Project Progress Reports

Use Case: Project Progress Reports

CIS 564.4

University of Phoenix

Use Case: Project Progress Reports

One of the biggest problems with project management is updating, monitoring, and communicating the progress of a project. How often should progress be updated? How often should progress reports be distributed? To whom should the progress reports be distributed? In what form should the progress reports be distributed? What software programs can or should be used? What is the security level of project progress?

As part of developing the need in the initial investigation step in the systems development life cycles (SDLC) process, a constructive method is use case. Use case is a technique for capturing requirements with written scenarios in non-technical terminology that describe how a system interacts with a user or another system (University of Phoenix, Course Syllabus, 2006). There are two fundamental pieces, along with how they relate, to bear in mind: the actors and the goals. The actors are everyone and everything that will use (or be used) by the project progress reports, and the goals, which are what the actors want to achieve. The use case will describe the goals achieved by the actors who perform tasks (Carr & Meehan, 2005).

Use Case Application to Project Progress Reports

Project progress reports allow those bringing about the progress on a project to record what and how much has been accomplished on the project, managers to monitor the progress for decision-making, and those that rely on the status of the projects progress for interrelating tasks, to inform and be informed about the projects progress.

The actors tasks include accomplishing project work, recording and editing project work accomplished, and reviewing project progress for goal accomplishment, along with administrative tasks of controlling permissions for project progress updates and distribution for project progress review. A use case for Generate and Distribute Project Progress Reports will summarize the actors tasks and goals.

Generate and Distribute Project Progress Reports

Use Case Diagram.

Use Case General Description. The process to Generate and Distribute Project Progress Reports requires gathering information on progress of work accomplished, reviewing, analyzing and inputting the information into software by personnel reviewed for permission for input, generating progress reports, review of progress by management, review of distribution recipients of progress reports for security, and receipt of progress reports for review and comparison to the project schedule and goals.

Use Case Actors, Tasks, and Goals.

„П Work accomplished by field personnel according to project schedule

„П Project Engineer gathers what and how much work progress has been accomplished from field engineers and work foreman on a daily basis

„П Project Engineer reviews, analyzes, inputs relevant progress information on a daily basis into scheduling program and into financial software

„П Information technology system personnel periodically reviews input permissions

„П Project Engineer generates Gantt Chart and Goal Comparison reports on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis

„П Project Manager reviews and analyzes Gantt Chart and Goal Comparison reports for adherence to schedule and financial goals on a monthly basis. When necessary, questions and/or revision requests are sent to Project Engineer for verification and/or edit to progress information followed by another review

„П Information technology system personnel periodically review recipients and timing of Gantt Chart and Goal Comparison reports

„П Final Gantt Chart and Goal Comparison reports are distributed to Project Manager on a monthly basis, Project Engineer, Field Superintendent, and Foreman