Incorporating Policies, Procedures, and Regulations

Safety nets ensure that the work environment is secure. Human resource practices work as a safety net to ensure that the employment practices you use in forming a project team are above board.

You can ensure that the integrity of your project is beyond reproach by following the policies and guidelines set by your company, your industry, and the government.

Organizations have a variety of policies, procedures, and regulations that help the project management team with various aspects of organizational planning. These human resource practices give guidance on planning team benefits, incorporating company initiatives, and following government stipulations.

The sources of influence which govern employment practices can be divided into internal sources and external sources. Internal sources are policies set forth by the organization. External sources are decisions made outside of the company which affect company policy. Together, these internal and external sources make up the policies, procedures, and regulations governing your project.

• Company policies - include information addressing issues like vacation time, maternity leave, sick leave, and medical benefits.
• Regulations - deal with safety standards, minimum wage laws, and hiring discrimination.
• Procedures - vary from company to company. Your company chooses procedures based on what works best in its industry and what has proven to provide a sense of continuity and balance.

Corporate policies and procedures are at the discretion of individual companies. These are based on what each company deems fair and what it finds produces the most productive and loyal employees. On the other hand, the laws set forth by government are unwavering standards which must be met by each and every company. While project managers should abide by the human resource practices of the organizations in which they work, the laws set by government are binding and aren't optional.

The government has placed regulations upon different industries for the benefit of the public, as well as for those who work in these industries. The regulations differ for each industry, and you should become aware of how they affect your project.

Complying with company policies, regulations, and procedures will help to ensure project success. As you build and develop your project team, remember to:

• follow organizational procedures when assigning new jobs
• ensure the same level of project information gets to all team members
• provide similar training for all team members
• ensure senior management approves any guarantee made to an employee about future roles or positions
• inform team members why they were selected.

Company policies, regulations, and procedures are the safety nets that guide you to make sound decisions when it comes to planning the human resource aspect of your project. When you follow your company's human resource practices you stand a better chance of keeping your team members happy, the government satisfied, and your organization running smoothly.

Elements of a Project Information Plan

In the IT project life cycle, outputs of one phase become the inputs to the next phase in the cycle. Since planning is the first phase conducted, where does the project team get its information to conduct the key planning activities?

The project team's information comes from the information plan. The information plan is an input to the planning phase and is obtained from the management team and the client.

The information plan provides a high-level description of the project's information systems and related business objectives. This plan is always the first document created for a project. Every information plan should contain a brief overview, as well as the following five sections.

1. Needs analysis
The needs analysis is a set of procedures undertaken to set priorities and make decisions about a product, based on the client's request. To conduct a needs analysis, the project manager (PM) interviews the client and reviews the project's schedule, resources, and budget to obtain information. During the information gathering process, the PM should follow the steps listed below.

• Identify the business need. The PM restates the project request to make sure it is clear and asks why the client wants to invest in a product. Three of the most common needs are to generate revenue, reduce expenses, or comply with regulations. The PM then asks for a tangible goal that will result from satisfying the need.
• Identify the gap. The gap is the difference between the client's current state and the desired state of technology that the project's product will help the client to achieve. The PM must ask the client what the current state of affairs is and what the client ultimately expects from the final product.
• Identify the tasks involved. With the help of the client, the PM identifies what tasks the end users will perform when using the final product.
• Identify the user groups. The PM asks the client who the intended users of the proposed product are. The PM also needs to obtain from the client a description of any user trait that might affect how the product is developed.
• Identify any project constraints. Finally, the PM should identify any constraints. A constraint is anything that could potentially limit the success of the project.
  

If you have followed all of these steps to gather information, you should have the information you need to create the needs analysis section of the information plan for your client's project.

2. Project goals
The next section of the information plan, goals, contains two parts. First, it states the business objective and explains how the product will contribute to revenue, contain expenses, or comply with regulations. This information is obtained from the needs analysis section. The second part outlines product evaluation and explains how the customer can determine if the final product has achieved its goal.

3. Form of the product
The form of the product describes the medium you will use to deliver the product and the reason you chose that medium. You will have to choose the medium that best fits your product and that most efficiently distributes the information to the intended users. The available choices include mediums such as:

• CD-ROM software packages
• networks
• network-installed applications
• downloadable Web packages.
  

4. Product function
The next section, function of the product, briefly describes what the product will do for the company or the reason why the product was created.

5. Quality guidelines
The fifth section, quality guidelines, outlines the standards that the product must meet to be accepted by management and the client. A project usually has two types of guidelines.

• Product guidelines affect production and the product's appearance. These guidelines cover such areas as programming languages and templates to be used, grammar standards, and a viewing platform for the final product.
• Project guidelines affect time, money, and resources needed to complete the project, such as schedules or budgets.
  

Remember, the information plan is created during the project conception and is used as an input to the planning phase. It will provide the reasoning behind the design choices the project team will make. Without a complete information plan, the PM will not have the necessary information to achieve the project plan sign-off milestone that must be met to complete the planning phase and begin the analysis phase of the project.