8) Can recent college graduates expect to be project managers right away? What is a typical career path for a project manager? Using the internet, research the average salary of a PM in South Florida. Is this for an experienced project manager? Which sites (URL) did you use to find average salaries?

I do not believe that a college graduate could be expected to assume the mantle of project manager right out of school. While they may certainly be well versed in the methodologies and tools involved, a recent college graduate would most likely not be equipped to traverse the political landscape of an organization without some hands on experience. Every company, even within the same field, has it's own culture and with every change in culture comes a change in philosophy. Being exposed and adapting to the range of variety is essential in becoming a great project manager. 

In addition to not possessing the ability to adapt to the needs of a particular organization, many companies would require that a candidate hold Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI) before even being considered for the role of project manager. In order to attain PMP certification, several thousand hours of project experience are required. Thus the best route for a recent college graduate is to seek a position as a business analyst or perhaps even a development role in order to gain experience that can then be applied toward PMP certification.

Based on a search on glassdoor.com, the average salary for a project manager in South Florida is $83,615. Salaries reported ranged from $56,000 to $107,000. With that range in mind, it can be inferred that the average salary is not what a fresh project manager should expect. However, when the data is sorted by "Most Reports", we see that the range is just from $82,000 to $96,000. While that does not mean that one can expect to start within that range, it does show that there is true demand for skilled project managers and that, with experience, a project manager can move into an organization with higher pay.

7) Many information technology project managers come from senior technical positions. What can you do to help them transition into a project management role?

Transitioning from a purely technical role to a project manager role cannot be easy. For the most part, it requires a change in focus from whatever part of a project you may typically have worked on to focusing on the overall picture. Having technical experience and expertise is incredibly valuable for a project manager as it will allow them to make better decisions about the direction of a project, but it can also come with some challenges. The biggest challenges would most likely come from the constraints that a project manager has to deal with on a regular basis.

While an informed project manager may have excellent ideas for what a project should be, it is important to take a step back and make sure that everything will fall within the triple constraints of cost, time, and scope. I believe that, at first, a person transitioning from a technical role may have some difficulty in budgeting resources around those constraints. While some interaction with end users and business heads is inevitable in a technical role, many of the discussions that impact how a project can proceed take place without developers being present. As long as the transitioning project manager can accept that sometimes business rules will conflict with what they may view as the most efficient solution for a project, they should be able to handle the duties of a project manager.

6) Either from your own experience or by searching the Internet, describe a well-planned and executed project. Describe a disastrous project. What were some of the main differences between these projects?

A well-planned and executed project as name implies, it combines many key elements, the most important of all is selecting the right Project Manager. This position required the person to be highly qualified to take the lead, and need to be detail oriented, and need to have a good communication and technical skills to deal with team members and stakeholders. In most situations the PM need to be ready when facing a problem, by knowing how and when to negotiate. Finally, in order to have a well-planned and executed project is to have an organized and clear documentation form the start in case if emergency happened.

At the other hand, the disastrous project it turn out to be not a successful project, because of lack of few or many resources. It begins with the poor management, and poor communication with no documentation, no time planning and no rules or standards followed correctly, and most cases with limited financial support.

The difference between the two projects is that the first one by choosing the right resources and imply the right key elements it succeeded. The second one did not verifies and analyses the steps that should have taken prior to start a project. Also did not have the clear scope and objectives of the project.

5) Process Groups - How much time and money is typically spent on projects in each of the process groups. Assume you have one year and $100,000 to spend. Justify your answer

By doing some research online find out that both Closing and Initiating does not consume much time and money. The core of the Process Group is at the Executing and Planning process, those are the foundation if I can say; here is where all the resources are shared together to come up with best result. In addition, we do not put aside the Monitoring process, although has only 9% but still this process is very important to accomplish the mission of the project.

4) Some of the adaptive approaches to developing systems (like agile) are becoming more popular. Are they better or more appropriate than prescriptive approaches in most cases? Why or why not?

Well, it is depend; some customers they might find that the adaptive approaches (like Agile) suit their needs, with non-observance of quality. Example of the phone or Tablet Apps, in few days you find a new app come out and probably after a few days, also you might get tired of it, or deleted it. At the other hand I think the prescriptive approach will last long, because of the effort and concentration put in to the project in order to be efficient even though the cost and time spent to accomplish it is most the time is too high.

3) Briefly describe the strategic planning process; including the SWOT analysis. Which method do you think businesses use most when identifying IT project? Why?

The Strategic Planning Process

Mission and Objectives

Describe the company's vision, as well as the unchangeable standards and purpose of the firm and forward-looking idealistic goals that guide the search of forthcoming opportunities. Led by the business vision, the firm's frontrunners can define measurable financial and strategic objectives. Financial objectives consist of dealings such as sales targets and earnings growth. Strategic objectives are related to the firm's business position, and may consist of measures such as market share and reputation.

Environmental Scan

Consist of the following modules:

• Internal analysis of the firm 
• Analysis of the firm's industry (task environment) 
• External microenvironment (PEST analysis)

The internal analysis can identify the firm's strengths and weaknesses, and the external analysis makes known opportunities and threats. An outline of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is produced by means of a SWOT analysis.

SWOT Analysis

An analysis of the internal and external strategic environment is a vital part of a tactical planning process. Environmental factors internal to the firm regularly can be categorized as strengths (S) or weaknesses (W), and those external to the firm can be categorized as opportunities (O) or threats (T). The SWOT analysis offers information that is helpful in matching the firm's resources and abilities to the competitive setting in which it operates. The following diagrams show how a SWOT analysis fits into an environmental scan:

Environmental Scan           / \            Internal Analysis       External Analysis / \                  / \ Strengths   Weaknesses       Opportunities   Threats | SWOT Matrix

Strategy Formulation

When a clear depiction of the firm and its environment is in hand, explicit strategic alternatives can be established. Even though diverse firms have different alternatives depending on their circumstances, there also exist generic strategies that can be applied across a wide range of firms. Michael Porter; leader of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University, identified cost leadership, differentiation, and focus as three generic strategies that could be considered when outlining strategic alternatives. Porter warned against applying a mixture of these strategies for a set product; rather, he reasoned that only one of the generic strategy alternatives ought to be followed.

Strategy Implementation

The carefully chosen strategy is implemented by means of programs, budgets, and actions. Implementation consists of organization of the firm's resources and enthusiasm of the team to reach goals. The manner in which the strategy is executed can have an important influence on whether it will be successful. In a big company, those who implement the strategy likely will be different individuals from those who formulated it. For this motive, precaution must be taken to communicate the strategy and the reasoning behind it. If not, the implementation might not be successful if the strategy is misunderstood or if lower-level managers resist its implementation because they don’t understand why the precise strategy was designated. The implementation of the strategy must be monitored and modifications made as needed.

Evaluation & Control

Consists of the next steps:

1. Defining parameters to be measured. 
2. Defining target values for those parameters. 
3. Performing measurements. 
4. Comparing measured results to the pre-defined standard. 
5. Making necessary changes. 

I personally believe no single method is good enough on its own. It is all subjected to how acute the project or system is. Nevertheless, I think SWOT is the method businesses use the most because solid relations between strengths and opportunities can propose a good state of the company allowing to use an aggressive strategy. On the other hand a strong communication among weaknesses and threats could be analyzed and potential cautioning and advises used for defensive strategies.

2) Describe the triple constraint. What are the three components and what is the relationship between them.

The Project Management Triangle; also known as Triple Constraint, is a model of the constraints of project management. Traditionally it recognized three main constraints: "Cost", "Time" and "Scope". These constraints construct a triangle with geometric proportions showing the strong codependent liaison amongst these dynamics. It is a graphic utility where the three aspects shown on the corners of the triangle show opposition; if there is the necessity to change any one of these aspects then at least one of the other aspects must also be manipulated, therefore one side of the triangle can’t be changed without affecting the others. It is useful to help with analyzing the goals of a project. It is used to illustrate that project management success is measured by the project team's skills to manage the project, accordingly the expected outcomes are formed while managing time and cost. Furthermore an enhancement of the constraints separates product "quality" or "performance" from scope, and turns quality into a fourth constraint. The time constraint denotes the amount of time available to complete a project. The cost constraint refers to the budgeted amount available for the project. The scope constraint denotes what must be completed to produce the project's finished outcome. As these three constraints are often conflicting constraints like bigger scope naturally means increased time and increased cost, a tight time constraint could mean increased costs and reduced scope, and a constricted budget could mean increased time and reduced scope. The discipline of project management is about providing the tools and the modus operandi that assist the project team (not just the project manager) to bring together their work to meet these constraints.