Planning
The entire information development process must be planned in advance. The creation of information products usually takes place through project-like organized processes. As no two information products are the same, the creation of information products must be planned as a project despite the existence of standard processes for information development.
The trigger for the creation of information is usually the product development process, which is also organized as a project. In this case, the information product development project is a sub-project in the superordinate product development project. In addition, changes to products that have already been introduced or changes to the framework conditions may require the information products to be adapted. In all cases, planning must take into account the necessary resources such as money, personnel and time as well as processes and relevant interfaces, e.g. with suppliers.
The planning includes:
- Product life cycle support
- Planning the creation of information
- Project management
Planning is influenced by information from various sources, e.g. from the environment analysis, but also from internal documents such as product specifications, requirement specifications, functional specifications or empirical values from previous projects. Fundamental content and conceptual specifications are also incorporated into the planning.
The result of the planning phase is a specific schedule and milestone plan for the creation of the information products, which also provides information on capacity, costs and interfaces.
Project management
Project management comprises the organization, implementation and control of the development process of the information product as well as the process steps, work tasks and resources.
This is where the project details are specified and planned. The necessary project management techniques and tools are also described.
The result of the project management shows the scope and effort of the information product creation project and is implemented in the subsequent phases.
- Projects and project features
- Tasks, objectives and necessity of project management
- Tasks and objectives of project communication
- Creation of requirement specifications, functional specifications, other specifications
- Organizational roles in projects, competence requirements for a project manager and the project team
- Project environment analysis and definition
- Task and performance planning
- Effort estimation and resource planning
- Cost planning
- Definition of project key figures
- Planning the collection of project key figures
- Project risk planning
- Project documentation
- Process, schedule and resource planning
- Tasks, methods and procedures of project controlling
- Evaluation and prioritization
- Identification and management of critical paths
- Time management in projects and typical "time wasters"
- Measures in the event of deviations from plan
- Task and activity coordination and information management within the project and with the project environment
- Project communication
- Methods of change management
- Risk management methods
- Methods of interface and supply management
- Collection and evaluation of defined project key figures
- Target/actual analysis
- Creation of status reports
- Project presentation (e.g. in the steering committee and externally)
- Project management models (e.g. waterfall model, agile models, V-model)
- Techniques for project management (e.g. Gantt chart)
- Requirements for a project management tool
- Tools for project management (e.g. MS Excel®, MS Project®, Mindjet MindManager®)