Project Management For the tax preparation software, the status would be yellow. Everything appears to be moving forward properly at this time and there have not been any reasons to get behind or to have overtime on the project. However, there is more to the issue than just what is taking place at the moment. There are concerns that may present themselves in the future, and in order to plan for these properly it is necessary to focus on what could occur based on these concerns. There are two risks that are the most important to consider. These are that it is hurricane season in Florida, where three of the developers are located, and that the one person who decided to take early retirement (and is leaving in a week) is the only person who knows how to work with the IRS to get approval for the final product. All other areas of the project are on or ahead of schedule and the costs for the project are under budget. Despite the fact that most of the project seems to be going well, those two big concerns could really become an issue that could derail everything very rapidly.

Projects involving IT development can be difficult to monitor, especially if the developers are scattered across the country or across the globe (Dinsmore, 2005; Ireland, 2006). Because of that, those who run these types of projects have to ensure that they are keeping up with everything the developers are doing (Ireland, 2006). If they fail to get project updates (that are accurate and truthful) on a reasonably basis and timeline, they can...

This is not to imply that developers will lie about where they are in a project, but only to cause the coordinator of a project to consider that underestimation of the time it takes to do something can be a serious concern (Phillips, 2003).
Project management is only successful if the project is actually managed appropriately, and if everyone working on the project is on the "same page" (Nokes, 2007). Without that cohesion, the project can fail even if the manager thought that things were working well (Nokes, 2007). Getting a nasty surprise instead of seeing a project delivered on time has happened to many a project manager who thought that things were going fine but who eventually realized that he or she was being fed inaccurate information from developers (Nokes, 2007). In this case, however, the developers are all ahead of schedule. Even a slight delay would not put them behind on the project, so there are few things that could become a serious concern from a project management standpoint. The main issue that could really become a serious concern is the developer who is leaving. His early retirement is not actually a problem, since the group is ahead of schedule.

What is an issue with this developer, though, is the fact that he is the only person who knows how to get IRS approval for the final project.…