Project Management for the Tax Preparation Software,

Project Management

For the tax preparation software, the status would be yellow. Everything appears to be moving forward properly at this time and there have not been any reasons to get behind or to have overtime on the project. However, there is more to the issue than just what is taking place at the moment. There are concerns that may present themselves in the future, and in order to plan for these properly it is necessary to focus on what could occur based on these concerns. There are two risks that are the most important to consider. These are that it is hurricane season in Florida, where three of the developers are located, and that the one person who decided to take early retirement (and is leaving in a week) is the only person who knows how to work with the IRS to get approval for the final product. All other areas of the project are on or ahead of schedule and the costs for the project are under budget. Despite the fact that most of the project seems to be going well, those two big concerns could really become an issue that could derail everything very rapidly.

Projects involving IT development can be difficult to monitor, especially if the developers are scattered across the country or across the globe (Dinsmore, 2005; Ireland, 2006). Because of that, those who run these types of projects have to ensure that they are keeping up with everything the developers are doing (Ireland, 2006). If they fail to get project updates (that are accurate and truthful) on a reasonably basis and timeline, they can easily miss out on critical information about the project that would need to be conveyed so steps could be taken to correct problems before they became significant issues (Dinsmore, 2005). This is not to imply that developers will lie about where they are in a project, but only to cause the coordinator of a project to consider that underestimation of the time it takes to do something can be a serious concern (Phillips, 2003).

Project management is only successful if the project is actually managed appropriately, and if everyone working on the project is on the "same page" (Nokes, 2007). Without that cohesion, the project can fail even if the manager thought that things were working well (Nokes, 2007). Getting a nasty surprise instead of seeing a project delivered on time has happened to many a project manager who thought that things were going fine but who eventually realized that he or she was being fed inaccurate information from developers (Nokes, 2007). In this case, however, the developers are all ahead of schedule. Even a slight delay would not put them behind on the project, so there are few things that could become a serious concern from a project management standpoint. The main issue that could really become a serious concern is the developer who is leaving. His early retirement is not actually a problem, since the group is ahead of schedule.

What is an issue with this developer, though, is the fact that he is the only person who knows how to get IRS approval for the final project. This could be a serious concern, and if he fails to do this before he retires, he could leave the entire project at a serious disadvantage. There are other people in the world who would be able to get the approval, but the company would have to find and hire one of them, who would then have to be brought up to speed on the project. If that was not possible, the retired developer could potentially be retained in a consultant position until IRS approval was obtained. That could be costly, though, and could actually hold the project hostage for quite a lot of money. While that would be unfortunate, there are no guarantees that it would not take place. This is something that must be carefully considered, and the main focus of making sure the project runs properly should be on that particular developer and whether he has IRS approval yet. Keeping up with that part of the information is vital. All other issues can be handled more easily.

The potential for hurricanes affecting the other developers is worthy of consideration, but it is not as big of a problem as it might appear to be. This is mostly due to the fact that hurricanes provide some warning before they arrive, so the developers could work ahead, back up their information, send it to a central location, or even pack up and evacuate so they would be able to continue working through the storm. There are many options for projects when there is the threat of bad weather or some other act of nature that may delay or suspend that project (Dinsmore, 2005). Keeping those developers working is very important, especially if a hurricane does head their way and do damage so they cannot return to their homes. Extra money may be needed at that time to house the developers somewhere else where they can continue to work on the project, but this is an unlikely scenario. With no hurricanes in the immediate forecast, the concerns over this can remain on the back burner.