Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

• Analyze and reflect on factors that commonly lead to the success or failure of a project

Scenario

You have reached the end of Release One of the XYZ Business Workflow  project, and your team has faced some challenges during the development  process.

One software tester and one developer from your team resigned. You  found replacements for both of them. But, the new developer had to be  trained by one of your other team members. This affected the team’s  productivity.

Also, during one of your status meetings with the client  stakeholders, their product owner requested a change in a feature that  was almost complete. They were also very resistant to give any  additional time for the first release. As a result, you had to add extra  hours to your development time.

To accommodate these changes, your team worked extra hours and even  some weekends to complete the project. Finally, you managed to deliver  the first release according to schedule.

Although the release goes fairly smoothly, after a few days, the  customer reports that their users are facing some issues with the  software. They also have a list of changes and two new features they  would like to see in the software before your final rollout in Release  Two.

Directions

Analysis and Recommendations
Your executive team  has asked you to prepare a report summarizing your analysis of the first  release of the XYZ Business Workflow software and recommendations for  how you think Release Two of the project should be planned.

Think about the project charter, the initial project plan you created  in Project One, and the challenges the project team has faced so far.  What steps did you take to manage these challenges? In retrospect, can  you think of some other strategies you could have used during project  planning and/or risk mitigation for better results? Specifically, your  report should include the following:

1. Reflect on the project so far and provide your analysis of what went well and what could have been better.
    
   1. Outline what you think were the successes and failures of the project.
   2. Identify major challenges your team faced in completing this project and describe how you handled them.
   3. List some alternate strategies you could have used during project planning and/or during risk mitigation for better results.
2. Based on your experience with Release One, provide some  recommendations for managing the second release of the XYZ Business  Workflow software, including the methodology, change management, and  quality control strategies.

Use information from the scenario, Project One and Project Two, and  make reasonable assumptions as you complete these tasks. Be sure to  explain your assumptions.

What to Submit

To complete this project, you must submit the following:

Project Analysis Recommendations
Write a short  paper with your analysis of the first phase of the software development  project and your recommendations for the second phase. Your paper should  be 750 to 1,250 words in length; cite any references using the APA  format.