Can Recent College Graduates Expect to be Project Managers Right Away? What is a Typical Career Path for a Project Manager? Using the Internet, Research the Average Salary of a PM in South Florida. Is This for an Experienced Project Manager? Which Sites (URL) Did You Use to Find Average Salaries?

Recent college graduates should not expect to be a PM, or at least a successful PM, directly after graduation. Project Management is not a job than can be picked up within a month of starting the job. Graduates should instead aspire to get a job as an Assistant PM instead, and that way the graduate has some real world experience under their belt. Companies would rather a hire a person with no formal education, but years of experience than a person who has a degree but no history of actual managing. Expert Judgment, which is using your past experiences to make a decision, is very important for a PM that fresh graduates simply will not have. The average salary in South Florida is 77 thousand dollars per year. (http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/project-manager-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.htm). Many of these jobs are for experienced PMs of at least 24 months.

~LH

Even If a Project Team Was Not Part of Project Selection, Why Is It Important for Them to Know Why Their Project Was Selected?

It is important for all members of a project to know why the project was selected so they know what steps to take for said project. Knowing if the project was selected for the customer, or for the employee, makes a huge difference. If a business is targeting the customer, the look of the product should be smooth, clean, and enjoyable. If the employee is using it, it should be bare bones and blunt, so to be quick to use.It helps motivate the team members to do their jobs in an efficient and needed way.

~LH

Some of the Adaptive Approaches to Developing Systems (Like Agile) Are Becoming Less Popular. Are They Better or More Appropriate Than Prescriptive Approaches in Most Cases? Why or Why Not?

Prescriptive and Agile approaches aren't necessarily better or worse than each other. Rather, each method should be used depending on the type of project that the team is working on. For example, if the project needs to be be finished in a short time, and the overall quality is not that important, an Agile approach might be better. Using an Agile approach means that the team will be in close contact during the entire project and so they will be working on their respective jobs much more intently. A Prescriptive approach, on the contrast, focuses more on the overall quality and the scope of the project, usually sacrificing time and cost for a more complete end product. So in essence, there really is no better or more appropriate choice between the two forms; rather, it depends on the project and the team's preferred method of completing projects.

~LH

Why do you think organizations should develop their own information technology project management methodologies? Why can't they just follow a book or methodology that has already been developed?

The issue with following a project management methodology from a book is that, while it would have many best practices, it also does not take into account the culture of the organization in question.  Every organization is different, with it’s own business rules and traditions, requiring it’s management strategy to adjust based off the organization.  While you can use a book methodology as a basis, you won’t get as efficient management as if at least customized your own methods.

-Matthew Tridento

Process Groups - How much time and money is typically spent on projects in each of the process groups? Assume you have on year and $100,000 to spend. Justify your answer.

Assuming $100,000 budget and 365 days of time

Initiation: $2,000, 7 days

Planning: $21,000, 76 days

Executing: $69,000, 253 days

M&C: $5,000, 18 days

Closing: $3,000, 11 days

Not too much to justify, I’m a fan of the higher planning phase and the shorter execution phase, and this was, literally, the text book breakdown for the alpha process.

-Matthew Tridento

Briefly describe the strategic planning process; include the SWOT analysis. Which method do you think businesses use most when identifying IT project? Why?

The idea behind strategic planning is almost a pre-pre planning stage, just on a higher level.  If the planning phase is discussing a project’s goals, than strategic planning is discussing an organization’s goals, and is similar in many aspects.  A commonly used method in strategic planning is the SWOT process, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  While the exact definition for each step is rather obvious, but it should be noted that the outcome of the SWOT process is a selection of Opportunities, and the knowledge of which can be pursued as projects.

Maybe it’s my fondness for math and numbers, but if you ask me to identify an IT project to pursue from a selection, I’ll go for the one with the best ROI.  For that reason, I’m throwing in my support for the NPV analysis, to get a full financial feasibility analysis and project which project will provide the most objective value.

-Matthew Tridento

Define globalization, outsourcing, and virtual teams and describe how these trends are changing IT project management.

With a rapid spread of a more global civilization and ready access to world spanning communication, Globalization is more and more becoming a fact of everyday life.  Globalization is the phenomenon that has been popping up the past few years of a world-wide interconnected society.  Twitter, facebook, linkedin, these are all applications with one simple goal; ensuring that people worldwide have access to instant communication with one another.  It’s not only shaping how we communicate with each other, but how our society evolves over the coming decades.

Meanwhile, it provides a ready avenue for outsourcing.  Outsourcing allows employers and project managers to acquire labor from outside sources, such as 3rd party companies or contractors in world spanning locations.  With globalization and outsourcing, it’s not out of the question for a project manager in America to get instant updates from a team in New Zealand about the production of the software needed for the next phase of their project.

Globalization also allows more in-depth long distance communication, including face-to-face interaction via video chat software and schedule sharing.  This allows a manager to put together a virtual team, getting the best people for a given job from anywhere in the world and having them work together seamlessly.  Mind you, it does not have it’s downfalls; virtual teams do lack the more personalized and constant interactions that a local team would have.  However, it can be readily argued that a virtual team’s advantages outweigh the disadvantages in many situations.

-Matthew Tridento

Describe the Triple Constraint. What Are the Three Components and What is the Relationship Between Them?

The Triple Constraint is the idea that you have three governing factors in a Project and that you must balance each one to fit a perfect plan. If one of these three things, the Time, Cost, or Scope, need to be increased, then the other two must decrease. It is a delicate balance act that is performed by managers. Time refers to the amount of time and resources you are able to spend on the project. Cost is the amount of money and man power you are willing to use on the project. Scope is how specified the project is, IE are you programming an entire application, or just part of it. As previously stated, if one goes up, usually others go up or down relative to it. So if there is more time spent on the project, the cost will go up due to paying workers. If the scope gets smaller, the cost may go down and time may go down because you are not focusing on all the little thing.

~LH