By: Mitchell H.Levine.CISA
Audit Serve, Inc.

Following an SDLC methodology has been the primary component used to ensure a systems development project’s success.  Although no one can dispute this conclusion, without a disciplined Project Management approach a systems development will not meet the overall objectives of the project, which includes not delivering requested functionality, coming over budget and not delivering the project within the requested timeframes.

This article will discuss all of the components of Project Management.

Project Plans

There are series of types of project plans which are delivered as art of the overall project which is comprised of various levels of details.  Project Plans are developed knowing that tasks will changes and target dates for delivery and resources assignments will change as the project progresses and a great understanding is obtained of the project requirements.  The worst possible approach would be using a large percentage of the project timeline to the initial establishment of the project plan which will delay the start of specific project initiatives.  If parallel activities of known project initiatives occur, then the extended time devoted to establishing project plans would not be detriment to the project’s ability to meet the stated delivery dates.

A determination needs to be made as to whether there are different project plans being established for different phases of the project which are managed by different individuals based on their level of expertise.  Are there separate project plans for User Acceptance testing, Interface testing, dress rehearsal and cutover (i.e., Go-Live) activities.  Each of the project plans should tie into the master project plan.

One validation which needs to occur is to ensure that the testing tasks included in the project plan do not attempt to be the source for the development and tracking of test conditions to be tested.  Test plans are separate deliverables.

This article will continue in the next issue of Audit Vision