Which document should list and describe all of the deliverables required for the project?

Project Management

Project management provides direction, monitoring, and control of all project personnel, including the customer. This is a valuable addition to the overall project in maintaining timely project communications and reporting and avoiding scope creep. Here we discuss the various activities and tasks required to manage a project, with more on how to manage the project in Chapter 10.

Project management maintains project communication among all parties, enforcing documentation and procedural standards for the project and requiring that players actively participate in project status meetings (in person, online, and teleconferences); preparing, presenting, and submitting status reports, and reviewing and administering the project change control process. If the project is out of scope, it’s up to the project manager to let everyone know and present ideas for how that can be handled.

Successful DVS project managers will review the SOW and associated documents and even if they do not understand the technology and/or meaning, they can decipher the activities and tasks, along with the associated hours and working with the technical engineers to coordinate and manage the technical activities. The project manager should track and monitor delivery of equipment, review inventory, and establish and maintain communication with vendors, suppliers, subcontractors, and technical engineers.

The project manager also takes ownership of the project plan, measuring, tracking, resolving deviations, and evaluating progress against the schedule presented in the SOW and the initial project plan developed during the initiation of the project. At what is sometimes referred to as kick-off meeting, the project manager will introduce the project participants, reviewing project team roles and responsibilities along with the project objectives and methodology. A primary action item for this meeting is the development of a project plan, with the proposed schedule for individual activities and tasks based on responsibilities laid out in the SOW (usually included in some form of an implementation plan), with any milestones and dependencies, security and safety procedures, and security clearances.

An architectural review of the design will be carried out with any limitations and conclusions, inviting and confirming attendance of all intended participants, including various decision-making levels in the security, information technology, and operations management areas.

This is an ongoing activity until project implementation is completed, at which point the project manager leads project closure.

Digital Camera

The site survey typically becomes a document deliverable and as such it requires details on the findings and recommendations. Thanks to digital photography, recording area of coverage, obstacles, discoveries, and specific camera installation locations is fast, cheap, and easy. A single photograph of an obstruction is worth a thousand words of description. Always bring a digital camera whenever doing a site survey.

Digital Camera Power

There you are with your customer, walking the area of coverage where he points out those unique areas that he needs monitored to improve the security and safety of the facility(s). These are very select locations and there are many. Good thing you have your digital camera to record these nuances in the customer's system requirements, but alas, upon pulling out your fancy digital pocket camera, you discover the rechargeable battery is dead. This is why I always carry a spare high-quality digital pocket camera that uses AA batteries and extra batteries.

Digital Camera

The site survey typically becomes a document deliverable and as such, it requires details on the findings and recommendations. Thanks to digital photography, photographically recording area-of-coverage, obstacles, discoveries, and specific camera installation locations is fast, cheap, and easy. A single photograph of an obstruction includes the thousand words of description an image can provide. Always bring a digital camera whenever you’re doing a site survey. It also helps to write notes that cross-reference your photos, to refresh your memory later.

DIGITAL CAMERA POWER

There you are, with your customer, walking the area of coverage where she points out those unique areas that she needs monitored to improve the security and safety of the facility(s). These are very select locations, and they are many. Good thing you have your digital camera to record these nuances in the customer’s system requirements, but alas, upon pulling out your fancy digital pocket camera, you discover that the rechargeable battery is dead.

This is why I always carry a spare high-quality digital pocket camera that uses AA batteries and carry extra batteries with me. I went through two sets of AAs in Dallas just this week.

Project Documentation Deliverables

Status reports are part of the project’s document deliverables. Documentation is an essential part of any project and becomes even more important the more complex the project. Unfortunately, I’ve been thrown into integration situations where there were no documents, diagrams, as-builts, or even manuals for the existing equipment. I had to assume this was a scheduling (budgetary) issue and not a purposeful attempt to conceal information. At that point, reverse engineering was the only means of understanding how the proprietary system worked and whether there was any integration potential.

I believe (and it’s not because I’m an author) that document deliverables are important to all projects for the simple fact that they show the customer all the work that was accomplished for their money. Rarely will there be a customer representative watching each stage or task of the project. Document deliverables record many of those monumental obstacles that were cleared and the numerous decisions, workarounds, and typical issues that are part of any system implementation. There isn’t that much time available for someone who already faces a day full of regular duties and responsibilities to communicate every little decision. The document deliverables show customers that they are getting their money’s worth.

The types of document deliverables vary dramatically and are solely based on the specific requirements of the implementation, but it is best practice to leave (at the very least) a “cheat sheet” of how to use the VMS software. This way, anyone, new or old, can learn how to use the very basic features of the DVS system (if they’re authorized).

Table 10.5 provides an overview of the types of documents that may be required as deliverables, depending on the organization and size of the project.

Table 10.5. Project Documentation and Descriptions

Table 10.6 shows several actual documents produced for a number of DVS projects, their descriptions, inputs, and the tools used to create the documents. The use of these documents as part of a DVS implementation is entirely based on the requirements and size of the installation. The larger the size of the install, the more project management will be required to control and monitor the progress.

Table 10.6. Project Document Deliverables

Example Tables for Document Deliverables

Below are examples of tables that can be used to track document deliverables.

Revision STATUS

A revision status block should be provided for all submitted documents including maps, diagrams, floor plans, and conduit pathway plans. The revision block should identify the revision number/letter, date of revision, a description of the change, the creator of the document, and the person adding the revision change.

3.5 Deliverables

3 Adaptive Trust-Based Model

In this section, we define an adaptive trust-based model that measures the level of confidence (or trust level) of the learner. The measurement is performed by analyzing evidences collected from the learner through different activities and interactions. Such trust level is basically represented as a score, dynamically updated according to the collected evidences during the period of time the learner is in the university.

Evidences stem from analyzing the behavior of the learner during his or her studies. The security mechanisms placed in the VLE, in the assessment activities, and in the FEs provide automatic evidences to update the trust score. Note that, not all evidences come from automatic systems. Instructors could also provide manual evidences from his interaction with the learners.

The model cannot be applied in a straightforward manner throughout a program. The assessment activities and the FEs of individual subjects should be globally designed to deploy different security mechanisms, from on-site face-to-face to fully virtual activities, throughout the program. Each activity may have multiple designs and each design may deploy a different set of security mechanisms. Note that, this adaptation of an activity to multiple designs may be difficult, and one fundamental objective is that the evaluated knowledge and competences should be equivalent for all designs. These designs will be triggered depending on the current trust score of a learner. For instance, an activity may be evaluated using an interview for learners with a low trust score, but just as a deliverable document for learners with a higher trust score.

Fig. 2.1 shows the flow of the model on an assessment activity. During the pre-process activity phase, the score dynamically decides which design of the activity should be performed by the learner based on the security mechanisms that need to be raised depending on the trust level of the learner.

At the end of each activity, during the post-process activity phase, each security mechanism outputs different evidences. In the most common scenario, the system cannot definitely decide that an infraction has happened. Often, automated security mechanisms can only provide a probability of infraction depending on the collected data. This probability depends on the learner's actions, since some of them might be flagged as suspicious, but with reasonable doubt. The final probability is used to calculate a partial trust score, which will impact the learner's global score. On the other hand, it is possible that the mechanism detects an infraction beyond any reasonable doubt. In this scenario, there is no partial trust score. A penalty is inflicted on the learner and his global trust score is automatically lowered to 0. Collected evidences are used to justify the penalty to the learner.

Fig. 2.2 illustrates an example of the model behavior through a program. Let us assume a learner starts a program under this model. Therefore, assessment activities have been designed including a broad set of different security mechanisms. The chart shows the evolution of the trust score through different semesters where the Y-axis denotes the learner's global score and the X-axis denotes the semesters. We can observe that each semester has different assessment activities (represented by a dot).

When a learner starts the program, the score is set to 0. There is no evidence of confidence. Therefore, the learner should demonstrate through his behavior that the institution can trust him. The subjects of the first semester set up the trust score and the selected security mechanisms through the design of the activities will tend to be strict, that is, an on-site FE or interviews. Given the partial activity scores, at some point, the score could increase. In this case, other types of mechanisms may be used for new activities (see fourth semester in Fig. 2.2), adapting the assessment activities to the learner's behavior.

Note that, the objective of this model is not to penalize learners with a low level of confidence, but rather to benefit learners with higher levels. The designs defined as hard are the default assessment activities in a program without this model. If a learner does not demonstrate any evidence of trust, the standard process of evaluation is followed, whereas a learner with a higher level benefits from other less exhaustive evaluation activities. Based on this idea, this model needs constant information to maintain the score, that is, the score decreases on semesters where the learner is not enrolled in any course (see fifth and sixth semester in Fig 2.2).