Cis 554 discussions responses | Information Systems homework help

There are two discussions here that need to be responded to thoroughly. Responses must be on APA format 150+words 1-2 legitimate verifiable sources per response.

CIS554 discussion 1 post responses.

Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:

“Contract Development” Please respond to the following:

• Gathering software requirements requires gathering of functional requirements, operational requirements, and technical specifications. These requirements can then be described in the contract development process. Describe what may happen if declarative statements contain ambiguous phrases such as “ands”, “ ors”, “ifs”, or “buts” as described within the operational requirements. Present example(s) to support your answer.

• Determine the typical items that should be included within a contractual agreement of a software project. Analyze how the inclusion of these items may help avoid risks in future phases of the software project life cycle.

AJ’s post states the following:

• Gathering software requirements requires gathering of functional requirements, operational requirements, and technical specifications. These requirements can then be described in the contract development process. Describe what may happen if declarative statements contain ambiguous phrases such as “ands”, “ors”, “ifs”, or “buts” as described within the operational requirements. Present example(s) to support your answer.

Software requirement gathering is the act of the project manager and project team understanding how a final product should function for the customer and end users. Each requirement may be a stand alone feature or several requirements maybe linked to one feature. The issue when gathering software requirements in the contract development process has ambiguous phrases (E.g. ands, ors, ifs or buts). Let’s say for example, that requirements are documented with ambiguous syntax. This means that the language describing a requirement is subject to change depending on the reader. If a requirement needs to be defined to develop a software product for a customer, there cannot be room for error as constraints can be negatively affect the project. If ambiguous syntax cannot be removed from documentation on how to proceed with project can lead to severe issue between internal departments as well as third party vendors.

The utmost concern is that project team members need to understand each other as well as initiatives be aligned in any phases like designing, building and testing. A solution that may benefit an organization or project team is to write clear, unambiguous requirement descriptions. To achieve that solution, I find that creating a glossary at the end of and documentation that is created throughout the project extremely helpful. This way any stakeholder that needs to read a document pertaining to the project they will have clear concise language that is defined.

• Determine the typical items that should be included within a contractual agreement of a software project. Analyze how the inclusion of these items may help avoid risks in future phases of the software project life cycle.

Below is a list of sections that need to be included into the contractual agreement for a software project:

• Scope of Work

• Deliverables

• Budget

• Time & Material (Professional Services)

• Schedule

• Software Specifications (Requirements)

• Logical Design

• The types of roles that will be used to execute the project

• Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) Clause

• Confidentiality Clause

• Applicable Law Clause

Now, we know that contractual agreements could have a grocery list of sections that need to be laid out in detail. The reasons why I chose these topics to focus on are: what is the final product?, what timeline is the project team working with, what will this product look like based upon the requirements and lastly how to protect the intellectual property that is being developed. The way that these topics or items can help project managers avoid risks is by being an accurate information.

CIS554 discussion 2 post responses.

Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:

“Project Planning” Please respond to the following:

• Operational requirements, software specifications, process constraints, and product constraints are all necessary inputs for project planning. Describe how each is used for defining the project planning processes. Provide specific examples to justify your answer.

• Synthesize the project management challenges that may occur without an explicitly written project plan. Summarize how this impacts a project manager’s ability to lead a technology project.

DT’s post states the following:

“Project Planning” Please respond to the following:

• Operational requirements, software specifications, process constraints, and product constraints are all necessary inputs for project planning. Describe how each is used for defining the project planning processes. Provide specific examples to justify your answer.

Requirements elicitation is the process used to determine what users need and what customers expect.  To help define the project planning processes, eliciting operational requirements is very key.  Some widely used techniques to gather operational requirements include introspection (defines what you would need/desire if you were a user of a proposed system), brainstorming, using paper prototypes, observation, using operational walk-throughs and demonstrations. 

Software specifications can also be considered as technical specifications.  During requirements analysis, vague and ambiguous quality requirements from users/customers gets translated into technical specifications that produces objective verification and validation criteria for software systems.  Software specifications can sometimes be confused with operational requirements because they are derived from the operational requirements.   The four kinds that make up these specifications include: 

• primary requirements

• derived requirements

• design goals

• design constraints

Both process and product constraints are constraints that are imposed by the customer.  An example of a process constraint in project planning might be where a software system is required to be delivered in a staged sequence of increasing capabilities, or having a third party verify and validate source code and requirements and design documentation.  An example of a product constraint may require that a software system use a specified version of an operating system for development or have a new or modified system add a SQL interface to an existing database.

• Synthesize the project management challenges that may occur without an explicitly written project plan. Summarize how this impacts a project manager’s ability to lead a technology project.

A project manager is faced with the level of detail not appropriately satisfying effort, schedule, and resources needed for each work activity estimation to be done with confidence if a project plan is not explicitly written.  Also if the plan is poorly written it could also make it tough for key predecessors and successors to be determined and can also make it hard to identify complexities and risk factors.  In the absence of these details, it is almost impossible for a project manager to successfully lead a project.