For a team of its employees to upgrade the firm’s management information system, the term customer take on a broader definition, including not only the project funder (the company’s management) but also other stakeholders, such as the people who will be the end users of the information system. I’ he person managing the project and the project team must successfully accomplish the project objective to satisfy the customer(s).
- Finally, a project involves a degree of uncertainty. Before a project is stared, a plan is prepared based on certain assumptions and estimates. It is important to document these assumption, because they will influence the development of the project budget, schedule, and work scope. A project is based on a unique set of tasks and estimates of how long each task should take, various resources, and estimates of the costs associated with the resources. This combination of assumptions and estimates causes a degree of uncertainty that project objective will be completely accomplished. For example, the project scope may be accomplished by the target date, but the final cost may be much higher than anticipated because of low initial estimates for the cost of certain resources. As the project proceeds, some of the assumption will be refined or replaced with factual information. For example, once the conceptual design of a company’s annual report is finalized, the amount of time and effort needed to complete the detailed design and printing can be better estimated.