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Note: The
SEM Guidelines "Project Initiation"
cover both the actual project initiation to SEM and the
check of the tender. This checklist has been based very
substantially on these Guidelines, but deals with the
various aspects of the Initiation phase in greater
detail. Five key areas are distinguished:
- Task definition
- Feasibility
- Available experience
- Determination of effort and costs
- Project management
- and risk determination in
the narrower sense.
Task definition
- Can the salient features of the required product
be identified from the preliminary requirements
and the analysis of these requirements?
- Can the scope of the task be restricted?
- How complex is the task?
- Do the existing documents provide a basis for
drawing up a software requirements specification
or a tender?
Feasibility
- Has the task been broken down into work packages?
- Has rough effort planning been conducted?
- Has rough deadline planning been conducted?
- Has the planned solution been tested on a
technical level?
- Will sufficient personnel be available at the
right times?
Available experience
- Is the necessary expertise available for
analyzing the requirements (domain know-how,
analysts)?
- Do personnel have experience of the planned
hardware / operating system environment?
- Do personnel have experience of the planned
system architecture and software platform
(client/server, DB, real time, etc.)?
- Do personnel have experience of the planned
methods (analysis and design, OO, programming
language, GUI, etc.)?
- Do personnel have experience of tools (CASE, CM,
test tools, etc.)?
- Does the envisaged project manager already have
experience of managing similar projects?
- Can missing know-how be acquired in good time
through training?
Determination of effort and costs
- Has the effort estimation been conducted and
documented using an approved method?
- Has effort for project management and CM been
taken into account explicitly?
- Has effort for QA (reviews, tests) been taken
into account explicitly?
- Has effort for building up know-how been taken
into account explicitly?
- Have travel costs been taken into account
explicitly?
- Has the estimation of the effort been influenced
by pricing and deadline specifications?
- Have costs for the necessary software tools and
hardware been taken into account?
- Have costs for the acceptance procedure been
taken into account?
- Have costs for warranty, operations support etc.
been taken into account?
- Have risk factors for costing been taken into
account explicitly?
Project management
- Has a project manager been defined?
- Was the project manager involved in initiating
the project?
- Can tried and tested solutions be used for
planning and CM?
Risk determination
- Do critical requirements exist and where are
these to be found (deadlines, functions,
performance, standards, etc.)?
- If the project is being executed in conjunction
with partners, has the type of cooperation
and
responsibility been planned / defined exactly?
Are the partners already known?
- If outsourcing is being used, do any risks exist
as regards compliance with deadlines or quality
(e.g. unknown suppliers); does this have any
serious consequences for the project?
- Can the project be handled at several locations?
What problems could arise as a result?
- Is the system relevant in terms of safety and
security; can errors in operation have serious
consequences?
- What is the situation as regards warranties and
liabilities as well as other high-level
commercial and technical risks?
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