CISA Domain 3 – Information Systems Acquisition, Development and Implementation – PART 2

PART 2 – CISA Domain 3 – Information Systems Acquisition, development and implementation

• What is Project Management structure?
• What are the project organizational forms?
• What is Project communication and culture?
• What are the project objectives?
• What is OBS and WBS?

• Project management is a business process in a project-oriented organization
• Some of the most prominent standards and organizations – PRINCE2^TM
• The project management process begins with the project charter and ends with the completion of the project
• Project Charter provides a preliminary delineation of roles and responsibilities, outlines the project objectives, identifies the main stakeholders, and defines the authority of the project manager

Three major forms of organizational alignment for project management are

• Influence project organization –
  • The project manager has only a staff function without formal management authority
  • The project manager is only allowed to advise peers and team members as to which activities should be completed
• Pure project organization –
  • The project manager has formal authority over those taking part in the project
  • providing a special working area for the project team that is separated from their normal office space
• Matrix project organization –
  • Management authority is shared between the project manager and the department heads.

• Project communication can be achieved by:-
  1. One-on-one meetings – One-on-one meetings and a project start workshop help to facilitate two-way communication between the project team members and the project manager
  2. Kick-off meetings – A kick-off meeting may be used by the project manager to inform the team of what has to be done for the project
  3. Project start workshops – communication is open and clear among the project team to use a project start workshop to obtain cooperation from all team members and buy-in from stakeholders. This helps develop a common overview of the project and communicates the project culture early in the project.
  4. A combination of the three
• A project culture is comprised of shared norms, beliefs, values and assumptions of the project team.
• A key success factor for establishing the correct project culture is defining and adapting the unique characteristics of a project

• Project objectives are the specific action statements that support the road map to obtain established project goals.
• A project needs clearly defined results that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely (SMART)
• These objectives are broken down into three –
  • Main objectives are the primary reason for the project and will always be directly coupled with business success.
  • Additional objectives are objectives that are not directly related to the main results of the project but may contribute to project success.
  • Non-objectives are the results that are not to be expected on completion of the project.
• A commonly accepted approach to define project objectives is to start off with an object
  breakdown structure (OBS).
• After the OBS has been compiled or a solution is defined, a work breakdown structure (WBS) is designed to structure all the tasks that are necessary to build up the elements of the OBS during the project

• It represents the individual components of the solution and their relationships to each other in a hierarchical manner, either graphically or in a table.
• An OBS can help, especially when dealing with non-tangible project results such as organizational development, to ensure that a material deliverable is not overlooked.

• WBS is designed to structure all the tasks that are necessary to build up the elements of the OBS during the project.
• The WBS represents the project in terms of manageable and controllable units of work, serves as a central communications tool in the project, and forms the baseline for cost and resource planning.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

AUTHOR
Aswini Srinath ( )
Writer And Editor

“ I am a qualified Chartered Accountant based out of Chennai, with 8+ years of experience in various roles in finance domain including CA Practice, financial reporting and auditing. I have always been keen to challenge myself by exploring potential capabilities outside of my core competency. Picked up Information Security as one such thing. Cleared CISA with 2nd Rank in ISACA Chennai Chapter in 2019. Since then, i have been sharing my learning and experience to a small group of avid followers, helping them prepare for their CISA exams. This article is also one such attempt, where I summarize the key areas in each domain based on the importance and weightage from an exam point of view. “