of the course. Each member needs to know our objectives of each deliv-erable. We then split up the work appropriately. Each member needs to know exactly what they are doing, otherwise it would have been possible that work would have been duplicated without anyone else knowing. We used face-to-face meetings to discuss this and kept in contact online.

06. What level of granularity did you use to cat-egorise your project milestones and what are they?Assignment 2 and 3 did not have to be completed by their given deadlines, although they were needed for thefinaldeliverable.Weusedthesedeadlinesassub-goals as well as to get feedback on the assignments

07. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularising them?Timesheets were very similar across each team member. We use copies of the format given to use, which was very easy to use. We could easily add or delete rows to organise each week’s tasks.

08. How much time did you budget for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?We completed assignment 2 and assignment 3 by their deadlines, and used the feedback as a metric to improve and review them. It was clear that our WBS and GANTT charts needed major improvement. We did not realise the extent of how much improvement was needed on them until after we got the feedback. As such, we did not prepare much time for reviewing the material.

09. Did you identify potential problems that could have arisen during project development? If so, what was your contingency plan for dealing with them?Success in the PM module depended on the comple-tion of the work entailed by all three assignments. Completion of this work depended on the ability of each group member to contribute a certain portion of it. Assignment briefs dictated that certain tasks were to be completed by all group members individually, i.e. the same task would be done by each member of the group, and that each would be graded separately. The remaining tasks, however, were group-based and could

be divided among individuals arbitrarily. The problem, therefore, of an individual not completing their allocat-ed group work, for whatever reason, may have arisen. The contingency plan in such an event consisted in re-assigning the work to another member of the group. There were two considerations to make when doing this: First, ensuring that the remaining time would besufficienttocompletethework;second,thattheprocess for choosing the new task owner would be fair. Inrespectofthefirstconsideration,itwasnecessaryto monitor the progress of each group member closely throughouttheprocess;tothisend,frequentstatusupdatesonFacebooksufficed.Inrespectofthesecond,there was no formal procedure agreed—although it was understood that whoever was most available (i.e. had fewest other pressing commitments) would probably oblige.

10. How and when did you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?A review of the processes used throughout project was not an integrated part of the project management plan. Minor, informal reviews were, however, born of necessity.Afterthefirstassignment,forexample,theneed to review the process for responding to assign-ment releases was apparent: The group would have to meet earlier, and assign resources and set milestones sooner. It also became apparent that using Facebook to compensate for poor attendance at meetings was ineffective—itwasagreedthatitwasnecessarytohavephysical meetings more regularly to improve productiv-ity and synergy.

11. Did you budget time for adapting to new pro-cesses, tools, or technologies?Yes, on two occasions: First, for adapting to project management software (Microsoft Project 2013 and Project Libre for the group’s Windows and Mac users respectively), and, second, for ensuring that the pres-entation would run smoothly in the environment where it was to be delivered (namely in a brightly lit room fittedwitha4:3screenandWindowsPCofmodestspecificationrunningMicrosoftPowerPoint2013).Intheformer case, each group member budgeted an extra day for learning to use the project management soft-ware. In the latter, the schedule was set to allow for troubleshooting of technical issues during rehearsal at the venue.

12. What did you estimate the project would re-quire in labour-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time that was available to spend on it?It was estimated that 300-600 labour hours would be required by the PM course assignments (6-9 hours per week [not including lectures and tutorial], for 10-13 weeks, per 5 members of the group). Assuming that not all modules would require equal investment of time—despite carrying equal credits—and that the FYP would not require more than about 16 hours of work perweek,and,finally,thateachindividualwascapable


Group B2

9

of 48 hours of work per week, then, over the 13 weeks of the semester, enough time was available to accom-modate that potentially required.

13. Did you accommodate the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?The scheduling overhead associated with task-switching is absorbed into to estimate of total required project time. Given the magnitude of the variance in the sched-ule estimates, a measure of this overhead would be trivial.

14. This question is already asked by question/ tip #11N/A

15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? Were they Realistic?We arrived at each of our estimates by communicating via Facebook threads and weekly/fortnightly meetings. Group discussion at meetings ensured that we arrived at realistic estimates and that we stayed on schedule. Yes, these were realistic and we were successful for the most part on keeping them on track.

16. Did you use any tools in the process of esti-mating your work?Although we did not use any tools in estimating our work for the Project Management course we used weekly or fortnightly meetings that allowed us to keep track and update milestones and deadlines.

17. Did you factor a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unforeseen issues that may arise?Nowedidnotfactoraschedulecontingencybufferintoour project management project to allow for unfore-seen issues.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and did you record actuals as well as estimates of your work-ing time?Yes, the PM course has outlined methods for planning and organising future projects, and will have an impact on any projects that we undertake from here on.

19. What was your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?We would consider a task to be 100% complete when wearehappythatwehavesatisfiedalloftherequire-ments and deliverables for that task.

20. How did you measure and track the current status of the project state?To do this, we communicated through Facebook to keep each other updated about our current progress. We also held weekly meetings where we would discuss our progress on tasks and to see whether we were on track for the deadlines we set for ourselves.

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the PM course, e.g. past assignment reports?N/A

ReflectionsHow the group worked, how it organised itselfThegroupconsistsoffivemembers:PatrickButler(Music, Media and Performance Technology), Allyn Dalton (Digital Media Design), Brian Greene (Computer Systems), Tom McGreal (Games Development), and Pádhraig O’Donoghue (Music, Media and Performance Technology). Work was organised through a combina-tion of group meetings and online social networking channels (namely Facebook’s “group page” and instant messagingsystems);emailwasusedonlytoinitiatecontact in February.

IssuesAlthough the group was productive and interperson-al dynamics were harmonious in general, it was not altogetherwithoutdifficultiesandissues.Theissueofineffectivecommunicationwasthemostfrequentlyoc-curring and impactful. Multiple secondary issues arose

directly as result of these breakdowns in communica-tion, namely increased communication overhead (which in turn raised tensions among group members and led to jadedness in the long term), disunited work (i.e. in-consistent approaches among individuals), and delays.

Positive aspectsThe positive aspects of this team project was the knowledge gained & the relationships built. The lessons learned from the pitfalls of miscommunication and poor time management were also a positive aspect as these are issues we can now easily identify and aspire not to repeat them going forward. This module has proven to be very helpful in the completion of our FYP’s, allowing us to apply industry standard practices to our own work and thus improving it. It has also given us a taste of what real world projects will be like and will certainly benefitourfuturecareers.


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Lessons learnedThere were many lessons learned over the period of thismoduleandspecificallyfromthecompletionofthePMproject.Theseinclude;

1. Do not use Facebook as a means of team com-munication· Although convenient, it soon becomes a disordered array of posts and very hard to manage. Causing seri-ouscommunicationoverheadwithoutbenefitingcom-municationflow.

2. Ensure all team members attend all team meet-ings.· Not having all team members present at meetings negatestheeffectivenessofmeetingsinthefirstplace.This increases communication overhead having to update a team member on points, instructions, tasks & discussions raised during meetings.

3. Adhere to team soft deadlines.· Following and sticking to team soft deadlines would build in a contingency for rework and project analysis. Havingthisbuiltincontingencywouldproducehighercalibre work and ensure that all objectives are covered.

The above lists only the most poignant lessons learned by the team during this project. Other lessons were learned both as a group and individually, but are less noteworthy.

11

February Summary

Activity Patrick Butler Allyn Dalton Brian Greene Tom McGreal Padhraig O'Donoghue Group Month Total (Feb)

Lecture Attendance4.00 7.00 7.00 6.00 8.00 32.00

Tutorial Attendance2.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 18.00

Tutorial Preparation0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.50

Team Organisation (meeting minutes, agendas, timesheets) 0.00 0.00 0.60 0.00 0.60 1.20

Online (Facebook) Project Discussions1.50 0.00 2.40 0.00 6.30 10.20

Timesheets (completion)0.40 1.00 0.20 0.00 0.00 1.60

Team Meetings3.50 0.00 3.80 4.00 3.50 14.80

Review Textbook Information / Notes Review 0.00 4.50 6.30 0.00 0.50 11.30

Assignment Research2.50 0.00 3.20 0.00 2.00 7.70

Assignment Formatting0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 11.00 11.00

Assignment 12.00 20.50 9.80 0.00 8.00 40.30

Assignment 24.00 0.00 8.00 0.00 15.50 27.50

Assignment 34.50 0.00 0.00 7.00 0.00 11.50

Presentation Research0.00 0.00 0.00 6.00 0.00 6.00

Presentation Preparation0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Final Assignment0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Total 24.40 37.00 45.30 27.00 59.90 193.60

(hours per activity)

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March Summary

Activity Patrick Butler Allyn Dalton Brian Greene Tom McGreal Padhraig O'Donoghue Group Month Total (Mar)







Team Meetings3.50 0.00 3.50 4.00 2.00 13.00




Assignment 12.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 2.00

Assignment 24.00 6.00 3.00 0.00 3.50 16.50

Assignment 34.50 13.00 4.00 7.00 6.00 34.50




Total 27.40 43.00 33.30 28.00 26.10 157.80


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April Summary

Activity Patrick Butler Allyn Dalton Brian Greene Tom McGreal Padhraig O'Donoghue Group Month Total (Apr)







Team Meetings3.00 0.00 3.00 5.00 0.50 11.50




Assignment 10.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Assignment 20.00 3.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.00

Assignment 30.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00




Total 42.90 21.00 78.90 21.00 29.50 193.30


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May Summary

Activity Patrick Butler Allyn Dalton Brian Greene Tom McGreal Padhraig O'Donoghue Group Month Total (May)







Team Meetings0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00




Assignment 10.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Assignment 20.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Assignment 30.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00




Total 12.80 21.00 15.10 11.00 30.60 90.50


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Activity Patrick Butler Allyn Dalton Brian Greene Tom McGreal Padhraig O'Donoghue Group Module Total







Team Meetings6.50 0.00 10.30 9.00 6.00 31.80




Assignment 16.00 20.50 9.80 0.00 8.00 44.30

Assignment 28.50 9.00 11.00 7.00 19.00 54.50

Assignment 34.50 13.00 4.00 13.00 6.00 40.50




Total 107.50 122.00 172.60 87.00 146.10 635.20



16

Individual SectionPatrick Butler

CS4457 - Final ReportIndividual Section - Patrick Butler

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Stakeholder AnalysisMyself - I am the main stakeholder in this project as I amdoingallthework.Iwillalsobeeffectedthemostby the success of the project as it will impact on my grades and the quality of my degree.

My Supervisor - This is the second most important stakeholder.Heistheonewhodeterminesthesuc-cess of the project as he will be the one grading it. The successoftheprojectwillalsoeffectmysupervisorbecause his name will be on the project along with my own. If the project is unsuccessful it will look bad on his part.

My Second Reader – The second reader doesn’t have anyinfluenceontheprojectinthewaythatitiscompleted.However,hedoeshaveasayinhowitis graded, along with my supervisor. Therefore, the second reader is a very important stakeholder. For this

reasonitisimportantthatmyfinalreportisclear,easyto read, and that it is an accurate representation of the work that went into the project.

My Parents - They are the ones who have been funding me throughout my education. If my project is unsuc-cessful, impacting on my grades or perhaps resulting in me having to repeat the project, they will bare the financialcostsofmerepeating.

Housemates&Classmates-ThesearethepeoplewhoI ask for advice and approval for my project. They play an important role by helping me to assess the work I have done to assure I stay on the right track with the composition

The CSIS Department and the MMPT Course – These are minor stakeholders in that they don’t have any controloverhowmyprojectiscompleted.However,thestandard of my project, and all FYPs for that mater, do reflectonthequalityofeducationtheyprovide.PoorFYPs will give a poor impression of how well the depart-ment is able to train its students.

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P. BUTLER

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Budget$0.00Cost

Techno Composition for ...

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Research

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Source Tools

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Exploration of Tools

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Composition

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Recording Sounds

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Arrangement

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Mastering

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Develop Tools

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First Iteration

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Second Iteration

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Third Iteration

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Fourth Iteration

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Spatialisation

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Listening Tests & Evalu...

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Performance

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Final Report

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Interim Report

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3 1 0 7 1 4 2 1 2 8 0 5Oct 2014

1 2 1 9 2 6 0 2Nov 2014

0 9 1 6 2 3 3 0 0 7Dec 2014

1 4 2 1 2 8 0 4Jan 2015

1 1 1 8 2 5 0 1Feb 2015

0 8 1 5 2 2 0 1Mar 2015

1 Techno Composition for Surround Sound 158 days? 9/8/14 8:00 AM 4/15/15 5:00 PM2 Research 135 days? 9/8/14 8:00 AM 3/13/15 5:00 PM3 Composition 59.875 days? 12/29/14 9:00 AM 3/20/15 5:00 PM4 Performance 0 days? 4/8/15 7:00 PM 4/8/15 5:00 PM5 Final Report 22.875 days? 3/16/15 9:00 AM 4/15/15 5:00 PM6 Source Tools 10 days? 9/29/14 8:00 AM 10/10/14 5:00 PM7 Exploration of Tools 10.875 days? 11/7/14 9:00 AM 11/21/14 5:00 PM8 Recording Sounds 3.875 days? 12/29/14 9:00 AM 1/1/15 5:00 PM9 Arrangement 54.875 days? 1/5/15 9:00 AM 3/20/15 5:00 PM

1 0 Interim Report 10.875 days? 12/22/14 9:00 AM 1/5/15 5:00 PM1 1 Develop Tools 22.875 days? 3/7/15 9:00 AM 4/8/15 4:00 PM1 2 First Iteration 6 days? 3/7/15 9:00 AM 3/16/15 5:00 PM1 3 Second Iteration 5.875 days? 3/18/15 9:00 AM 3/25/15 5:00 PM1 4 Third Iteration 6.875 days? 3/26/15 9:00 AM 4/3/15 5:00 PM1 5 Fourth Iteration 3 days? 4/3/15 8:00 AM 4/7/15 5:00 PM1 6 Mastering 5 days? 3/21/15 9:00 AM 3/27/15 5:00 PM1 7 Spatialisation 7.875 days? 3/27/15 9:00 AM 4/7/15 5:00 PM1 8 Listening Tests & Evaluation 4 days? 4/7/15 8:00 AM 4/10/15 5:00 PM

Name Duration Start Finish 3 1 0 7 1 4 2 1 2 8 0 5Oct 2014

1 2 1 9 2 6 0 2Nov 2014

0 9 1 6 2 3 3 0 0 7Dec 2014

1 4 2 1 2 8 0 4Jan 2015

1 1 1 8 2 5 0 1Feb 2015

0 8 1 5 2 2 0 1Mar 2015

0 8 1 5 2 2 2 9 0 5Apr 2015

1 2 1 9 2 6 0 3May 2015

1 0P. BUTLER

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80 50 130 130 90 220142 62 192 192 62 282

0 80 80 80 25 105 105 140 245 245 30 275 275 6 281 281 1 2820 0 80 80 0 105 105 0 245 245 0 275 275 0 281 281 0 282

80 120 200 200 20 220105 25 225 225 25 245

Finish -‐ 282Start = 0

1Research PerformanceDevelop New Tools SpatialisationSource & Explore Tools

3.12.2 4

2.3Composing

5.2

3.2Mastering

6Listening Tests & Evaluation

5.1Final ReportInterim Report

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Communication FlowQ - How do you organize communication and change concerning the FYP? (consider here the stakeholders)A - I communicate with my supervisor through email. I send weekly progress reports and arrange meetings if I need to discuss something. If I need to change any aspect of the project I send an email or arrange a meeting depending on the size and importance of the change.

Q - What has changed in your communication or-ganisation since deliverable 1?A - Since deliverable 1 I haven’t changed my method of communication. I am, however, communicating with my supervisor more frequently as Demo Day comes closer to ensure I am staying on track.

Q - How are you now organizing these aspects for the preparation of the demo days and the final report?A - I am keeping my supervisor updated whenever a large task has been completed and asking for feedback and direction to ensure I am on the right track. I am also communicating with Darragh Piggott to ensure my setup for Demo Day will be right.

Q - Scalability íssues: Size matters. If you were the FYP coordinator/ an FYP supervisor, how would you organize communication management under the constraints of limited resources (time and infrastructure) for these individual projects? (over 100 students, ca. 20 supervisors, ca. 20 second readers, external stakeholders/cus-tomers, 1 year span, topics and responsibilities spread across 5 courses). A - If I were FYP coordinator, I would probably have all FYP information and guidelines in one location, perhaps on Sulis, rather than email. This would make it easier for students to keep up to date with any changes to deadlines, etc. I feel the method of contact between supervisorsandstudentsissufficient.

21-Point Analysis Revisited1. What are your criteria for determining project success? The success of the project will be based on how the audience reacts to the composition and whether the desired perceptual and emotional effects are achieved.

HadIknownatthetime,Iwouldalsohavementionedthe level of functionality of the spatialisation tool I de-veloped as one of these criteria.

2. What are the project drivers, constraints & degrees of freedom you can identify in relation to your FYP?The main driver for this project is the musical quality of the composition. There are only a few constraints, mainly the limited spatial definition due to the number of loudspeakers in the reproduction system. There is a lot of freedom with this project as the aim is to create an experimental piece of music, not to recreate some-thing that has already been done. There is a lot of room for creativity.

This answer still applies.

3. What are your criteria for determining whether the product is ready for consumption (i.e. release, screening, or audition)?This will be determined after listening tests. These test will allow me to see if the desired spatial effects have been achieved accurately for the performance area.

This answer still applies, and this is how it was decided in the end.

4. What commitments must you take on this pro-ject are they achievable?I have committed to completing the music for the com-position by the end of week 5. I believe this is achiev-able as most of the work is done already. This will then give me four weeks to mix and master the composition. I will begin writing my draft report in week 5, giving me two weeks to complete it. This may be difficult to achieve as much of the work I will be documenting will take place after the draft is written.

These commitments should have been achievable. However,thecompositionprocessranoneweekoverthe planned deadline, and a draft report was not com-pleted. This was due to the additional work added onto the project because of incompatible spatialisation tools I had chosen earlier in the year. I developed my own spatialisation tool instead using Max/Msp. The devel-


Group B2

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opment of this tool caused major scope creep, and was finishedoneweekpriortodemoday.Italsoleftlesstime for mixing and mastering, yet all tasks were com-pleted to an acceptable standard on time for demo day.

5. What were your main considerations in writing your project plan?My main consideration was allowing enough time to compose the music of the piece. This takes a lot of thinking and experimentation and could not be rushed. I have also given myself a lot of time to mix the piece spatially as this also requires a lot of experimentation.

Theseconsiderationsstillapply.However,theextratask of needing to design my own tools was not taken into account due to inadequate research and a lack of foresight.

6. What level of granularity are you using to categorise your project milestones and what are they?There is only a small level of granularity with this pro-ject. These are the research stage, composition stage, mixing and mastering stage, and the report writing stage.

This answer still applies for the composition, mixing andmasteringstagesoftheproject.However,therewas a high level of granularity for the development of the spatialisation tool. The tool is comprised of a numberofcomponentswithspecificfunctions.Themilestones for completing each component were set by planning an iterative design process, discussed in the next answer.

7. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularising them?The large tasks for this project are the composition and mixing of the piece. These tasks, however, cannot be effectively modularised as they are a creative process. The other large task is the writing of the report. I hav-en’t developed a process for modularising this task.

This answer still applies for the composition, mixing andmasteringstagesoftheproject.However,anitera-tive process was used for the development of the spa-tialisation tool, similar to an agile approach. The devel-opmentprocesswasbrokendownintofiveiterations.Thetimescalefortheiterationswereflexible,however,they were limited to ten days in order for everything to be complete by Demo Day. Each time an iteration was complete, the program was tested and evaluated by myself. Any problems that arose were dealt with in the next iterations.

8. How much time have you budgeted for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?I have not budgeted much time for remixing as there may only be minor adjustments needed after the listen-ing tests. These adjustments can be made in the weeks between demo day and the final performance.

I did not budget any time for remixing the composition or reworking any elements of the spatialisation tools as there was not enough time due to scope creep. Final alterations were made in the week before Demo Day

9. Have you identified potential problems that could arise during project development if so what is your contingency if these problems material-ise?I can see no big problems that could arise. Perhaps the availability of the studio for mixing may be a problem but this will not be a big problem due to the nature of my mixing methods.

The biggest problem was the incompatability of the spatialisation tools I chose to mix the composition. This problem was spotted early in second semester, which gave me enough time to work around it by designing myowntool.Therewerenoothersignificantproblems.

10. How and when will you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?I will not be critically reviewing my processes as this project does not consider efficiency, rather the accura-cy of the resulting composition to the concept.

This answer still applies.

11. Have you budgeted time for adapting to new processes, tools, or technologies?No.

I should have budgeted time for this purpose. When I decided I needed to design new tools I had to abandon writing the draft report to facilitate for the extra time needed. It also added extra hours of work per week to the project.

12. What do you estimate the project requires in labour-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time available to spend on it?I estimate that I will need to spend between 15 and 20 hours per week from now until week 10 for the project to be complete two weeks in advance. This amounts to 2 - 3 hours per day, which is realistic, considering the small amount of hours on my timetable.

Thepreviousestimatewasrealistic.However,thede-velopment of new tools added an extra 10 to 15 hours per week from week 4 onwards, resulting in an esti-mated 25 to 35 hours spent on the project per week in orderforeverythingtobefinishedoneweekinad-vance. Up to 45 hours was spent on the project in the three weeks prior to the deadline


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13. How have you accommodated the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?Yes. The amount of time allocated per day allows for plenty of time for other work.

Thisanswerwasaccurateatthetime.However,thead-ditional work hours impacted on this, resulting in long hours when other assignments were due.

14. This question is already asked by question/ tip #11N/A

15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? Are they Realistic?So far, I am at the third stage of my project. The first two stages were researching and sourcing tools. The time estimates for these were met. The current stage is running one week over the estimated time but I have allowed for this with my estimates for the next two stages. I believe the estimates for the next stages are realistic.

Ibelievetheseestimateswererealistic.Howevertheadditional process of developing tools impacted on the later stages of the project.

16. Have you used any tools in the process of es-timating your work?No.

No.

17. Have you factored a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unfore-seen issues that may arise?Yes, I plan to have both the product and report finished one week prior to their deadlines.

Thiscontingencybufferseemedadequateatthetime.The major issue arose at an early enough stage for this to still be realistic, as it turned out to be. There were vey few problems after this and they were solved in the three or four days prior to Demo Day.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and are you recording actuals as well as estimates of your working time?This does not apply to my project.

As stated above.

19. What are your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?Realistically, I probably won’t ever consider this project to be 100% complete as there will always be room for improvement in most areas of the composition. The project will be considered complete when the compo-sition reaches a certain standard that I can be happy with.

I slightly misunderstood this question at the time. The taskofcomposingthepieceisadifficultonetoconsider100% complete, as there are always areas of the com-position which can be improved or worked on. Also, to the composer, the composition sounds worse the more you listen to it. For those reasons, I considered the composition to be “complete” when I was happy that it satisfiedtheconcept.However,Istillwouldnotconsid-er it 100% complete. The development of the spatial-isationtoolisadifferentstory.Iconsideredthistobe100% complete when all of the functions and features weretestedandconfirmedtobeworkingcorrectly.

20. How will you measure and track the current status of the project state?I will be keeping track of my project plan and continu-ously reconsidering how much time should be spent to reach my milestones.

I stuck to this process and it resulted in my project being completed in time. New milestones were added as the project changed, the project plan was updated, and time estimates were made based on this.

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the FYP, e.g. past assignment reports?No.

The previous answer still applied until the task of de-veloping the spatialisation tool was added. For this, I referred to previous projects I had done in Max/Msp.

Lessons LearnedMy FYP has taught me a few valuable lessons. I have realised the importance of proper planning before un-dertaking any project. This is an area which I was lack-ing in, and it resulted in a fair amount of scope creep with my FYP. I feel if I had taken this module before starting my FYP, rather than half way through it, it

wouldhavegreatlyimprovedthequalityofmyfinishedproduct and reduced the amount of stress I endured in the latter stages of the project.

I learned the importance of managing my time and set-ting a schedule for completing important tasks. My lack of time management resulted in me having to spend


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most of my time working on the project in the last six weeks before it was due. This caused me to neglect other modules by limiting the amount of time I could allocate to them.

During the FYP I also advanced my own technical skills. The need for the development of new tools instead of usingexistingtoolsforcedmetobecomeproficientin

Max/Msp, a program that I had struggled with in the past. My writing skills also greatly improved as a result oftheinterimandfinalreports.Thesearethetwolargest documents I have witten to date, and I now feel moreconfidentwhenundertakingwritingtasks.


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Individual SectionAllyn Dalton

CS4457 - Final ReportIndividual Section - Allyn Dalton

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Stakeholder AnalysisForthedurationofmyfinalyearprojectIbelievetherewas a number of stakeholders in linked to my project. My stakeholders include:

- Myself- Parents- Supervisor- Interviewee’s and testers- Second reader

My stakeholder analysis is as follows:

Myself:ThefirststakeholderIhaveselectedismyself.As I was in charge of completing my FYP, I have my grades at stake. These grades are going to have a say inthedegreeIreceivewhenIfinishcollege.Forthisreason I am a stakeholder in my FYP.

My Parents: I also believe my parents were/are im-mensely important stakeholders for my FYP. My parents have invested their hard earned money into my college education;thusthisleadsontomyFYP.IfIwerenotsuccessful in receiving a degree from college, my par-ents would have lost a lot of money they put at stake for my education.

My Supervisor: I believe my supervisor is a stakeholder. The reason for this is my supervisor had his name and reputation at stake. If I fail to reach a high standard

in my FYP or not complete it, my supervisor’s reputa-tionwouldhavebeennegativelyaffected.SimilarlyifI succeed in reaching a high standard in my FYP (as I hope to do) my supervisor’s reputation and name will bepositivelyeffectedfromthissuccess.

Interviewees and Testers: After myself, my parents and my supervisor the next most important stakeholder I have is the interviewee’s and testers that I had recruit-ed for my FYP. Although the interviewee’s and testers were the same people, without these I would not of been able to develop my design and prototype to what thefinaldesignwaswithoutthem.ForthisreasonIap-preciate their importance and I rate them as an impor-tant stakeholder.

Second Reader: The reason I believe my second reader is a stakeholder is they are a partially responsible for myfinalFYPgrade.Iamawarethatthesecondreaderis almost equally as important as my supervisor. Other than the reason stated above I don’t see the second reader as the most important stakeholder I have.

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A. DALTON

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1 Final Year Project - "FitPlan" 152 days 9/16/14 8:00 AM 4/15/15 5:00 PM2 Literature Review 97 days? 9/16/14 8:00 AM 1/28/15 5:00 PM3 State of Arts 45 days? 9/21/14 8:00 AM 11/21/14 5:00 PM4 Empirical Research 44 days? 10/21/14 8:00 AM 12/19/14 5:00 PM5 Interim Report 25.875 days? 12/2/14 9:00 AM 1/6/15 5:00 PM6 Design 1 8.875 days? 1/20/15 9:00 AM 1/30/15 5:00 PM7 Prototype 1 Low Fidelity (Paper) 25.875 days? 2/3/15 9:00 AM 3/10/15 5:00 PM8 Test 1 25.875 days? 3/10/15 9:00 AM 4/14/15 5:00 PM9 Design 2 5.875 days? 3/17/15 9:00 AM 3/24/15 5:00 PM

1 0 Learn how to use Axure (wireframing) 2.875 days? 3/25/15 9:00 AM 3/27/15 5:00 PM1 1 Prototype 2 Medium Fidelity (Axure) 8.875 days? 3/25/15 9:00 AM 4/6/15 5:00 PM1 2 Test 2 2 days? 4/6/15 8:00 AM 4/7/15 5:00 PM1 3 Demo Day 1 day? 4/8/15 8:00 AM 4/8/15 5:00 PM1 4 Complie Report 4 days? 4/9/15 8:00 AM 4/14/15 5:00 PM1 5 Report Submission 1 day? 4/15/15 8:00 AM 4/15/15 5:00 PM

Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors

Final Year Project - page1

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Communication Flow1. How do you organize communication and change concerning the FYP?Considering my stakeholders, I organize communication and change related to the FYP mainly via college email. I also have fortnightly meetings with my supervisor to discuss and changes and ideas. Although face to face communicationprovedtobemorebeneficialanditwasmy preferred point of contact the use of emails was also hugely important as I could send my supervisor an email at any hour of the day about a problem or an issue that arose and he could respond and help without any great deal of distress.

2. What has changed in your communication organization since Deliverable 1?Since Deliverable 1 my communication organization hasworsenedduetosignificantriseinworkload.Ihavehad less communication with stakeholders as there is a significantincreaseinworkloadandIamunabletofindthetimeforcommunication.HoweverasIreachedthelater half of the FYP as the deadline loomed in on me therewasasignificantincreaseincommunicationasthere was draft report to be checked and a lot of little bits to be sorted.

3. How are you now organizing these aspects for the preparation of the demo days and the final report?Iamorganizingaspectsfordemodayandthefinalreport by trying to reach my targets week by week that I set the previous week. I have planned progress

meetings with my supervisor to ensure I stay on track and I am correctly prepared for demo day. This proved successful however it was a stressful time.

4. Scalability issues: Size matters. If you were the FYP coordinator/ an FYP supervisor, how would you organize communication manage-ment under the constraints of limited resources (time and infrastructure) for these individual projects? (over 100 students, ca. 20 supervisors, ca. 20 second readers, external stakeholders/customers, 1 year span, topics and responsibili-ties spread across 5 courses). If I were the FYP coordinator/FYP supervisor I would organize communication management by the use of Social Media. A twitter feed with updates or a private Facebookgroupwouldbebeneficial.Thiswouldalerttostudents to due dates and regular updates on the FYP. FYPcoordinatorandsupervisorswouldhavedifferentfeeds/accounts and it would provide instant updates to students as social media plays a huge role in today’s society. FYP supervisors could possibly consider using an instant messaging system/texting to keep in con-tact with students as it can be an extremely stressful time for students and email access is not always readily available.

21-Point Analysis Revisited[Original answers identified in italics.]

1. What are your criteria for determining project success?I will deem my project a success if the user can suc-cessfully carry out the tasks I set for a usability test after I have the medium fidelity prototype complete.

After looking back on my FYP I can almost deem my project a success. Unfortunately due to time constraints and unexpected problems I was only able to carry out usability testing on on person, when I had anticipated in carrying out at least 5 complete usability tests.

2. What are the project drivers, constraints & degrees of freedom you can identify in relation to your FYP? For my FYP the project driver is to ensure that all of my users (testers) understand what the application is about, for this to happen I have to ensure that my

second prototype and tests benefits and builds on my first one prototype and tests. The main constraint I feel I am encountering is I cannot physically code my mobile application, as I do not have the required skills. If I was able to program my own code I would have a lot more freedom in certain areas like functions and layout. Because I am lacking in this skill I have to use a ready-made wire framing application called ‘Axure’.

One constraint that I failed to mention was the time it would take me to learn how to use a new software, for me this was Axure. I had never previously used this software before and I did not anticipate the time it would take me to get to grips with this. In turn this was probably the main cause of my set back in not been able to carry out a complete user test.


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3. What are your criteria for determining whether the product is ready for consumption (i.e. release, screening, or audition)? If I am satisfied my prototype has achieved all the functions I intended on it to achieve, I would then feel it is ready for consumption.

In my opinion I believe my product was not fully ready for release as it was not a functional prototype and it was only in the early prototype stages.

4. What commitments must you take on this pro-ject? Are they achievable?My first commitment I had to achieve and I did achieve it was to locate 5 interviewees with an interest in exer-cise and carry out interviews and analyse results. As I am moving on in the project commitments I now have to make are getting two prototypes completed and tested and analyse the results and I feel this is very achievable.

5. What were your main considerations in writing your project plan?When writing my project plan I had three main consid-erations. These included carrying out interviews and analysing, developing a paper prototype on paper (low fidelity) and analysing the results and my third consid-eration was whether or not I would have sufficient time to complete a second prototype (medium fidelity) using Axure.

This commitment was maintained throughout the FYP and more was achieved. I was successful in completing amediumfidelityprototypeusingAxure.

6. What level of granularity are you using to categorise your project milestones and what are they? The level of granularity from a design point of view is a functional prototype. I have several different tasks that I need to be functional for my prototypes to be a success. Each successful task will be a milestone.

Although my prototypes were not functional I was able to showcase them as been functional with the use of video editing software’s.

7. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularising them?One large task I have identified in my project is carry-ing out two prototypes, one low fidelity prototype and a second medium fidelity prototype. To carry out the second prototype I have to carry out and complete the first prototype and this is how I have linked them.

My design elements did not change for the duration of my project.

8. How much time have you budgeted for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?I have not budgeted any time for reworks or bug fixing, as I am purely just prototyping. I am using the user centred design process and for this to work I need to research, prototype, analyse and repeat the process again so essentially I am ‘reworking’ for the next proto-type. This is why I have not budgeted for reworks as a ‘rework’ is built into my timeline already.

As it turned out I should have allocated some time for reworks as the second prototype design took a few times to get right.

9. Have you identified potential problems that could arise during project development if so what is your contingency if these problems material-ise?I have identified one potential problem that could arise during project development. This problem is if it takes me too long to teach myself how to wireframe will, I be able to complete the second prototype although I feel that this problem is highly unlikely to arise.

Although I did not encounter the problem I mentioned above I encountered many design laws that I needed tofix.IfIwasnotrushingfortimesthesedesignflawsand problems would not of happened.

10. How and when will you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?When I have completed my medium fidelity prototype and before I finalise my FYP report. I will assess this by reviewing a GANTT chart I created before I started interviewing the users.

AftercompletingcertaintaskIreflectedontheGANTTchart that I had created. This allowed me to see was I on track. Thankfully I was on track and reaching mile-stones with my product but as regards to my report I was behind schedule. This was mainly because I spent alittlelongerthanexpectedonmyfinaldesign.Ithenimprovedthisefficiencybyusingapomodorotimeas suggested by my project management tutor. This allowed me to stay focused and eliminate material that was not relevant.

11. Have you budgeted time for adapting to new processes, tools, or technologies?Yes.

Although I had allocated time for this, certain functions and features within ‘new’ softwares and technologies took me longer to grasp than expected.


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12. What do you estimate the project requires in labour-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time available to spend on it?I require 8 hours per week Monday through Friday for my FYP to be finished a week in advance.

Imaintainedthistimeschedule.Howeverwhenwewere giving an extension I was able to allocate more timetothefinishingtouches.

13. How have you accommodated the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?No.

Completing other course work on time was a struggle throughout the duration of the FYP, however I managed to get everything submitted on the due date which I was pleased considering the pressure I was under.

14. This question is already asked by question/tip #11N/A

15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? Are they Realistic?I arrived at each of my estimates based on how quick I know I work. Yes I feel they are realistic.

My estimates turned out to be quite accurate until I heard of the extension that was being giving. I then allowedforextratimeonfinishingworkandpublishingdetails.

16. Have you used any tools in the process of es-timating your work? A GANTT chart.

As well as a GANTT chart I also used a pomodoro timer whilst writing the report.

17. Have you factored a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unfore-seen issues that may arise? No.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and are you recording actuals as well as estimates of your working time? This question does not apply to me.

19. What are your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?As I have mentioned before I carried out interviews and I am currently completing my first prototype and aim to complete a second prototype. When I had all 5 interviewees interviewed I counted that task 100% complete. When I get the same 5 interviewees to test each of my prototypes I will then count the tasks 100% complete.

As I mentioned earlier I was unsuccesful in carrying out a full user test for my second prototype, however apart from this I would have considered my FYP 100% complete.

20. How will you measure and track the current status of the project state?Compare my actual progress to my GANTT chart that I created before the Christmas break.

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the FYP, e.g. past assignment reports?No, unfortunately not.

After completing an interim report I was able to add sectionsofthistomyfinalreport.

Lessons LearnedThroughout the duration of the FYP I learned many things. I have learned the importance of scope in a project. Without scope the project would not of been possible.Ihavealsorealizedthesignificanceingoodcommunicationandgoodcommunicationflow.Withoutregular communication with my fyp supervisor be in via email or face to face it would not of been possible tostartletalonecompletemyfyp.WhenIreflectonthe fyp process it was a massive learning experience for many of my skills such as writing, creativity, time management, project management as well as it testing my patience.

One of the keys to success for my fyp was planning. Without laying out a plan at the beginning of the fyp I would not of been able to complete the project. The

planning of the project at the beginning allowed me to organize my time management, project management and scope for the fyp.

Without the correct use of time management I would not of been successful in reaching milestones, dead-linesandfinalsubmission.Formethiswasprobablythe most important lesson I learned. I now realize the importance and key role that time management plays within project management and projects.


33

Individual SectionBrian Greene

CS4457 - Final ReportIndividual Section - Brian Greene

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Stakeholder AnalysisIhaveidentifiedfivestakeholdersformyFYP,theseinclude:

01. Myself02. My Supervisor03. Second reader04. External examiner05. End Users06. The CSIS Department

Two of these I believe to be directly involved and therefore the most legitimate stakeholders. These two stakeholders including my FYP supervisor and I are both directly involved in the project and can both gain or lose from the process and end result. I believe in re-ality we are the only stakeholders with invested interest in the project. This invested interest has two aspects, the time invested in completion of the project is one as both my supervisor and I have invested considerable time.Andthefinaloutcomebeingthesecondaspect,however I believe that I am more exposed to this than my supervisor.

From my own perspective I will be investing the most timeintheprocessandalsothefinalgradeIreceivewill have the most impact on me. This I believe consti-tutes me as the prime stakeholder.

From my supervisors perspective he also invests a large amount of time in the project albeit a fraction of the time I have spent on the completion of research and deliverables, however this cannot be overlooked. This time my supervisor has and will be investing in the evaluation of my project, from the standpoint of gradinganddirectingmyeffortsisabundant.Andthisis why I would classify him as a secondary stakeholder. I have used the term secondary stakeholder here as I believe the stakes are higher for me compared to my supervisor, this is due to the fact that my grade will not affecthim.ThisisnottosaythatonapersonallevelhewillnotbeaffectedasIamsurehewantsmeto

achieve the highest grade possible, but on a profession-al level the outcome will not impact him. On the other hand the grade I receive will impact my future career.

External to the aforementioned stakeholders I see the second reader of my project as a stakeholder, although a less salient one. The role of this stakeholder is to evaluate the merit of the project and recommend a grade based on its substance. I realise this stakehold-er has great power over the outcome of the project, other than this I cannot identify the invested interest this stakeholder has therefore classing them as a less involved stakeholder.

I also see the external examiner as a stakeholder as they will evaluate the project and concur or disagree with the recommended grade. This is also a powerful stakeholder with little or no invested interest in the project outcome.

The end users of my application I see as important stakeholders. It is possible that they are truly the only stakeholders that can honestly critique the project, since they will be evaluating only the product and noth-ing else. Also an objective of the project was to create a useful & useable piece of software and this can only be judged through its use.

I also see the faculty of the CSIS department as stakeholders. This I believe is a tenuous selection as IcannotconfirmtheirinterestinmyFYP.Althoughitcould be said that the department is interested in the pass rate of students. But I do not believe this to be a direct investment or holding a stake in the outcome of myfinalyearproject.Howeveronapersonallevelafterbuilding friendly relationships with my lectures over my years of study I do know some are eager to see me achieve success in this project. Also taking into account the time they have invested in helping me to develop my abilities, which was essential to completing this pro-ject. In this sense they are legitimate stakeholders.

35

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FYP - Sentiment Anal...

Set Up GIT (Source C... Main Research Prototyping Development Process Deomnstrate Project ... Compile Final Report

Initial Research (Hi... Study Frameworks & A... Create UI Prototype Create Twitter Data ... Create Prototype Cla... Train classification... Implement 3rd party ... Implement User inter... Integrate the classi... Testing

FTP Presentation Evaluate current app...

Read Papers on senti... Source Required Tech... Study Frameworks & A...

Complete Rapidminer ... Compete API tutorial... Implement tweet View Implement Sentiment ... Implement metrics Vi... Implement Data Visua... Develop Set of Manu... Develop Set of Autom... Run Automated Test S...Resolve Bugs

Level 1 Enter Project

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

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ID WBS Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors1 1 FYP ‐ Sentiment Analysis of

Twitter Data158 days Fri 05/09/14 Tue 14/04/15

2 1.1 Set Up GIT (Source Control) 1 day Fri 05/09/14 Fri 05/09/14

3 1.2 Main Research 62 days Fri 05/09/14 Sun 30/11/14

4 1.2.1 Initial Research (High Level) 30 days Fri 05/09/14 Thu 16/10/14

5 1.2.1.1 FTP Presentation 1 day Thu 16/10/14 Thu 16/10/14

6 1.2.1.2 Evaluate current applications

2 days Fri 05/09/14 Sun 07/09/14

7 1.2.1.3 Read Past FYP Reports 4 days Thu 25/09/14 Tue 30/09/14

8 1.2.2 Read Papers on sentiment Analysis

62 days Fri 05/09/14 Sun 30/11/14

9 1.2.3 Source Required Technolgies 18 days Fri 05/09/14 Tue 30/09/14

10 1.2.4 Study Frameworks & API's 6 days Fri 31/10/14 Fri 07/11/14

11 1.2.4.1 Complete Rapidminer Tutorials

6 days Fri 31/10/14 Fri 07/11/14

12 1.2.4.2 Compete API tutorials

13 1.3 Prototyping 27 days Mon 01/12/14 Tue 06/01/15 3,10

14 1.3.1 Create UI Prototype 7 days Mon 01/12/14 Tue 09/12/14

15 1.3.2 Create Twitter Data Stream Prototype

3 days Tue 09/12/14 Thu 11/12/14

16 1.3.3 Create Prototype Classification Model

27 days Mon 01/12/14 Tue 06/01/15

17 1.4 Compile Interim Report 15 days Tue 16/12/14 Mon 05/01/15 3

18 1.5 Development Process 65 days Tue 06/01/15 Sat 04/04/15 13,3

19 1.5.1 Train classification model 39 days Tue 06/01/15 Fri 27/02/15

20 1.5.2 Implement 3rd party Classification for Comparison

1 day Wed 07/01/15 Wed 07/01/15

21 1.5.3 Implement User interface 32 days Thu 08/01/15 Fri 20/02/15

22 1.5.3.1 Implement tweet View 8 days Thu 08/01/15 Sat 17/01/15

23 1.5.3.2 Implement Sentiment results View

12 days Sat 17/01/15 Sat 31/01/15

24 1.5.3.3 Implement metrics View 3 days Sat 07/02/15 Tue 10/02/15

25 1.5.3.4 Implement Data Visualisation View

3 days Tue 10/02/15 Thu 12/02/15

26 1.5.4 Integrate the classification model & the UI

15 days Mon 02/03/15 Fri 20/03/15 19,20,21

27 1.5.5 Testing 58 days Thu 15/01/15 Sat 04/04/15

28 1.5.5.1 Develop Set of Manual Test Cases

47 days Thu 15/01/15 Fri 20/03/15

29 1.5.5.2 Develop Set of Automated Test Cases

4 days Mon 23/03/15 Thu 26/03/15 28

30 1.5.5.3 Run Automated Test Suite 1 day Fri 27/03/15 Fri 27/03/15 29

31 1.5.5.4 Resolve Bugs 5 days Mon 30/03/15 Fri 03/04/15 30

32 1.6 Deomnstrate Project (Demo Day)

1 day Thu 09/04/15 Thu 09/04/15 27

33 1.7 Compile Final Report 43 days Fri 13/02/15 Tue 14/04/15 3,13

30/11

16/10

07/11

06/01

04/04

20/02

04/04

01 Septem11 Septem21 Septem01 Octobe11 Octobe21 October 01 Novem11 Novem21 Novem01 Decem 11 Decem 21 Decemb01 January11 January21 January 01 Februa 11 Februa 21 Febr 01 March 11 March 21 March 01 April 11 April 21

Task

Split

Milestone

Summary

Project Summary

Inactive Task

Inactive Milestone

Inactive Summary

Manual Task

Duration-only


Manual Summary

Start-only

Finish-only

External Tasks

External Milestone

Deadline

Progress

Manual ProgressProject: Brian Greene FYPDate: Wed 06/05/15

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0 56 56 56 7 63 63 14 77 77 98 175 175 104 2790 0 56 56 0 63 63 0 77 77 0 175 175 0 279

286 72 358286 0 358

0 1 1 63 10 73 279 7 2861 1 63 67 4 77 279 0 286

63 77 140281 218 358

ES DUR EFLS FLOAT LF

Compile Interim Report8

Resolve Bugs

9

Start = 0

1Research

2Study Frameworks & API's

DESCRIPTIONWBS #

LEGEND

End = 358

3Prototyping

4Set Up GIT

5Development Process

6

Compile Final Report

10Fully Test Application

Develop Test Cases

7

CPA

Pre

cede

nce

Dia

gram


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Communication FlowHow do you organize communication and change concerning the FYP? (consider here the stake-holders)As I believe there to be only two stakeholders in direct contact concerning my FYP, these been my supervi-sorandI.Communicationhastakentwoforms,firstlyE-mail was our main point of contact, this has allowed forflexiblecommunicationinthesensethattherewasno schedule to adhere to and this also provided a ve-hicle to distribute information such as links to relevant research and sharing of intermediate deliverables etc. Secondly a weekly meeting was our secondary point of contact, during these meetings we discussed progress and any blocking elements encountered and derived solutions to these problems. Also these meetings allowed for demonstrations of progress accomplished to check if the direction taken was the right one. This framework for communication facilitated change in the sense that regular communication eliminated the effectsofchangesinceitwasmonitoredcloselyduringmeetings and E-mail.

What has changed in your communication organi-zation since Deliverable 1?From the outset of my FYP communication took the form as stated above and did not change at all. Apart from some minor rescheduling of the weekly meetings.

How are you now organizing these aspects for the preparation of the demo days and the final report?I contacted the FYP coordinator by E-mail and detailed the requirements of my demo. As all I required was a PC to demonstrate my product this was very straight

forward. During meetings my supervisor & I evaluat-ed drafts of the report identifying any further work or reworkthatwasrequiredforthefinalreport.

Scalability íssues: Size matters. If you were the FYP coordinator/ an FYP supervisor, how would you organize communication management under the constraints of limited resources (time and in-frastructure) for these individual projects? (over 100 students, ca. 20 supervisors, ca. 20 second readers, external stakeholders/customers, 1 year span, topics and responsibilities spread across 5 courses).From my understanding of the coordination and man-agementundertakenbythefacilityinrelationtofinialyear projects I would change very little if nothing in the way it is organised. I believe it to be a well-oiled machine at this stage. Communication is managed very well, from the outset regular lectures were held detailing the time line for deliverables and how to un-dertake these deliverables, nothing I believe was left to interpretation as all aspects were presented in an unambiguous fashion. If I were to change one thing it would be to add a social media element to the deliv-ery of communications. This I believe is not necessary, however from experience I believe students monitor their Facebook & Twitter accounts more closely than their student E-mail. This form of communication might reach a greater audience and in a more timely fashion.


1. What are your criteria for determining project success?The success criteria for my project includes a working and fully functional application, which can produce ac-curate sentiment classification of twitter data. Also this application should have undergone a comprehensive suite of automated testing. To accompany the applica-tion and testing suite a detailed report should be com-piled which documents the research undertaken & the development process for the project. The final measure of success would be the grade I am awarded.

UponreflectionIwouldstillseethisanswerasrelevant.HoweverIwouldfurtherclarifymymeasureofsuccessto include been awarded an A as my grade. Also that I

met & exceeded my supervisors expectations. I would also see the success of demo day been a factor to measure, in the sense of whether I impressed anyone with my work especially my second reader.

2. What are the project drivers, constraints & degrees of freedom you can identify in relation to your FYP?The key drivers I can identity are to develop a good quality application that produces accurate results and presents these results in an intuitive fashion. The constraints are to work within the given deadlines and have deliverables for each deadline. The degrees of freedom are some additional features that could be added to the application if my timeline permits. These


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additional features are not essential to the application however I believe they could really add value to the finished product.

This answer does lack some of the constraints I iden-tifiedalongthedevelopmentcycle,suchashardwareconstraints when developing a predictive model and a rate limit imposed on an API used for a third party predictive model to accompany the predicative model I was creating. Also a driver I now realise is to please & impress my supervisor & second reader. Other than these amendments I believe the answer is still relevant.

3. What are your criteria for determining whether the product is ready for consumption (i.e. release, screening, or audition)?The criteria for release of the application would be when all testing is complete, and at least 90% of bugs resolved or identified.

This answer is still correct, although I would add that I did also seek the advice of my supervisor on whether ornotthefinalproductwasofareleasablestandardbefore demo day.

4. What commitments must you take on this pro-ject are they achievable?The minimum commitments required are three hours coding, one hour of report writing and thirty minutes project review, all per day for the following three weeks. I believe this is achievable as I have been work-ing to this schedule since January 10th 2015.

This commitment was maintained, however once demo dayandfinalsubmissiondateswererescheduledtimes,these commitments we reduced.

5. What were your main considerations in writing your project plan?The main considerations I addressed while writing my project plan were to identify the most challenging aspects of the project. These related mostly to coding issues, learning new technologies & identifying relevant research. I prioritised these critical aspects, & tackled them from the outset of the project

This approach served me well, as when it came to the development & report writing phase of the project I was well prepared.

6. What level of granularity are you using to categorise your project milestones and what are they?The level of granularity from a programming perspec-tive is at the functional level. I have separated the application into a number of different tasks. Each task represents a functional requirement of the application.

Each milestone is essentially a fully implemented and tested functional requirement. I have set no milestones for the report section yet.

This level of granularity was followed for the devel-opment cycle. Once the report writing phase began I sought advice from my supervisor on how to structure the report. From the advice given I reduced the report intofivechaptersincludingIntroduction,Research,Design & Implementation, Evaluation and Conclusion.

7. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularising them?Some of the views incorporated in my UI design are very similar, so I have developed a base class from which to work from so code can be reused for these elements.

This aspect of my design held true throughout the de-velopment cycle.

8. How much time have you budgeted for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?I have budgeted two weeks for rework. I intend to test andbugfixasIdevelopsoIdon’texpectmajorre-works.HoweverIdecidedtoaironthesideofcautionand budgeted more than I think I require.

Testing was carried out during development, with allthesetestsbeingautomatedatthefinalstageofdevelopment to allow for regression testing. Due to thereschedulingoffinalsubmission&demoandsinceI had stayed on track in terms of timeline, I had the opportunity to carry out more testing than had been anticipated while also adding features.

9. Have you identified potential problems that could arise during project development if so what is your contingency if these problems material-ise?A major problem that could have arose was that I was not granted an Academic licence for a piece of software I am using to build a classification model. Although I have been granted this licence my contingency was to pay for a month’s subscription to the suppliers cloud service. Other potential problems were identified early in the research phase of my project and factored into the schedule as to allow time to overcome.

Other problems were encountered during development, mainly in relation to rate limits on the Twitter service I was using as a data source for my application. Also rate limits imposed by the third party prediction model I used to compare results to the model I had created. Both these rate limits were overcome by reducing the data usage of my application, thus maintaining liveness while the application was in use.


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10. How and when will you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?I consentingly monitor how long certain task take me to code and log any bugs found during testing. This has allowed me to improve the coding process as I develop the project.

This I did throughout development and it is a habit I intend on maintaining. I believe it gives me greater ability to estimate completion times of tasks and thus allows me to devise superior & useable strategies. On advice from my Project Management tutor, I started using a pomodoro timer to help me stay focused while writing.ThisIfoundveryeffectiveforanumberofreasons. It removes my hunger to procrastinate while report writing, and allows me to better estimate how much I can write within an hour. It is certainly a habit I intend on maintaining.

11. Have you budgeted time for adapting to new processes, tools, or technologies?Yes I have, during the research & prep phase of the project I had identified the new technologies I would be using and this was factored into to my project plan.

This is one of the main factors I believe led to my suc-cess, knowing & learning the technologies I was unfa-miliar with well before the development phase allowed metoconcentrateonproducingahighqualityfinalproduct.

12. What do you estimate the project requires in labour-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time available to spend on it?I require twenty seven hours per six day week for 3 weeks to complete ahead of time. This compared to the nominal time available is achievable but strict discipline is required.

I maintained this discipline over the entire project until the rescheduling was announced. While it was toughgoing,Ithinkitpaidoffintheend.Ifinishedwellaheadofscheduleandthefinalproductwasgoodquality.

13. How have you accommodated the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?As the project deadlines for some modules are still not concrete this aspect is not yet addressed fully.

Completing other projects and course work was a strain onmaintainingmyFYPschedule.Howeverbyburningthe midnight oil I succeeded in completing all other required course work.

14. This question is already asked by question/ tip #11As stated in question 11.

15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? Are they Realistic?During the research & prep phase of the project I developed a set of prototypes of certain features that would be incorporated in the application. I derived my development time estimate from the time taken to create these prototypes. I believe these estimates are accurate as I am currently on schedule.

My estimates were more or less accurate when it came to development, although a few bugs did take quite some time to resolve. My initial estimates on complet-ingthereportwereadifferentcase.Ihadplentyofmaterial to write about, but building a narrative was themostdifficulttaskandtookmuchlongerthanIhadanticipated.

16. Have you used any tools in the process of es-timating your work?No I have not used any tools to estimate, I did not think this would be useful given the scope of the pro-ject.

As I mentioned earlier I started using a pomodoro timer desktop application. This app tracks and main-tains a log of all tasks complete & uncompleted. This I found very useful during the report writing phase of the project.

17. Have you factored a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unfore-seen issues that may arise?Yes I have set a completion date of March 6th to com-plete the project. This allows three weeks of contingen-cy time in the project plan.

Due to the rescheduling of the FYP I also rescheduled the timeline of the project creating even more contin-gency. The application was complete in March however not on the 6th. This extra time was used to add more functionality to the application and complete further testing.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and are you recording actuals as well as estimates of your working time?I do see a potential use from the data produced. It will allow me to better estimate certain coding tasks in the future. I have been recording development time since I started coding as well as cataloguing estimates and also logging bugs on a source control system I use. Also I have currently started to use a pomodoro timer to record the time it takes me to write.

This data as I mentioned earlier is precious, allowing me to estimate both coding times and writing times more accurately. I intend on maintaining and using this data going forward.


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19. What are your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?A task would be categorised as 100% complete when the functional requirements are met & testing is com-plete.

This answer I still believe to be accurate.

20. How will you measure and track the current status of the project state?I review code daily and compare the progress made to the projected milestones. To track status have been using a calendar, my project plan and a source control system.

This system of tracking progress was used throughout the project and allowed me to submit my work ahead of time.

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the FYP, e.g. past assignment reports?As part of this project I have submitted an interim report from which I can build on for the final report. Also there have been many different coding projects in the past that I have referred to gain insight and inspi-ration.

During the development phase I leveraged some code frompreviousworkIhaddone.Whenwritingthefinalreport I used the interim report as a base for further work.

Lessons LearnedDuring the process of the FYP I have learned many lessons in the academic sense. I look back at it as an exceptional learning experience both my technical and writing skill have improved inordinately. I have also learned from the process as this is to date the biggest project I have undertaken. I have learned the essential natureofcommunicationandhowimportanttheflowofcommunication is. Without the regular communication withmysupervisortheprojectwouldhavesufferedsignificantly.

I have also learned the importance of time manage-ment, this lesson was not learned directly as I believe I managedmytimeeffectively.Ilearnedthislessonfrom

some of my peers, throughout the process there were some who seemed to be constantly behind. This lead to the FYP reschedule, but even with this some barely madesubmissiondeadlines.Efficienttimemanagementmay have solved these issues.

Another lesson I have learned is the importance of planning. The planning I undertook in the initial stages of my project played a major factor in the successful delivery of my project. Without this planning I think the finalstagesofmyprojectwouldhavebeenrushedandthis would have impacted quality.


42

Individual SectionTom McGreal

CS4457 - Final ReportIndividual Section - Tom McGreal

Group B2

43

Stakeholder AnalysisIt was imperative for myself to realize who are the im-portant people involved. This would allow me to discuss mygameindifferentwayswithdifferentpeople,i.e.the main stakeholders will be more involved than the lesser stakeholders.

The main stakeholders of my Final year Project are myself and my supervisor. I myself being the owner of the project grants me the highest authority over what does and does not go into the game. I determine what my end goals of the project are. I have the greatest amount of interest in the project. I want to show my potential as a programmer by creating a well-made game. I am also extremely motivated to get the high-estgradepossible.theprojectwillreflectmyeffortandskill as a programmer. As the main stakeholder in my project, I will be investing the most amount of time and effortintotheproject.

My supervisor is next as he is heavily involved in the project.Hewasthepersonwhothoughtoftheideaofthe project. It would seem appropriate that he would maintain interest in the project to see the outcome. It is also important that he monitors progress on the pro-

ject.HecanmakerecommendationsonwhatIcandowiththeprojectbutIwouldstillhavethefinalsayandcould completely ignore him if I wished.

Stakeholders with less priority would include my family, friends and colleagues. They would be supportive of my andmyprojectandwishmewell.Howevertheywouldnot have any say in the project. I could come to them for advice on what to do but I do not have to heed what they say.

The CSIS faculty is very interested in all students’ projects and would very much like to see the outcome ofeachproject.However,asthefacultycannotmeddlewith the individual students’ projects, all the faculty can do is standby and watch as the projects get completed by the students and how the students want to make their projects in terms of methods and goals.

It is important for both myself and the rest of the stakeholders that the project is a success.

44

T. MCGREAL

Notes

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T. MCGREAL

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ID WBS Name Schedule Start Schedule Finish Scheduled Duration Predecessors1 1 FYP 29/08/2014 16/04/2015 2302 1.1 Choosing Concept 29/08/2014 04/09/2014 63 1.1.1 Identify Area of interest 30/08/2014 06/09/2014 74 1.1.2 Finalise decision 07/09/2014 21/09/2014 145 1.2 Research & Theory 29/09/2014 17/11/2014 496 1.2.1 Researching past FYPs 29/09/2014 06/10/2014 77 1.2.2.1 Researching Game Engine 29/09/2014 06/10/2014 78 1.2.2 Choosing Game Engine 07/10/2014 07/10/2014 09 1.2.3 Storyboarding 08/10/2014 17/11/2014 40

10 1.2.4 Mapping Game 08/10/2014 17/11/2014 4011 1.3 Development 21/10/2014 05/02/2015 10712 1.3.1 Creating Initial Prototype 21/10/2014 19/11/2014 2913 1.3.1.1 Making Rooms 21/10/2014 28/10/2014 714 1.3.2 Linking Rooms 28/10/2014 05/11/2014 815 1.3.3 Making Playable Character 28/10/2014 29/10/2014 116 1.3.4 Creating Feedback 05/11/2014 19/11/2014 1417 1.3.1.1.1 Dialogues 05/11/2014 12/11/2014 718 1.3.1.1.2 Mouse work 12/11/2014 19/11/2014 719 3.2 Taking Photographs 23/10/2014 24/10/2014 120 3.2.1 Applying pictures 24/10/2014 28/10/2014 421 1.4 Interim Report 01/12/2014 31/12/2014 30

44102/21/504102/21/10erutcurtS1.4.122324102/21/824102/21/50gnitirW2.4.132114102/21/134102/21/02weiveR3.4.142

25 1.5 Development 05/01/2015 14/04/2015 9926 1.5.1 Second Prototype 05/01/2015 01/02/2015 2727 1.5.2 Adding features 02/02/2015 16/02/2015 1428 1.5.2.1 Adding puzzles 02/02/2015 16/02/2015 1429 1.5.2.2 Adding 'Game elements' 17/02/2015 14/04/2015 5630 1.6 Testing 02/03/2015 03/04/2015 3231 1.6.1 Reviewing bugs / errors 02/03/2015 09/03/2015 732 1.6.2 Polishing current features 10/03/2015 28/03/2015 1833 1.6.2.1 Fixing bugs 14/03/2015 03/04/2015 2034 1.7 Demonstration 26/03/2015 04/04/2015 935 1.7.1 Demo Day 26/03/2015 26/03/2015 0

85102/40/405102/30/72yrevileD2.7.16337 1.8 Final report 02/03/2015 08/04/2015 37

75102/30/905102/30/20erutcurtS1.8.183815102/30/825102/30/01gnitirW2.8.193015102/40/705102/30/82weiveR3.8.104

41 1.9 Delivery of Report 16-Apr 16/04/2015 042 1.9.1 End 16/04/2015 16/04/2015 0

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ID Task Name Start Finish DurationQ3 14 Q4 14 Q1 15 Q2 15

31/8 7/9 14/9 21/9 28/9 5/10 12/10 19/10 26/10 2/11 9/11 16/11 23/11 30/11 7/12 14/12 21/12 28/12 4/1 11/1 18/1 25/1 1/2 8/2 15/2 22/2 1/3 8/3 15/3 22/3 29/3 5/4

1 230d16/07/201529/08/2014FYP

2 6d05/09/201429/08/2014Choosing Concept

3 7d09/09/201401/09/2014Identify Area of interest

4 14d25/09/201408/09/2014Finalise decision

5 49d04/12/201429/09/2014 Research & Theory

6 7d07/10/201429/09/2014Researching past FYPs

7 7d07/10/201429/09/2014Researching Game Engine

8 0d07/10/201407/10/2014Choosing Game Engine

9 40d02/12/201408/10/2014Storyboarding

10 40d02/12/201408/10/2014Mapping Game

11 107d18/03/201521/10/2014Development

12 29d28/11/201421/10/2014Creating Initial Prototype

13 7d29/10/201421/10/2014Making Rooms

14 8d06/11/201428/10/2014Linking Rooms

15 1d28/10/201428/10/2014Making Playable Character

16 14d24/11/201405/11/2014Creating Feedback

17 7d13/11/201405/11/2014Dialogues

18 7d20/11/201412/11/2014Mouse work

19 1d23/10/201423/10/2014Taking Photographs

20 4d29/10/201424/10/2014Applying pictures

21 30d09/01/201501/12/2014Interim Report

22 4d04/12/201401/12/2014Structure

23 23d06/01/201505/12/2014Writing

24 11d05/01/201522/12/2014Review

25 99d21/05/201505/01/2015Development

26 27d10/02/201505/01/2015Second Prototype

27 14d19/02/201502/02/2015Adding features

28 14d19/02/201502/02/2015Adding puzzles

29 56d05/05/201517/02/2015Adding 'Game elements'

30 32d14/04/201502/03/2015Testing

31 7d10/03/201502/03/2015Reviewing bugs / errors

32 18d02/04/201510/03/2015Polishing current features

33 20d10/04/201516/03/2015Fixing bugs

34 9d07/04/201526/03/2015Demonstration

35 0d26/03/201526/03/2015Demo Day

36 8d07/04/201527/03/2015Delivery

37 37d21/04/201502/03/2015Final report

38 7d10/03/201502/03/2015Structure

39 18d02/04/201510/03/2015Writing

40 10d10/04/201530/03/2015Review

41 0d16/04/201516/04/2015Delivery of Report

42 0d16/04/201516/04/2015End

T. MCGREAL

Notes

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Notes

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CPA

Pre

cede

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gram


Group B2

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Communication FlowHow do you organize communication and change concerning the FYP?At the start, I met with my supervisor to discuss the project as a whole. This included how we would com-municate. We agreed on weekly meetings as well as e-mail for any consultations. The meetings would allow me to show progress on a consistent basis as well as further discuss what I would be working on for the following week. This allowed me to keep track of my project as well as give my supervisor insight on the di-rection it was headed. E-mail was used as an ‘emergen-cy communication’ in case something important needed to be handled immediately, i.e. upcoming deadlines or change in marking scheme. The weekly meetings were not strict and could be moved if it did not suit myself or my supervisor, so e-mails were also useful here.

What has changed in your communication organi-zation since Deliverable 1?My FYP communication did not change throughout from starttofinish.Facetofacemeetingswereveryreliable.

How are you now organizing these aspects for the preparation of the demo days and the final report? I needed to e-mail my FYP coordinator to specify the details of my FYP, this is important as there are many differenttypesofFYPdemos,suchasapresentationrather than a demo, or perhaps if it was just a report. I needed to state things like which computer I needed

todemonstrateon.Ihandledorganizingthefinalreportmyself,andwasconfidentthatIcouldcompleteitwithease.

Scalability issues: Size matters. If you were the FYP coordinator / an FYP supervisor, how would you organize communication management under the constraints of limited resources (time and in-frastructure) for these individual projects? (over 100 students, ca. 20 supervisors, ca. 20 seconds readers, external stakeholder/customers, 1 year span, topics and responsibilities spread across 5 courses.If I was the coordinator, it seems clear that I would have my own deadlines to adhere to. I would need to inform all students of their own deadlines. During the project, we were assigned computers so we could work oncampusanddemotheprojectsonthem.However,there was a large delay in these computers getting assigned and there was no reason given for this. I felt there was a lack of communication on this front.

Throughoutthefirstsemester,wehadlecturessetupso the coordinator could instruct us on deadlines and what to expect of the workload. These lectures worked very well in letting us know of all the important de-tails.However,therewerenoneoftheseinthesecondsemester. It seemed important that we should be in-formedonthingslikethefinalreport,astherewasverylittle guidance on this front.


1. What are your criteria for determining project success?“The game works as expected, you can play through the game fully without any major bugs inhibiting suc-cess. The game is fun and engaging, people like and want to play it”

Looking back, this objective remained the determin-ing factor of the project being deemed a success. At the time, I did not know how to measure the aspect of fun in my game. I now realize that during demo day, I observed how people reacted to the game and saw that most were not bored nor lost in the game. People we’re genuinely entertained throughout there play throughs of the game.

2. What are the project drivers, constraints & degrees of freedom you can identify in relation to your FYP?“The schedule, I must have the project completed by a certain date [constraint]

I want to show off my expertise as a game developer [Driver]”

I did not include any degrees of freedom, one I can think of now is that I could have implemented any fea-tures that I wanted (within reason, I should still make sense in the game). The constraint of the deadline was especiallysignificantasitwasmoved,whichallowedmore time for more features and general tidying up of the game.


Group B2

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3. What are your criteria for determining whether the product is ready for consumption (i.e. release, screening, or audition)?“The game is fully playable and no major bugs are an issue.”

Thisistiedtothefirstpointthatmeasuressuccess.Aslong as the game is fully playable it should also be suc-cessful. I should have also added that there would be enough features in the game to make it entertaining

4. What commitments must you take on this pro-ject are they achievable?“I must commit to the schedule, this cannot be changed.”

The schedule may change (which it did), but I must adhere to its deadlines.

5. What were your main considerations in writing your project plan?“I must plan a realistic schedule for myself to work on, I also cannot bloat my product with as many features as I can as time constraints are a factor. “

I should have also planned what equipment I needed (i.e. camera), where the game was located and the story.

6. What level of granularity are you using to categorize your project milestones and what are they?“I have a month to month plan to detail what stage the game should be at.”

This is a very poor attitude to have for planning. At the time I did not have knowledge of WBS and GANTT charts, which I could have used to better plan my pro-jectandutilizemytimemoreefficiently.

7. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularizing them?“My project does not have many modular processes so I do not think I need to modularise them “

This remained true throughout the entire project. There were some minor repetitive tasks that cropped up during development, however there were no means of making the modular.

8. How much time have you budgeted for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?“The game is not code heavy so I may not need to plan for retests and bug fixing “

Ididnotdomanytestsduringdevelopment.However,I did not consider that I would have had to retake the photographs for my game. This set me back as I had to book cameras and rely on the weather to be sunny and consistent.

9. Have you identified potential problems that could arise during project development if so what is your contingency if these problems material-ize?“I have chosen a game engine to use as a base for my project, so I need to learn how to use this before making headway on the rest of the project.”

I also needed time to learn how to use a camera, which I did not anticipate.

10. How and when will you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?“After the project is complete, I will be able to review it so I can see where the problem areas arose and how they affected the project.”

I reviewed my project after completion. I found that during the project, I fell behind due to personal rea-sons. This meant time was a very valuable resource and I could not implement all of the features that I wanted to.

11. Have you budgeted time for adapting to new processes, tools, or technologies?“As mentioned, I need to learn the interface of the game engine I am using and how to navigate it.”

The game engine was simple enough to use and I had set enough time in order for me to learn how to navi-gateit.However,IusenumerousprogramsbesidetheenginethatIdidnotknowhowtouseatfirst.Ineededto set time to learn how to use these too.

12. What do you estimate the project requires in labor-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time available to spend on it?“I would estimate that the project would require about 100 hours to complete. This equals to about 2 hours every day of work effort. “

I found that this would have been a good estimate of the labor hours required and was an acceptable amount consideringthenominaltimeavailable.However,asIfell behind, the amount of time I had left shrank and I had to rush some of the development.

13. How have you accommodated the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?“There is no need for task-switching as there are no parallel tasks in my project.”

This remained true throughout the project

14. This question is already asked by question/ tip #11“N/A”


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15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? Are they Realistic?“I mostly guessed from my current time spent on the project, mixed with how long the game should be. This may not be realistic enough.”

I had based this on previous knowledge of my pro-gramming and how I work at problems. The game’s story could have been anywhere between 10 minutes toonehourtocomplete,itwasuptometodefinethislength.

16. Have you used any tools in the process of es-timating your work?“I have not used any estimating tools.”

Again, it might have been better had I’d used estima-tion tools to better understand when my goals would be completed.However,Ifeelthetherearesomethingsyou cannot predict and you should not rely fully on these tools.

17. Have you factored a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unfore-seen issues that may arise?“ I do not have a contingency buffer as I don’t see many issues arising. There may be a factor of how long the learning process takes as I may become behind schedule if takes a long time.”

Ididnothaveabufferforwhenmypersonalissuesintervened with the project, therefore I fell behind and had less time to work on the FYP.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and are you recording actuals as well as estimates of your working time?“I am recording actuals by a month-to-month basis. This allows me compare to my project plan to see how my stages are developing.”

I should have compared my work on a goal to goal basis, rather than time, as it would be accurate in fore-seeing which goals / features could be completed on time.

19. What are your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?“Once the sub-tasks are working properly (bug-free), they will be considered to be 100% complete.”

20. How will you measure and track the current status of the project state?“I have to develop a story before creating the actual game, so I need to complete this before moving on.”

I could have used goals and milestones to get accurate data on when I completed each sub goal and get a cleardefinitionofwheretheprojectwasheaded

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the FYP, e.g. past assignment reports?“The interim report and draft report will help later on with the creation of the final report”

The interim report helped slightly in completing the finalreport.Imostlywroteitfromscratchratherthancopying from the interim. My past programming experi-ence helped greatly in making the project.

Lessons LearnedI learned a great deal in managing all aspects of a project during my FYP. I needed to communicate with my supervisor frequently and detail what my intended goals and plans were for each step of the FYP. I needed to organize meetings with him to discuss this and inform him of the progress of the project. It gave me insight on to how communications must be organized throughout large scale projects for companies.

I learned how Time constraints can be a limiting factor during development of a project. This constraint can alsochange,whichwillmassivelyaffecttheprojectand

its quality. As the deadline moved two weeks ahead for the demo day, it allowed me to add more features and tidy up the game at the cost of some time for the report.

The report itself allowed me to improve my writing skills.Iwasconfidentinmywritingbeforehoweverthere is always room for improvement. I needed to meet with the appropriate standards for the report as well as further explain my project and the reasoning of choosing which paths I took.


51

Individual SectionPádhraig O’Donoghue

CS4457 - Final ReportIndividual Section - Pádhraig O’Donoghue

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Stakeholder AnalysisI am the project’s most “salient” stakeholder, i.e. my claims are given more “priority” over those of “com-peting stakeholders” (Mitchell et al 1997, p.869). I also have the most legitimate claim on the project (p.866), namely to being the recipient of the grade as well as the project’s largest investor of time and money. It is arguable, however, whether I have the most power: My supervisor, the next most salient stakeholder, may have more.Ifthedefiningcriterionforsuccessisthepro-ject’sfinalgrade,then,certainly,mysupervisorholdsthe most power over the project. While I may have direct control over the project as the sole worker, my supervisorhasindirectcontrol,and,moresignificantly,a greater amount. If, however, an alternative criterion for success is given priority e.g. enjoyment or educa-tion, then the sway of power shifts back to me. All the criteriaare,nevertheless,important;sothepowerofmy supervisor cannot be discounted. My supervisor also has a legitimate claim on the project, namely having their reputation at stake to some degree. While they may have the option of disowning a project, its success orfailurewillnonethelesspotentiallyreflectwellorbadly on them in the eyes of peers and faculty adminis-trators depending on its outcome.

The project’s second reader potentially has a good deal of power, too. It is important that they are ac-knowledged and that contact is made with them in some channel in order to stimulate their interest in the project itself and, perhaps, their enthusiasm for

the assessing it. (There is a remote possibility that an externalexaminerwillhaveasimilarinfluenceontheproject’s success.)

My parents are also major stakeholders: They have invested a lot of time, energy, and money in my educa-tion, and so they have a legitimate claim on the pro-ject. Apart from this, they are interested in my welfare and progress in general.

Thefilmproductionpartoftheprojectintroducesmorestakeholders, namely cast, crew, equipment owners, facility managers, location owners, and IP owners (if any copyrighted works are used). Each of them is im-portantsincetheycanaffectthesuccessoftheproduc-tion.Somewillbeaffectedbyit,too,e.g.crewand,ifsomething goes wrong, equipment owners, etc.

TheFYPcoordinatorinfluencedthesuccessoftheprojectby,first,assistingwithmyrequestsforrevisingboth my project description for the demo brochure and mymarkingscheme,and,second,offeringvaluableadvice on submission of the deliverables.

In a broader sense my colleagues (in both the depart-ment and in other third level institutions, i.e. potential competitors and collaborators), and the department itself (which is interested in the pass rate of students) are all stakeholders, albeit less salient ones.

53

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1.1 Concept

1.2 Proposal

1.3 Research

1.3.1Literature review

1.3.2Case studies

1.4.1Draft provisional

questions

1.4.2Select most interest-

ing

1.4.3Refine question

1.5.1Presentation

1.5.2Interim Report

1.5.3Final report

1.6.1Planning (as part of

CS4457 module)

1.6.2Conception

1.6.3Pre-production

1.6.4Production

1.6.5Post-production

1.6.6Product Development

Completed

1.7.1Preview to supervisor

1.7.2Sound check with

technical director and file delivery

1.7.3Delivery (i.e. demon-

stration)

1.7.4Product Demonstra-

tion Complete

1.4 Form research

question

1.5 Reporting

1.6 Product Development

1.7 Presentation

1.8 End

1.2.1Own Project proposal

1.2.2Review options

1.2.3Secure supervisor

1.1.1Locate concept

context

1.1.2Development

1.1.3Definition

Level 1 - Entire Project

Level 2

Level 3

P. O’DONOGHUE

Notes

Only 3 levels shown (out of 7 total)

54

ratS_deludehcSemaNSBWDI t Scheduled_FinishScheduled_ ratS_deludehcSemaNSBWDIsrossecederP t Scheduled_FinishScheduled_Predecessors1 1 FYP Fri 29/08/14 Fri 17/04/15 231 days? 62 1.6.2.1 Brainstorming and selection Wed 05/11/14 Sat 28/02/15 116 days2 1.1 Concept Fri 29/08/14 Sat 06/09/14 9 days? 63 1.6.2.2 Refinement and definition Sun 01/03/15 Sun 01/03/15 1 day?3 1.1.1 Locate concept context Fri 29/08/14 Wed 03/09/14 6 days? 64 1.6.3 Pre-production Sat 28/02/15 Fri 06/03/15 6 days? 614 1.1.1.1 Identify area of interest Fri 29/08/14 Sun 31/08/14 3 days? 65 1.6.3.1 Creative work Sat 28/02/15 Thu 05/03/15 6 days?5 1.1.1.2 Identify specific application Mon 01/09/14 Wed 03/09/14 3 days? 66 1.6.3.1.1 Scripting Sat 28/02/15 Tue 03/03/15 4 days?6 1.1.2 Development Mon 01/09/14 Fri 05/09/14 5 days? 3SS 67 1.6.3.1.1.1 Drafting Sat 28/02/15 Sun 01/03/15 2 days?7 1.1.2.1 Sample existing solutions Mon 01/09/14 Fri 05/09/14 5 days? 68 1.6.3.1.1.2 Rewriting and finalisation Mon 02/03/15 Tue 03/03/15 2 days? 678 1.1.2.2 Synthesise original project Wed 03/09/14 Fri 05/09/14 3 days? 69 1.6.3.1.2 Storyboarding Tue 03/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 2 days? 669 1.1.3 Definition Sat 06/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 1 day? 6,3 70 1.6.3.1.2.1 Extract shot list Tue 03/03/15 Tue 03/03/15 1 day?10 1.1.3.1 Distill project down to essentSat 06/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 1 day? 71 1.6.3.1.2.2 Draw storyboard Tue 03/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 2 days?11 1.1.3.2 Identify single most essential Sat 06/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 1 day? 72 1.6.3.1.3 Read-through Thu 05/03/15 Thu 05/03/15 1 day? 7612 1.2 Proposal Fri 05/09/14 Thu 25/09/14 21 days? 2 73 1.6.3.2 Scheduling and logistics Sun 01/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 4 days?13 1.2.1 Own Project proposal Fri 05/09/14 Sun 07/09/14 3 days? 74 1.6.3.2.1 List shooting requirements Mon 02/03/15 Mon 02/03/15 1 day?14 1.2.1.1 Draw up proposal Fri 05/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 2 days? 75 1.6.3.2.2 Procurement Sun 01/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 4 days? 6615 1.2.1.1.1 Draft proposal Fri 05/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 2 days? 76 1.6.3.2.2.1 Find talent Wed 04/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 1 day?16 1.2.1.1.2 Refine proposal Sat 06/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 1 day? 77 1.6.3.2.2.2 Find locations Wed 04/03/15 Wed 04/03/15 1 day?17 1.2.1.2 Submit proposal Sun 07/09/14 Sun 07/09/14 1 day? 78 1.6.3.2.2.3 Book equipment Sun 01/03/15 Sun 01/03/15 1 day?18 1.2.1.2.1 Format document Sun 07/09/14 Sun 07/09/14 1 day? 79 1.6.3.2.2.4 Book post facilities Sun 01/03/15 Mon 02/03/15 2 days?19 1.2.1.2.2 Email submission Sun 07/09/14 Sun 07/09/14 1 day? 80 1.6.3.2.3 Schedule production (includTue 03/03/15 Tue 03/03/15 1 day?20 1.2.2 Review options Mon 08/09/14 Mon 15/09/14 8 days? 13 81 1.6.3.3 Pre-Production Complete Fri 06/03/15 Fri 06/03/15 0 days? 73,6521 1.2.2.1 Await feedback on proposal Mon 08/09/14 Thu 11/09/14 4 days? 82 1.6.4 Production Wed 04/03/15 Tue 10/03/15 6 days? 6422 1.2.2.2 Assimilate feedback Fri 12/09/14 Fri 12/09/14 1 day? 83 1.6.4.1 Principal photography Sun 08/03/15 Mon 09/03/15 2 days23 1.2.2.3 Choose course of action Mon 15/09/14 Mon 15/09/14 1 day? 84 1.6.4.2 Re-shoots Sun 08/03/15 Mon 09/03/15 2 days? 8324 1.2.3 Secure supervisor Mon 15/09/14 Thu 25/09/14 11 days? 20 85 1.6.4.3 Production Complete Mon 09/03/15 Mon 09/03/15 0 days? 8425 1.2.3.1 Identify appropriate candidatMon 15/09/14 Mon 15/09/14 1 day? 86 1.6.5 Post-production Mon 09/03/15 Tue 24/03/15 16 days? 8226 1.2.3.2 Initiate contact Tue 16/09/14 Tue 16/09/14 1 day? 87 1.6.5.1 Preparation (file preparation Sun 15/03/15 Wed 18/03/15 4 days27 1.2.3.3 Engagement Tue 16/09/14 Fri 19/09/14 4 days? 88 1.6.5.2 Editing Wed 18/03/15 Wed 25/03/15 8 days 8728 1.2.3.4 Sign-off and application submMon 22/09/14 Thu 25/09/14 4 days? 89 1.6.5.3 Special FX and colour gradingMon 06/04/15 Tue 07/04/15 2 days29 1.3 Research Mon 29/09/14 Mon 30/03/15 183 days? 12 90 1.6.5.4 Sound Mon 09/03/15 Mon 23/03/15 15 days? 8830 1.3.1 Literature review Mon 29/09/14 Mon 09/02/15 134 days? 91 1.6.5.4.1 Inventory Mon 09/03/15 Sun 15/03/15 7 days?31 1.3.1.1 Preliminary research Mon 29/09/14 Fri 17/10/14 19 days? 92 1.6.5.4.1.1 Production sound review Mon 09/03/15 Mon 09/03/15 1 day?32 1.3.1.1.1 Exploration Mon 29/09/14 Wed 08/10/14 10 days? 93 1.6.5.4.1.2 Foley spotting Sun 29/03/15 Sun 29/03/15 1 day?33 1.3.1.1.2 Discrimination Mon 13/10/14 Fri 17/10/14 5 days? 94 1.6.5.4.1.3 Source library sounds Sat 14/03/15 Sun 15/03/15 2 days?34 1.3.1.2 Reading Mon 13/10/14 Mon 09/02/15 120 days 95 1.6.5.4.1.4 Musical direction conceptMon 09/03/15 Mon 09/03/15 1 day?35 1.3.1.2.1 Identification of authoritati Mon 13/10/14 Mon 27/10/14 15 days 96 1.6.5.4.2 Recording Mon 09/03/15 Sun 15/03/15 7 days? 9136 1.3.1.2.2 Continuous reading, annotaMon 13/10/14 Mon 09/02/15 120 days 97 1.6.5.4.2.1 Foley recording Sun 29/03/15 Mon 13/04/15 16 days37 1.3.2 Case studies Mon 13/10/14 Sun 12/04/15 182 days 98 1.6.5.4.2.2 ADR Mon 30/03/15 Thu 02/04/15 4 days38 1.4 Form research question Thu 23/10/14 Tue 04/11/14 13 days? 12,29SS 99 1.6.5.4.3 Editing Tue 10/03/15 Mon 16/03/15 7 days? 9639 1.4.1 Draft provisional questions Thu 23/10/14 Wed 29/10/14 7 days? 100 1.6.5.4.3.1 Dialog Fri 03/04/15 Fri 17/04/15 15 days 9840 1.4.2 Select most interesting Thu 30/10/14 Thu 30/10/14 1 day? 39 101 1.6.5.4.3.2 Sound effects (foley and hMon 30/03/15 Fri 17/04/15 19 days 9741 1.4.3 Refine question Fri 31/10/14 Mon 13/04/15 165 days 40 102 1.6.5.4.3.3 Ambience Wed 08/04/15 Fri 17/04/15 10 days42 1.5 Reporting Mon 06/10/14 Fri 17/04/15 193 days? 29SS 103 1.6.5.4.4 Music Wed 11/03/15 Sat 14/03/15 4 days?43 1.5.1 Presentation Mon 06/10/14 Wed 15/10/14 10 days 104 1.6.5.4.4.1 Composition Wed 11/03/15 Wed 11/03/15 1 day?44 1.5.1.1 Structuring Thu 09/10/14 Thu 09/10/14 1 day 105 1.6.5.4.4.2 Arrangement Thu 12/03/15 Thu 12/03/15 1 day? 10445 1.5.1.2 Drafting Mon 06/10/14 Thu 09/10/14 4 days 44FF 106 1.6.5.4.4.3 Editing Fri 13/03/15 Fri 13/03/15 1 day? 10546 1.5.1.3 Rehearsal Tue 14/10/14 Tue 14/10/14 1 day 45 107 1.6.5.4.4.4 Mixing Sat 14/03/15 Sat 14/03/15 1 day? 10647 1.5.1.4 Delivery Wed 15/10/14 Wed 15/10/14 1 day 46 108 1.6.5.4.5 Mixing Fri 20/03/15 Mon 23/03/15 4 days? 99,10348 1.5.2 Interim report Sat 13/12/14 Thu 01/01/15 20 days? 109 1.6.5.4.5.1 Pre-mixing Fri 20/03/15 Sat 21/03/15 2 days?49 1.5.2.1 Define structure Wed 17/12/14 Sun 28/12/14 12 days? 110 1.6.5.4.5.1.1 Dialog Wed 08/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 13 days50 1.5.2.2 Writing Sat 13/12/14 Sun 28/12/14 16 days 49FF 111 1.6.5.4.5.1.2 Sound effects and ambieWed 08/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 13 days51 1.5.2.3 Proofing Mon 29/12/14 Wed 31/12/14 3 days 50 112 1.6.5.4.5.2 Mixing (rerecording) Wed 08/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 13 days 10952 1.5.2.4 Submission Thu 01/01/15 Thu 01/01/15 1 day? 51 113 1.6.5.4.5.3 Sound mastering Wed 08/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 13 days 11253 1.5.3 Final report Thu 16/10/14 Fri 17/04/15 183 days? 114 1.6.5.5 Video mastering Wed 08/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 13 days 90,8954 1.5.3.1 Define structure Wed 04/03/15 Sat 18/04/15 46 days 115 1.6.5.6 Post-Production Complete Mon 20/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 0 days? 11455 1.5.3.2 Writing Thu 16/10/14 Thu 23/04/15 190 days 54FF 116 1.6.6 Product Development CompletMon 20/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 0 days 8656 1.5.3.3 Proofing Mon 13/04/15 Thu 23/04/15 11 days 55 117 1.7 Presentation Tue 24/03/15 Fri 27/03/15 3 days? 5957 1.5.3.4 Submission Thu 16/04/15 Thu 23/04/15 8 days 56FF 118 1.7.1 Preview to supervisor Tue 24/03/15 Tue 24/03/15 1 day?58 1.5.3.5 Final Report Completed Fri 17/04/15 Thu 23/04/15 7 days 57 119 1.7.2 Sound check with technical dir Wed 08/04/15 Wed 08/04/15 1 day?59 1.6 Product Development Wed 05/11/14 Wed 25/03/15 140 days? 38 120 1.7.3 Delivery Wed 08/04/15 Thu 09/04/15 2 days? 11960 1.6.1 Planning (as part of CS4457 moWed 25/02/15 Sat 28/02/15 4 days 121 1.7.4 Product Demonstration Compl Wed 08/04/15 Wed 08/04/15 0 days? 12061 1.6.2 Conception Wed 05/11/14 Sun 01/03/15 117 days? 122 1.8 End Thu 23/04/15 Thu 23/04/15 0 days? 117,42

WB

SP. O’DONOGHUE

Notes

All 7 levels shown (please see MicrosoftProjectsourcefileforfull Gantt chart)

55

ID WBS Task Name Start Finish Duration Predecess

1 1 FYP Fri 29/08/14 Fri 17/04/15 231 days?

2 1.1 Concept Fri 29/08/14 Sat 06/09/14 9 days?

3 1.1.1 Locate concept context Fri 29/08/14 Wed 03/09/14 6 days?

6 1.1.2 Development Mon 01/09/14 Fri 05/09/14 5 days? 3SS

9 1.1.3 Definition Sat 06/09/14 Sat 06/09/14 1 day? 6,3

12 1.2 Proposal Fri 05/09/14 Thu 25/09/14 21 days? 2

13 1.2.1 Own Project proposal Fri 05/09/14 Sun 07/09/14 3 days?

20 1.2.2 Review options Mon 08/09/14 Mon 15/09/14 8 days? 13

24 1.2.3 Secure supervisor Mon 15/09/14 Thu 25/09/14 11 days? 20

29 1.3 Research Mon 29/09/14 Mon 30/03/15 183 days? 12

30 1.3.1 Literature review Mon 29/09/14 Mon 09/02/15 134 days?

37 1.3.2 Case studies Mon 13/10/14 Sun 12/04/15 182 days

38 1.4 Form research question Thu 23/10/14 Tue 04/11/14 13 days? 12,29SS

39 1.4.1 Draft provisional questions Thu 23/10/14

Wed 29/10/14

7 days?

40 1.4.2 Select most interesting Thu 30/10/14

Thu 30/10/14

1 day? 39

41 1.4.3 Refine question Fri 31/10/14 Mon 13/04/15

165 days 40

42 1.5 Reporting Mon 06/10/14 Fri 17/04/15 193 days? 29SS

43 1.5.1 Presentation Mon 06/10/14 Wed 15/10/14 10 days

48 1.5.2 Interim report Sat 13/12/14 Thu 01/01/15 20 days?

53 1.5.3 Final report Thu 16/10/14 Fri 17/04/15 183 days?

59 1.6 Product Development Wed 05/11/14 Wed 25/03/15 140 days? 38

60 1.6.1 Planning (as part of CS4457 module)

Wed 25/02/15 Sat 28/02/15 4 days

61 1.6.2 Conception Wed 05/11/14 Sun 01/03/15 117 days?

64 1.6.3 Pre‐production Sat 28/02/15 Fri 06/03/15 6 days? 61

82 1.6.4 Production Wed 04/03/15 Tue 10/03/15 6 days? 64

86 1.6.5 Post‐production Mon 09/03/15 Tue 24/03/15 16 days? 82

116 1.6.6 Product Development Completed

Mon 20/04/15 Mon 20/04/15 0 days 86

117 1.7 Presentation Tue 24/03/15 Fri 27/03/15 3 days? 59

118 1.7.1 Preview to supervisor Tue 24/03/15 Tue 24/03/15 1 day?

119 1.7.2 Sound check with technical director and file delivery

Wed 08/04/15 Wed 08/04/15 1 day?

120 1.7.3 Delivery Wed 08/04/15 Thu 09/04/15 2 days? 119

121 1.7.4 Product Demonstration Completed

Wed 08/04/15 Wed 08/04/15 0 days? 120

122 1.8 End Thu 23/04/15 Thu 23/04/15 0 days? 117,42

23/04FYP

06/09Concept

03/09e concept context

05/09Development

06/09Definition

25/09Proposal

07/09Own Project proposal

15/09Review options

25/09Secure supervisor

12/04Research

09/02Literature review

12/04Case studies

13/04Form research question

29/10Draft provisional questions

30/10Select most interesting

13/04Refine question

23/04Reporting

15/10Presentation

23/04Final report

20/04Product Development

08/11Planning (as part of CS4457 module)

01/03Conception

06/03Pre-production

10/03Production

20/04Post-production

20/04Product Development Completed

09/04Presentation

24/03Sound check with technical director and file delivery

10/04Delivery

08/04Product Demonstration Completed

23/04End

S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T25 Aug '14 15 Sep '14 06 Oct '14 27 Oct '14 17 Nov '14 08 Dec '14 29 Dec '14 19 Jan '15 09 Feb '15 02 Mar '15 23 Mar '15 13 Apr '15 04 May '15

Task

Split

Milestone

Summary

Project Summary

Inactive Task

Inactive Milestone

Inactive Summary

Manual Task

Duration-only


Manual Summary

Start-only

Finish-only

External Tasks

External Milestone

Deadline

Critical

Critical Split

Baseline

Baseline Milestone

Baseline Summary

Progress

Manual Progress

Project: FYP Pádhraig O'DonogDate: Wed 06/05/15

Gan

tt C

hartP. O’DONOGHUE

Notes

Only 3 levels shown (out of 7 total)

56

P. O’DONOGHUE

Notes

This diagram is based on level 3 of the WBS.

Legend

ES Dur EFLS Float LF

29 134 16378 49 212

42 4 46177 135 181

0 6 6 29 7 36 36 1 37 37 5 420 0 6 102 73 109 109 73 110 110 73 115

6 1 7 7 3 10 10 8 18 18 11 29 42 66 108 108 6 114 114 6 120 120 16 136 136 1 137 137 2 139 212 0 2126 0 7 7 0 10 10 0 18 18 0 29 115 73 181 181 73 187 187 73 193 193 73 209 209 73 210 210 73 212

0 5 5 29 169 1981 1 6 43 14 212

29 183 21229 0 212

End

WBS No.Description

1.4.2 1.4.3Select most interesting resea Refine research question

1.6.1Product Planning

1.6.2Product Conception

1.3.1Literature review

1.1.1Locate concept context

1.4.1Draft provisional research qu

Sound check with technical d Delivery

1.6.3 1.6.4 1.6.5Product Pre‐Production Product Production Product Post‐Production

1.7.2 1.7.3

Start

1.1.3Concept Definition

1.2.1Own Project proposal

1.1.2Concept Development

Final Report

1.5.3

1.2.2Review Options

1.2.3Secure Supervisor

Case Studies

1.3.2

CPA

Pre

cede

nce

Dia

gram


Group B2

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Communication FlowHow do you organize communication and change concerning the FYP? (consider here the stake-holders)So far, there have been three stakeholders with whom communication has been critical to project success: my supervisor, the FYP coordinator, and the person assist-ing me during production of my project-related short film.Allthreehavedictatedcommunicationmethodsaccordingtotheirindividualpreferences.Thefirsttwoprefer email as the primary means of exchanging in-formation, while the last prefers social-network-based instant messaging. I have adopted their preferred com-munication methods because it is mostly I who depends on their cooperation, and not the other way around.

Each may have their own reasons for preferring to communicate in their particular ways. Putting myself in their shoes, it is easy to understand why, for example, my supervisor encourages his supervisees to use email rather than phone calls or face-to-face meetings: he hasmanyothercommitmentsandahecticschedule;aswellasthat,email,ingeneral,ismoreflexibleintermsof scheduling than any of the real-time communication methods.TheFYPcoordinatoralsorequiresthisflexibil-ityinordertomultitaskeffectively.Myfilmproductionassistant is averse to using a mobile phone (a method that I would have preferred in many of the instances in which communication was necessary) and, instead, is usually reachable via the social networking site, Facebook. Usually, it is I who initiates the dialogue, but, sinceeithertheirresponsemayaffectatime-sensitiveactivity (as is often the case) or they may urgently re-quire a response from me, it is necessary to frequently check the relevant email account as well as Facebook for any inbound communications.

Thecommunicationmethodswiththefirsttwostake-holders have, invariantly, been formal, whether via email (in the case of both supervisor and FYP coordi-nator), lectures (FYP coordinator), and group meetings (supervisor). In comparison, the communications with my production assistant have been very informal. This is explained by the fact that we are close friends and that he is not subject to any regulatory body (e.g. the CSIS department, Student Academic Administration, etc.) or accountable to other stakeholders like my su-pervisor, the coordinator, and I are.

It has been necessary report progress to both my supervisor and the FYP coordinator at various times. On more than one occasion, I have had to convey “bad” news via email. I have endeavoured to explain the causes of any setbacks and the measures I have

taken to mitigate them in these emails. In each case, however, I have postponed delivery of the news until the last possible minute. The rationale—if it could even be called that—has been to avoid unnecessary com-municationandreportonlydefiniteinformation.(Ineach case, there was potential to reverse the situation before it was too late.) This tactic has almost certainly cost me in terms of losing the trust and good faith of both stakeholders. Though regrettable, the cost can be justified(aslongastherespectiveinterestsofthesestakeholdersarenotadverselyaffected)bytheupshotsofunaccountability,namely“[unstifled]creativityandautonomy” (Schwalbe 2014, p.406) and decreased communication overhead.

What has changed in your communication organi-zation since deliverable 1?Apart from an exacerbation of my tendency to withhold “bad” news, nothing has changed. (The latest bad news is a case of having to explain to my supervisor why it has taken so long to explain why I have did not submit an interim report. This is something I will redress as soon as possible. [Update: I emailed my supervisor toexplainthesituationthreeweekslater.Hedidnotcriticise my conduct, but when we met later, he did ask why I always left things so late. I was not able to respond adequately and had to sidestep the question.])

How are you now organizing these aspects for the preparation of the demo days and the final report?It was necessary to arrange accommodation of my product demonstration with the FYP coordinator. This was arranged via email. It is now necessary to arrange a preview of my product with my supervisor. I will also organise this via email.

Equally critical is the necessity to make the necessary technical arrangements for the proper presentation of my product with the media technician responsi-ble, namely Darragh Pigott. I will initiate contact via email and later request an appointment to meet him. [Update: Darragh was extremely helpful in this respect. This made what could have been a complicated process a lot easier.]

Scalability íssues: Size matters. If you were the FYP coordinator/ an FYP supervisor, how would you organize communication management under the constraints of limited resources (time and in-frastructure) for these individual projects? (over 100 students, ca. 20 supervisors, ca. 20 second


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readers, external stakeholders/customers, 1 year span, topics and responsibilities spread across 5 courses).ThecurrentFYPcoordinatoralreadyemployseffectivetechniques for organising communication management, namely the series of lectures (“pull” communication) complementedbyamailinglist(“push”;Schwalbe2014, p.417).

It may, however, save the coordinator time if they set up an online drop-box for distributing the various FYP-related guidelines and memos intended for students,

rather than emailing these documents in small sets which involves composing narratives (explanations) to accompany them.


01. What are your criteria for determining project success?Although the criteria for success vary among the dif-ferent stakeholders, they mostly overlap. As the main stakeholder, mine include (in order of importance): that a contribution has been made to the field of film theory with a rigorously researched, soundly argued, and well-presented answer to a relevant research question; significant expansion of my knowledge of the subject; enjoyment of the process; a good grade (B3 or higher); that the short film produced as part of the project is both instructive and entertaining; that the costs do not exceed my means; that it leads to interest from poten-tial employers. My supervisor shares all of these criteria except perhaps that of its cost-friendliness to me. He may wish to minimise costs to the department, howev-er, as well as the investment of his time in the pro-ject, and consider these additional criteria for success. My parents’ criteria would also include all of my own, though the criteria in the “academic value” category, would not be prioritised as highly in their estimation as those relating to my wellbeing, grades, and prospects for employment.

Passingthemodule!Mydefinitionofsuccesshashadtochange. It was not possible to achieve the standard I had hoped. Poor time and scope management were the causes of the decrease in quality.

02. What are the drivers, constraints, and de-grees of freedom that you can identify in relation to your FYP?The main driver is quality: It would be preferable to earn a higher grade than a lower one (but this is not critical). The schedule, costs, and staffing are three very limiting constraints: The schedule is determined by the non-negotiable deadlines set by the department. The budget for accessing research material (namely books, journals, DVDs and Blurays) and producing the short film is capped at around €500. Staffing is constrained by the requirement for work to be done independently by the student, i.e. by the fact that it is

a solo project. The production phase of the short film, however, presents a limited degree of freedom in the size of cast and crew. The duration and scale of the short film offer a greater degree of freedom still for adjustment.

Quality ceased to be a driver late in the project exe-cution phase: It became a degree of freedom out of necessity.(Andwasthenpromptlysacrificed!)Thefree-dom presented by the pre-production and production phases(oftheshortfilm)wasusedunwiselyandactu-ally resulted in an expansion of the project’s scope, i.e. the script was too long, and so the running time of the short was too long, and so most post-production tasks saw a three-fold increase in duration. Time remained a hard constraint, but the facility to submit during the seven-day period that followed the deadline presented another degree of freedom—and it proved critical.

03. What are your criteria for determining wheth-er the product is ready for consumption (i.e. release, screening, or audition)?The short film must be brought to a minimally accept-able presentation standard before it can be deemed fit for consumption. This means that the number of flaws—either technical or aesthetic—in the editing, sound (editing and mixing), and any visual effects of the production must not exceed that of the typical pro-fessional equivalent.

The original criteria were relaxed a little: As long as the dialogue was intelligible and the presentation was freefromanyglaringflaws,theshortwouldbefitforscreening. It was only possible to bring it to a profes-sional standard and polish it after the demonstration. The decision to compromise on attention to detail in the days and hours leading up to the demo proved to be vital.

04. What commitments must you make on this project? … Are they achievable?I have not agreed to anything with my supervisor that I do not believe is achievable—in fact, I have not agreed to anything at all, except (tacitly) that “something”


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will be submitted by the department deadlines. I have, however, already failed to fulfil the commitment of the submission of the interim report in early January. Due to a lack of foresight, I did not communicate it to my supervisor in advance. When I do negotiate project specifics with my supervisor, I will be careful not to promise too much.

If, initially, the approach to making commitments was discrete, this changed on the day of the prod-uct deadline, when I promised to deliver two versions of the short (which would vary in respect of their soundtracks). This was a foolhardy choice… and a gamble. It contributed at least two days to the lateness of the submission. It was, nevertheless, an important part of the response to the research question.

05. What were your main considerations in writ-ing your project plan?I wished to maximise the time available for researching the topic while balancing time available for producing the short film, i.e. the quality of research was priori-tised over the quality of the product. A major consider-ation was the dependency of the short film on research, i.e. there would be no point making a film if it did not address the research question effectively. Ideally, this would be a finish-to start dependency, but it is likely that the preceding task of research may resume during the succeeding one of production. Another dependen-cy considered was that which certain sections of the final report have on the successful completion of the short film, i.e. answers to certain questions may not be known until the film is made (finish-to-finish).

Dwindling time reserves meant that the research, de-spite being inadequate, had to be suspended in order to produce a product. As expected, however, research did resume during the latter stages of the work on the product, and the completion of the report was dependent on the prior completion of the product (a finish-to-finishdependency).Inhindsight,itmayhavebeen possible commence work on the product much sooner (e.g. a month or even more), rather than hold-ingoutforgreaterdefinitionintheresearch.

06. What level of granularity are you using to categorise your project milestones and what are those milestones?I am using only a very gross level of granularity in defining project milestones. They include the most high-level milestones of defining a research question; completing research; completing pre-production, pro-duction and post-production; and completing the final report.

The question of granularity demands careful consid-eration. Perhaps the gross (high-risk) approach taken was appropriate, given the time pressures involved and the administrative overhead that increased granularity wouldbeengender.Thenagain,finergranularity,andthe closer monitoring it promotes, may have resulted in greater control of the scope and schedule of the pro-

ject;justifyingtheaddedoverhead.Thereis,however,an element of absurdity which becomes apparent while updating the Gantt chart when the project is on the brink of catastrophic failure, it must be admitted.

07. What common large tasks have you identified in your project and what processes have you de-veloped for modularising them?Research (i.e. reading and annotation) and report-writ-ing are the only common large tasks I have identified. (The task of producing the film consists mostly of unique, i.e. non-repeating, sub-tasks.) I have not de-veloped processes for modularising them.

The research and report-writing tasks were indeed among the most common and largest tasks of the project. Sound editing and mixing tasks, however, also turned out to be common large tasks which I had not anticipated. Although I neither foresaw the need to modularise the last two tasks on time nor exer-cisedpropermanagementofthefirsttwo,usingthePomodoro technique (loosely) while writing the various sections of the report helped ensure a relatively con-sistentlevelofefficiencyandcontrolofthetask.HadI kept accurate records of the productivity rates, then these, combined with a checklist of the necessary steps associated with each task, would have been useful for estimating and managing future tasks of the same kind.

08. How much time have you budgeted for rework, reshoots, remixing, bug fixing, and why?I have budgeted 1 week for reshoots. I would have pre-ferred more, since shooting is a relatively risky proposi-tion (even with the most careful planning). 1 week is all I can afford due to the dependencies of certain tasks on shooting, namely those of post-production and com-pleting the report.

The original budget for reshoots (one week) was re-duced to two days, but, thankfully, reshoots were not necessary. It was necessary, however, rerecord some soundeffectsanddialog(about6hoursintotal).Theschedule had been abandoned at that point, so it is meaningless to speak of time budgets here.

09. Have you identified potential problems that could arise during project development? If so, what is your contingency plan if these problems materialise?A contingency plan is already in effect due to the actual occurrence of the risk of falling behind on research. As it stands, I have not formed a research question and it is critical that I do so as soon as possible in order to proceed. This contingency plan effects a scaling back of the film production so that it is shorter and (from a technical standpoint) less ambitious. The research must also be curtailed in order to make deadlines. I have no plan in place for dealing with the risk of a stalled production; it seems unthinkable, but I would, perhaps, fall back on doing a research-only project in such an


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event; this would, however, have a severe and detri-mental effect on the project driver of achieving a good quality of work and grade.

It was not necessary to execute the contingency plan of doing a research-only project. There were points, however, where facilities and equipment were either unavailable or malfunctioning, and, not having a con-tingency plan in place, I was exposed to considerable risk. These moments brought home the importance of starting major projects sooner rather than later.

10. How and when will you critically review the processes used throughout the project to improve efficiency?Reviewing processes is not an activity I can afford to engage in—except where an existing process is identi-fied as being so dysfunctional that it threatens to un-dermine project feasibility, i.e. where I could not afford not to!

The processes used were slapdash and could clearly be improved. The calm and collectedness necessary to critically review them, however, escaped me at the time. One improvement that seems obvious already would be to be more thorough about making annota-tions and systematic about organising them, e.g. using Zotero or some other software reference manager.

11. Have you budgeted time for adapting to new processes, tools, or technologies?Yes! I have accommodated the anticipated time it will take to adapt to the process of mixing sound in an un-familiar 5.1, multichannel environment. I have allowed for an extra week of post-production time on these grounds.

The time budgeted for adapting to the 5.1 mixing pro-cess was neither available nor, fortunately, necessary, it turned out. I did not expect it, but the software which I was already competent at using proved to be eminently capableofsupportinga5.1surroundsoundworkflow,and the process was easier than expected. The soft-ware (and hardware) installed in the recording studio, however,provedtobemoredifficulttousethanex-pected. This resulted in 1-2 days of delays, which had aknock-oneffectbecausenoadaptationtimehadbeenbudgeted or was available, for that matter.

12. What do you estimate the project requires in labour-hours and how does this compare with the nominal time available to spend on it?Assuming a 48-hour work week, after deducting time for other modules, I have 252 hours of nominal time available remaining to complete the project. Based on Wieger’s estimate that about 60% of this time is the most one can realistically hope to spend effectively on the project, then there are, approximately, only 150 hours available. I estimate that research will take a further 30 hours; film-making, 90 hours (20 hours pre-production, 30 hours production, and 40 hours post-production); and report-writing, 80 hours. This

gives a total estimate of 200 labour-hours, i.e. approxi-mately 50 hours greater than the effective time availa-ble, but approximately 50 hours fewer than the nominal time available. This means that the project is particular vulnerable to risk, e.g. falling ill, production delays, etc. It also means that project success may have to come at the expense of my other modules and social life.

The original estimates did not turn out to be that ac-curate, but they margin by which they were out was not that great. About a further 30 hours was spent on research, perhaps more, so this was the most accu-rate.Theproductionofthefilmtookabout120hours,i.e. approximately 33% of an increase on the original estimate. Both pre-production and post-production required an additional 20 hours each, an increase of 100% and 50% respectively. The production “phase” (i.e.nottheoverallfilmproduction,buttheshootingphase) required only about 66% of the original 30 hoursestimate.Haditnotbeenfortheextensiononthe product submission deadline, failure would have been almost certain: Only a drastic reduction in the quality of the product would have made it possible to meet the original deadline. The possibilities of having to sacrificeperformanceinothermodulesandrelinquishasocial life were realised to the full.

13. How have you accommodated the task-switching overhead associated with parallel assignments into your schedule?The schedule, fortunately, allowed for task switching to be almost completely eliminated during the 4-6 weeks approaching the project finish dates. This undoubtedly helped. Any time lost to task switching overhead could have meant the difference between project success and failure. It is a relief, I must say, to know that the phenomenon is recognised; having a definition of the concept and a term for it means it can be more intelli-gently considered in the planning and design of projects of any kind.

I have not accommodated task-switching overhead into the schedule since the time constraints do not permit it. It is acknowledged, however, that these overheads cannotsimplybeignored.Hence,itisacceptedthattheinefficienciesofmultitaskingbetweenmodulesandthe project will result in the degradation of quality all round. The distinction, though, is merely semantic, at this point (i.e. it could be claimed that the sched-ule does accommodate the overhead if the quality is viewed more as a degree of freedom than a driver, and the target for quality is lowered). Fortunately, the fact that 2 of my modules (namely Project Management in Practice and Directed Studies 4) have been designed to align with the aims and goals of the project mitigates thisissuetoasignificantextent.

14. Scheduling training time... [Similar question already posed by tip #11]No other training is required outside the kind already addressed by question 11.


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15. How did you arrive at each of your estimates? … Are they Realistic?These estimates are of a back-of-the-envelope grade, i.e. rough guesses. They are however based on sub-stantial experience from the previous 3 years of college assignments and short film projects. I will do a more accurate work estimate as part of a late interim report and show the work of calculating it.

I tried to err on the side of caution by overestimat-ing the required labour-hours involved in each part of the project. As mentioned earlier, however, the scope expanded (as much as three-fold in some cases) due to poor scope planning in the pre-production phase. Taking this into account, the estimates were fairly real-istic. The data accumulated during this project, coarse though it is, will be useful for making future estimates.

16. Have you used any tools in the process of es-timating your work?No, I have not used any tools for estimating the work. I was not aware that any existed until I read Wieger’s project management success tips. From what I can tell, however, I do not believe that they would be suitable for a project of this kind, i.e. non-IT.

Ididnotdiscoveranytoolsforestimatingfilmproduc-tion work in the course of the project.

17. Have you factored a schedule contingency buffer into your project plan to allow for unfore-seen issues that may arise?No, I have not scheduled contingency buffers into the project plan. As already pointed out, the project is ex-posed to significant risk.

There were no major issues to report, thankfully. The minorissues(includingtechnicaldifficultiesintherecording studio and limited studio availability) made it clear, however that the project was extremely sensitive to risk because of the extreme time constraints at play. The loss of control is not desirable, and would be totally unacceptable in a professional context where the inter-ests of other stakeholders are involved.

18. Do you foresee a potential utility in the his-torical data offered by your project and are you recording actuals as well as estimates of your working time?Yes, I would value the historical actuals-and-estimates data and I will be using time sheets to track project work.

I did not use time sheets to track the work on the FYP, regrettably. The Gantt chart, however, contains both the baseline and actuals data, and will serve as a poignant reminder of how badly things went wrong. The

gross totals data for some of the main summary tasks, as previously stated, will be useful for estimating and managingfutureprojects(filmoracademicwriting).

19. What are your criteria for counting a project task as 100% complete?I had not determined criteria for deciding when tasks are 100% complete. (I have not scheduled any ‘inch-pebble’ milestones.) The nature of the macro-lev-el tasks varies considerably, e.g. conducting research is more open-ended than shooting a scene. My foremost concern is finishing the project; it will be considered 100% finished when the research question is answered.

Havingsubmittedboththeproductandthereportwithastrongsensethatneitherwastrulyfinished(espe-cially in the latter’s case), this is a pertinent ques-tion. Leaving aside the criteria for determining when inch-pebble tasks are complete, I suggest that, while the original criterion is still reliable (namely answering the research question decisively), the task is nearing completion once a certain level of diminishing returns is experienced. Based on this criterion, both the product andreport(thereportespecially)wereasignificantdis-tance from completion, given that every last hour spent on them was vital, with every last addition indispensa-ble.

20. How will you measure and track the current status of the project state?I will measure the current status of the project using a Gantt chart based on 3-point estimates. (This Gantt chart does not yet exist.)

I abandoned tracking almost as soon as the sched-ule baseline was complete. I concentrated only on the major deliverables and deadlines. Returning to theGanttcharttoupdateitconfirmedtheextentofthe schedule overruns. Sometimes, e.g. in an obvious crisis, “open and honest tracking” is not necessary. The schedule variance came as no surprise—although it was sobering to be reminded of the unrealistic optimism of some of the original estimates.

21. Have you any existing project retrospectives that could be of benefit to you in your work on the FYP, e.g. past assignment reports?Yes, I have 2 separate project reports, each of which document and critically reflect on problems encoun-tered during the production of their respective videos.

The—verybrief—reflectionsectionofmyFYPreportnow reads like those from the reports of previous as-signments: a cautionary tale about the consequences ofpoortimemanagement.Uponreflectiononthosereflections,Iseethatitisnecessarytotranslatetheexperience into behavioural change, otherwise mistakes are repeated.


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Lessons LearnedIt was instructive to work with my groupmates in the PM module. I am very grateful to have learned from each of them.

Ourdifferenttimeperspectives(TheTimeParadox2015)createdfrictionarounddeadlines.Havingrepeat-edly jeopardised submissions by leaving them until the last minute—after being entrusted with the responsi-

bility of closing out the assignments—it became clear to me that this is morally and professionally unac-ceptable: My groupmates ought to have equal control over the work right up until submission. My approach was opaque and exclusionary. It also engendered risk, which was a further betrayal of their trust. The habit of leaving my own assignments until the last minute ought to be strictly controlled in group contexts.


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References01. Chen, J., Su-I, L. and Vekhter, D. (2015) Non-zero-sum games [online], available: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/nonzero.html [accessed: 28 Feb 2015].

02. Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R. & Wood, D.J. (1997) ‘Towardatheoryofstakeholderidentificationandsalience:definingtheprincipleofwhoandwhatreally

counts’, The Academy of Management Review [online], 22(4), pp. 853-886, available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/259247 [accessed: 26 Feb 2015].

03. The Time Paradox (2015) ‘Zimbardo time perspec-tive inventory’ [online], available: http://www.thetime-paradox.com/zimbardo-time-perspective-inventory/ [accessed: 6 May 2015].


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DeclarationAll group members participated in equal fashion in the production of the deliverable.

ThefollowingsourcefileshavebeenuploadedtotheDropbox:

01. Sourcefilesforthereport02. PDFforthereport(thisfile)03. Sourcefilesforthepresentation04. PDFfilesforthepresentation05. The timesheets

Documents

CS4557 - Final Report - Group B2 20150605 2342