BCS Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management

Managing and Controlling Projects

Learn to Allocate Project Resources
Understand The Various Change Control Procedures
Define Quality and Learn The Various Terms Associated With it
Understand the Relationship between Programmes and Projects
Learn from Certified Instructors
Train from Globally Known Training Providers

Project planning, monitoring and control and change control have always been at the helm of affairs while managing an organisation and the various processes in it. To successfully manage projects in an agile manner current or aspiring Project Managers can enroll for The BCS Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management. This course provides an understanding of the principles of project management, along with those that relate to project planning, monitoring and control, change control and configuration management. Besides, it also helps the delegates to understand effort estimation, quality and risk management and communication between project stakeholders. We, at Pentagon Training, help the delegates learn the course from those who are certified in this course.

Who should take this course

Those who are affected by IT Projects whether directly or indirectly fall under the scope of the program. Also, the course is aimed at delegates who are new to project management and work within an IT project environment.

Prerequisites

The course has no prerequisites but a training with a BCS accredited training provider is recommended.

What Will You Learn

By the end of the course the delegates will have become familiar with the following concepts:

Planning Projects and their purpose
Implementation Strategies
How Products and Activities are related
Resource Allocation
Work Schedules, Gantt Charts
How to Monitor and Control Projects
Change Control Procedures
What is Quality Control and Quality Assurance
Approaches to Estimating
Risk – Identification and Prioritisation
Relationship between Programmes and Projects

Key Learning Points

Courseware

Tutor Support

Course Overview

This course is a suitable addition for individuals alraedy having PRINCE qualification.

At a high level, PRINCE2 provides a framework for projects in terms of what needs to be done, by whom and by when. The Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management provides a range of techniques of how those things can be done. The course provides an explanation and an analysis of various estimating techniques that are available so that a Project Manager or Business Analyst can decide which would be most suitable to use.

Exam

The BCS Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management exam is taken on the afternoon of the last day of the course. The delegates are given a period of one hour to answer the 40 questions. They need to score 26 marks out of 40 to pass this multiple-choice closed book exam. Candidates passing the examination are awarded the BCS Foundation Certificate in IS Project Management.

Projects and Project Work
- The definition of projects, as opposed to other types of work
- Terms of reference for a project
- The purpose of project planning and control
- The typical activities in a system development life-cycle
- System and project life cycles
- Variations on the conventional project life cycle, such as the use of prototypes or an iterative approach (e.g. the creation and testing of a series of versions of a product that converge on the final deliverable) or incremental approach (i.e. the phased creation and delivery of a series of products to users)
- Implementation strategies e.g. parallel running, ‘sudden death’, use of pilots
- Purpose and content of business case reports; the utilization and significance of discounted cash flows in such reports (Note: knowledge of the method of calculation is NOT required)
- Types of planning document: project initiation documents; project and stage plans, quality plan, communications plan, risk plan
- Post implementation review
Project Planning
- Project deliverables and intermediate products
- Work and product breakdowns
- Product definitions (including the identification of derived from, and component of relationships between products)
- Relationship between products and activities in a project
- Checkpoints and milestones
- Lapsed time and effort required for activities
- Activity networks (using ‘activity on node’ notation)
- Calculation of earliest and latest start and end dates of activities and resulting float
- Identification and significance of critical paths
- Resource allocation, smoothing and levelling, including the use of resource histograms
- Work schedules and Gantt charts
Monitoring and Control
- The project control life cycle: including planning, monitoring achievement, identifying variances, taking corrective action
- The nature of, and the purposes for which, information is gathered
- Collecting progress information
  - Timesheets,
  - Team development meetings
  - Error and change reports etc
- Presenting progress information
  - Content of progress reports
  - Graphical presentation of progress information e.g. accumulative resource charts (also known as S-curve charts)
  - Use of earned value analysis, including where it would be applied in project life-cycle (Note: it is not expected that candidates be able to calculate and interpret earned value figures)
- The reporting cycle
  - Reporting structures in projects
  - Timing, personnel and purpose of different types of reporting meetings
- Corrective action
  - Tolerance and contingency
  - Exception reports and plans
  - Management procedures involved in changing plans
  - Options, including extending or staggering deadlines, increasing resources, reducing Functionality or quality requirements, cancelling the project, etc.
- Change Control and Configuration Management
  - Reasons for change and configuration management
  - Change control procedures
    - Role of change control boards
    - Generation of change requests
    - Change request evaluation (e.g. its impact on the business case)
    - Change request authorisation
  - Configuration management
    - Purpose and procedures
    - Identification of configuration items
    - Product baselines
    - Configuration management databases: content and use
  - Quality
    - Definitions of the term ‘quality’ e.g. ‘fitness for purpose’
    - Quality control versus quality assurance
    - Defining quality: definition and measurement
    - Detection of defects during the project life cycle
    - Quality procedures: entry, process and exit requirements
    - Defect removal processes, including testing and reviews
    - Types of testing (including unit, integration, user acceptance, and regression testing)
    - The inspection process, peer reviews
    - Principles of IS0 9001:2000 quality management systems
    - Supplier evaluation
  - Estimating
    - Effects of over and under-estimating
    - Effort versus duration; relationship between effort and cost
    - Estimates versus targets
    - Use of expert judgement (advantages and disadvantages)
    - The Delphi approach
    - Top-down estimating
      - Identification of size drivers (e.g. function points etc)
      - Identification of productivity rates (e.g. function points per day)
      - Need for past project data to establish productivity rates
      - Factors affecting productivity rates (e.g. staff experience)
      - Estimation of effort for new projects using productivity rates and size drivers
    - Bottom-up approaches to estimating
    - Use of analogy in estimating
  - Risk
    - Definition of the term ‘risk’; components of risk: risk events (or triggers), probability, impact
    - Ways of categorising risk, e.g. business versus project
    - Identification and prioritisation of risk
    - Assessment of risk exposure (i.e. combining consideration of potential damage and chance of loss)
    - Risk responses and actions: risk prevention, reduction, acceptance, transfer and contingency planning
    - Typical risks associated with information systems development
    - Assessment of the costs/benefits of risk reduction activities
    - Maintenance of risk registers and risk logs
  - Project Communications and Project Organisation
    - Relationship between programmes and projects
    - Identifying stakeholders and their concerns
    - The project sponsor
    - Establishment of the project authority (e.g. project board, steering committee, etc.)
    - Membership of project board/steering committee
    - Roles and responsibilities of project board, project manager, stage manager, team leader
    - Desirable characteristics of project manager
    - Role of project support office
    - The project team and matrix management
    - Reporting structures and responsibilities
    - Management styles and communication (including same time/same place; same time/different place, different time/same place, different time/different place)
    - Team building (including phases of team cohesion e.g. forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning)

Team dynamics

About Sheffield

Sheffield is a city area in South Yorkshire, England. Actually part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, its name originates from the River Sheaf, which innings through the city. With some of its southern suburbs occupied from Derbyshire, the city has grown up from its main manufacturing roots to include a broader economic base.

In the 19th century, Sheffield increased a global reputation for steel manufacture. Known as the Steel City, many novelties were industrialised nearby, counting container and stainless steel, powering an almost tenfold increase in the population in the Industrial Rebellion. Sheffield conventional its public charter in 1843, flattering the City of Sheffield in 1893. International rivalry in iron and steel produced a weakening in these businesses in the 1970s and 1980s, according to with the failure of coal withdrawal in the area.

Government:

Sheffield is ruled at the local level by Sheffield City Council. It contains 84 councillors chosen to signify 28 words: three councillors per district. Following the 2016 local votes, the delivery of assembly places is Labor. The city also has a Lord Mayor though now just a ritual position, in the past, the office approved substantial authority, with decision-making powers over the funds and businesses of the city assembly.

Much of its past the assembly was skilful by the Labor Party, and was noted for its leftist understandings; during the 1980s, when David Blunkett ran Sheffield City Council, the area augmented the epithet the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. Though, the Liberal Democrats measured the Council between 1999 and 2001 and took control again from 2008 to 2011.

Climate:

Like the break of the United Kingdom, the weather in Sheffield is usually temperate. The Pennies to the west of the city can make a cool, depressed and wet atmosphere, but they also deliver shelter from the usual westerly breezes, forming rain shadow across the area.Between 1971 and 2000 Sheffield be about 824.7 millimetres (32.47 in) of rain per year. December was the rainiest month with 91.9 millimetres (3.62 in) and July the dehydrated with 51.0 millimetres (2.01 in). July was also the hottest month, with an average maximum temperature of 20.8 °C (69.4 °F). The regular least temperature in January and February was 1.6 °C (34.9 °F), however the lowermost heats recorded in these months can be between −10 and −15 °C (14 and 5 °F), though since 1960, the temperature has never fallen below −9.2 °C (15.4 °F), signifying that urbanization around the Weston Park site during the second half of the 20th century may stop temperatures below −10 °C (14 °F) happening.