Mobile App Development Project Management for Marketing Firm

Question

Task: The Project is meant to help you apply what you learn in the course to a project that you will evaluate. You should identify a case project. You should choose any professional project (not personal, like planning a wedding) to study. This project may be at your current place of work, but it cannot be one where the company already has PM documents developed (this relies on your academic integrity).

Answer

Introduction
Mobile app development project management is an important discipline that provides the guidelines on the effective management of the project tasks and activities. There are several areas that come under the domain of project management. Two of the most important areas are quality and stakeholder management. The end-users, that is, the customers associated with the project along with the project stakeholders have certain expectations from the project. It is essential that the handling of the project activities is done in a significant manner to achieve the improved quality. Similarly, there are internal and external stakeholders that are associated with the mobile app development project management and these needs to be managed in an effective manner.

Project Case Background
The report is prepared for the mobile app development project management in which a mobile app has to be developed for a marketing firm. The mobile app will enable the firm to get engaged with its customers directly and will also assist in the real-time customer interactions. The employees will interact with the customers through the mobile app and the marketing services and solutions provided by the organization will also be displayed on the app. The mobile app will also have the feedback option that the customers will be able to use to provide their comments and feedback on the project progress.

Quality Management Plan
The quality of the mobile app that is being developed will be extremely crucial. This is because the inability to maintain the quality aspects will result in the deterioration of the customer trust and engagement. It will be essential that the quality is maintained in all the aspects associated with the mobile app (Shah, Shamail and Ahmad Akhtar, 2015).

Scope
The scope of quality management in the mobile app development project management will include the coverage of quality handling and management throughout the lifecycle of the project. The scope will include quality management since the beginning of the project and it will go on till the closure stage.

Methodology
The use of the PMBoK methodology will be done for the management of the quality of the mobile app. There will be four major phases that will be involved in the quality management and these will include the planning, control, assurance, and continuous improvement of the quality of the mobile app.

Quality Planning
This will be the first phase and it will include the determination of the resources that will be needed for managing the quality of the mobile app. The resource will be assigned with the responsibilities and the estimates for the quality management processes will also be determined in this stage (Janicijevic et al., 2015).

Quality Control
The mobile app will be developed for the customer and it will be necessary that the quality of the mobile app is always maintained. There will be testing processes that will be conducted on the mobile app and these will make sure that the quality is controlled. The testing processes that will be executed will include the regression testing, system testing, performance testing, security testing, and integration testing for the mobile app (Poth and Sunyaev, 2015). The testing tools will be used for these activities and it will include Selenium, Test Link, and Bugzilla. The load balancing tools will be used as well.

Quality Assurance
The quality assurance activities will also be carried out on the mobile app to make sure that the functional and non-functional requirements are met. The assurance activities will include the technical inspections and walkthroughs of the application code. There will be formal reviews and audit processes that will also be conducted to ensure that the quality of the software is maintained.

Continuous Improvement
There will be too many changes determined in terms of the quality of mobile app development project management and these will be continually improved. This phase will go on throughout the lifecycle of the application development process (Shah, Shamail and Ahmad Akhtar, 2015).

Quality Management - Resources
It will be necessary that the resources that carry out the quality management processes and activities are effectively determined. The skills and the allocation of the resources will be essential to ensure that the effective quality management can be carried out.

• Quality Manager: The accountability of the quality management processes and activities will be on the quality manager.
• Quality Advisor: The resource will carry out the review and audit processes on the mobile app.
• Quality Analyst: The test management plan will be developed by the resource along with the development of the test scenarios
• Quality Engineers & Associates: The resources will develop and execute the test cases and will report the defects for the test cases that fail in the quality management process during mobile app development project management.

Quality Metrics
Number of Bugs/Defect Rate
The mobile app that is being developed will be tested to determine the bugs in the software. These bugs will be logged in the system using the Bugzilla tool and there will be a unique ID that will be allotted to each bug.

The number of bugs determined for a specified period of time will be determined and these will be used to calculate the defect rate. This shall be low to signify good quality of the mobile app (Tjortjis, 2019).

Change Failure Percentage
The development of the mobile app will be done using the agile methodology. The methodology will be flexible in terms of the changes and will make sure that the changes are accepted if they are valid for the mobile app. These changes will be allotted to the mobile app development project management team and it will be their responsibility to make the changes in the app accordingly.

There may be certain changes that may not go through properly and may fail. The percentage of these failed changes will be determined and it will signify the status of the overall app quality.

Test Coverage Ratio
It will not be possible to cover the entire mobile app and all the possible scenarios while testing the app. This is because some of the scenarios may not be covered or there may be new scenarios that may emerge. The test coverage ration; however, shall be high to ensure that all the project or software areas are tested to have improved quality.

Cycle Time
The mobile app development project management will be performed using the agile methodology and the development and deployment will occur in sprint (Winkler and Biffl, 2015). This timeframe will be referred as the cycle time and it is depicted in the figure below.

The difference between the lead time and cycle time will be determined to understand the status of the mobile app development project management and the app quality.

Schedule & Cost Variance
The use of the schedule and cost variance will be done as the quality metrics and it will be calculated through the earned value analysis technique. The variance will be determined on the basis of the estimated value and the actual value.

The schedule and cost performance index will be calculated in the same manner and it will provide the ability to make sure that the mobile app development project management process is not off track.

Stakeholder Management Plan
There will be several stakeholders that will be involved in the mobile app development project management. It will be essential that the management and handling of all the stakeholders is effectively done so that the project outcomes are properly managed (Boesso and Kumar, 2016).

Internal & External Stakeholders
The determination of the project stakeholders is done on the basis of the project analysis and the use of the business case and observation results. The details of the stakeholders that are associated with the project are included below. The internal project stakeholders are:

• Project Manager: The mobile app development project is being managed by the Project Manager and the overall management along with the internal sign-offs are provided by the Manager.
• Project Resources: The execution of the mobile app project activities is done by the resources allotted to the project (Missonier and Loufrani-Fedida, 2015).

The external stakeholders that are associated with the mobile app development project management are:

• Project Client: The marketing firm is the client of the project that has provided the project to get the app developed.
• Customers: The customers of the marketing firm are the ones that will use the mobile app and the functionalities and features will be included as per their requirement.
• Suppliers: The third-party vendors will provide the necessary tools and equipment for the mobile app development.
• Employees: The employees of the marketing firm will also be the users of the mobile app that is being developed (Rosslyn-Smith and Pretorius, 2015).

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Map
The Power-Interest map has been developed for the stakeholders on the basis of the stakeholder analysis that is conducted.

Stakeholder Communications
It will be necessary that the communications among the stakeholders are effectively conducted and the determination of the modes of communication shall be done in advance. The mobile app development project management is critical as the project client will provide significant revenues only when the project is successfully delivered.

Conflict Management Plan
There will be several resources and a number of stakeholders that will be involved in the mobile app development project management. It is certain that the resources and the stakeholders may get engaged in some forms of the conflicts regarding the professional activities. These could be due to the variations in the perspective as there will be a great degree of diversity that will be involved in the project. The conflicts may also emerge as a result of lack of communication (Yazici, 2018). It will be necessary that the communication gaps are avoided throughout the mobile app development project management lifecycle.

Strategies and Mechanisms
There will be certain strategies that will be used for the management and resolution of the project conflicts.

The primary strategy that will be used will be collaboration. As per this strategy, the conflicts in the mobile app development project management will be listed down and these will be discussed in the daily stand-up meetings in the project. The Project Manager will listen to these conflicts and the viewpoints of the resources and the stakeholders (if any) in the conflict (Speakman and Ryals, 2015). The Project Manager will then make a decision on the majority basis and the consensus will be achieved.

The conflict management will be done with the purpose of maintaining the project continuity at all times.

Conclusion
The quality and stakeholder management are the two very important aspects of the overall mobile app development project management. It will be necessary that the handling of these aspects is effectively done and these need to be in sync with the project processes. The two plans that have been developed shall be followed in the project so that the management of the quality and the stakeholders can be done in an effective way. These project areas shall be synced with the rest of the mobile app development project management activities.

References
Boesso, G. and Kumar, K. (2016). Examining the association between stakeholder culture, stakeholder salience and stakeholder engagement activities. Management Decision, 54(4), pp.815–831.

Janicijevic, I., Krsmanovic, M., Zivkovic, N. and Lazarevic, S. (2015). Software quality improvement: a model based on managing factors impacting software quality. Mobile app development project management Software Quality Journal, 24(2), pp.247–270.

Missonier, S. and Loufrani-Fedida, S. (2015). Stakeholder analysis and engagement in projects: From stakeholder relational perspective to stakeholder relational ontology. International Journal of Project Management, 32(7), pp.1108–1122.

Poth, A. and Sunyaev, A. (2015). Effective Quality Management: Value- and Risk-Based Software Quality Management. IEEE Software, 31(6), pp.79–85.

Rosslyn-Smith, W. and Pretorius, M. (2015). Stakeholder expectations of the Business Rescue Plan from a South African perspective. The Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, 7(1), p.1.

Shah, F.T., Shamail, S. and Ahmad Akhtar, N. (2015). Lean quality improvement model for quality practices in software industry in Pakistan. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 27(4), pp.237–254.

Speakman, J. and Ryals, L. (2015). A re?evaluation of conflict theory for the management of multiple, simultaneous conflict episodes. International Journal of Conflict Management, 21(2), pp.186–201.

Tjortjis, C. (2019). Mining Association Rules from Code (MARC) to support legacy software management. Software Quality Journal.

Winkler, D. and Biffl, S. (2015). Guest editorial: special section on software quality assurance and quality management. Mobile app development project management Software Quality Journal, 22(3), pp.467–468.

Yazici, E. (2018). Transborder identities, bias, and third-party conflict management. Conflict Management and Peace Science, p.073889421880081.