Software Project Management

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What is a Project?

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

Temporary endeavor.
• Definite beginning and a definite end.
• A product that can be either a component of an item, an enhancement or correction to an item.
• A service or a capability to perform a service (e.g., a business function that supports production.
or distribution)
• A result, such as research results or documents.

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What is it?

Project management involves the planning, monitoring, and control

of the people, process, and events that occur as software evolves
from a preliminary concept to full operational deployment.

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Who does it?
Scope of management activities varies among people involved in a software
project.
A software engineer manages day-to-day activities, planning, monitoring, and
controlling technical tasks.
Project managers plan, monitor, and control the work of a team of software
engineers.
Senior managers coordinate the interface between the business and software
professionals.

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Why is it important?
Building computer software is a complex process
- many people working over a relatively long time. That’s why software projects
need to be managed.
What is the work product?
A project plan is produced as management activities commence.
◦ The plan defines the process and tasks to be conducted.
◦ The people who will do the work, and the mechanisms for assessing risks,
controlling change, and evaluating quality.

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The Management Spectrum
Effective software project management focuses on the four P’s:
people, product, process, and project.

◦ People — the most important element of a successful project.

◦ Product — the software to be built.
◦ Process — the set of framework activities and software engineering tasks to
get the job done.
◦ Project — all work required to make the product a reality.

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Stakeholders are people too
What Is a Stakeholder?
A stakeholder is either an individual, group, or organization that’s impacted by the outcome of a project or a
business venture.
Stakeholders have an interest in the success of the project and can be within or outside the organization that’s
sponsoring the project.
Types
1. Internal Stakeholders
are within the organization. The project directly impacts them as they serve and are employed by the organization
managing it. Internal stakeholders can include employees, owners, the board of directors, project managers,
investors, and more.
2. External stakeholders
are outside of the organization and are indirectly impacted by the project. These people can be suppliers,
customers, creditors, clients, intermediaries, competitors, society, government, and more

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Stakeholders are people too
Senior managers who define the business issues that often have significant
influence on the project.
Project (technical) managers who must plan, motivate, organize, and control the
practitioners who do software work.
Practitioners who deliver the technical skills that are necessary to engineer a
product or application.
Customers who specify the requirements for the software to be engineered and
other stakeholders who have a peripheral interest in the outcome.
End-users who interact with the software once it is released for production use.

Your job is to organize and bring value from these people

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Team Leaders
Project management is a people-intensive activity. Jerry Weinberg [Wei86] suggests an
MOI model of leadership:
The MOI Model
◦ Motivation. The ability to encourage (by “push or pull”) technical people to produce
to their best ability.
◦ Organization. The ability to mold existing processes (or invent new ones) that will
enable the initial concept to be translated into a final product.
◦ Ideas or innovation. The ability to encourage people to create and feel creative even
when they must work within bounds established for a particular software product or
application.

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Job as a manager
A project manager is a professional who leads a team through the project life cycle by planning,
budgeting, scheduling, and tracking a project plan.
Responsibilities
Plan and implement projects
Help define project scope, goals, and deliverables
Define tasks and required resources
Collect and manage project team
Manage the project budget
Allocate project resources
Create a project schedule and timeline

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Job as a manager
Responsibilities
Support and direct team
Lead quality assurance
Report on the project status
Present to stakeholders reports on progress as well as problems and solutions
Implement and manage changes when necessary to meet project deliverables
Evaluate and assess the result of the project

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Project Planning
Project planning involves breaking down the work into parts and assigning these
to project team members.
The project plan, which is created at the start of a project, is used to
communicate how the work will be done to the project team and customers, and
to help assess progress on the project.

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Project Planning - Stages
• At the proposal stage - bidding for a contract to develop or provide a software
system.
A major principle of project planning is to plan an outline first and then in more detail as the
time to carry out an activity approaches.

• During the project startup phase, when you have to plan who will work on the
project, how the project will be broken down into increments, how resources
will be allocated across your company, etc.
• Periodically throughout the project - modify plan in the light of experience
gained and information from monitoring the progress of the work.

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Project Plan

• A project plan, also known as the project management plan, is the document
that describes how the project will be executed, monitored, and controlled, and
closed.

• This outlines the objectives and scope of the project and serves as an official
point of reference for the project team, larger company, and stakeholders.

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Project Planning Process
Step 0 : Select project
Step 1 : Identify project scope and objectives
Step 2 : Identify project infrastructure
Step 3 : Analyze project characteristics
Step 4 : Identify project products and activities
Step 5: Estimate effort for each activity
Step 6 : Identify activity risks
Step 7 : Allocate resources
Step 8: Review Plan
Step 9 & 10 : Execute plan / lower level of planning

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 Step 0 : Select Project

◦ It is outside the main project planning process

◦ While a feasibility study might suggest the project is worthwhile

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Step 0 : Cont.…

• Technology –
• Is the project technically feasible?
• Finance –
• Is it financially feasible?
Software • Can development be completed at a cost that the
Feasibility software organization, its client, or the market can afford?
Dimensions • Time – Will the project's time-to-market beat the
competition?
• Resources – Does the software organization have the
resources needed to succeed in doing the project?

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Step 1: Identify Project Scope and
Objectives

 Project scope tells you what are we going to do (and not do).
 Get the objectives of a project
◦ Break down the big-picture objectives of your project into
individual goals and tasks.
◦ Prioritize tasks according to importance and dependencies.
 Establish a project authority
‘Who is the boss?’ Identify the authority of the project.

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Step 1: Cont..
Stakeholders Analysis
 Identify all stakeholders in the project and their interests.
 The stakeholders who are all interested in the project include:
• Within the team
• Not in the project team but within in organization.
• External stakeholders
Change objectives based on stakeholder analysis.
Establish a method of communication with all parties
 We should satisfy the customer’s requirements.
 Decide how to keep in contact with customers.

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Step 2: Establish project infrastructure
Identify installation standards and procedures
• Identify the following software going to be used in the project
• Front End Software
• Back End Software
Identify project team organization
• Organizational Structure
• Team Management

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Step 3:Analyze project characteristics
Distinguish project as objective-driven or product-driven
Product - A project will be to create a product.
The details of the product is provided by the client.
Objective - A project is to meet an objective.
The Client may have a problem and ask a specialist to
recommend solutions.
Analyze other project characteristics (Including quality based)
• What are the problems going to solve?
• What is different about this project?

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Step 3: Cont..
Identify high levels of project risks
• What could go wrong
• What can we do to stop it?
Take user requirements concerning implementation
• Conform with the user requirement
Select development methodology and life cycle approach
• The step-by-step process, what are the methods going to be followed in the
project (Whether Waterfall, Prototype, or Incremental Model will be
followed).
Review overall resource estimation
• After risk identification, re-estimate the effort & resources of the project

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Step 4 : Identify Project Products and Activities
Identify and describe project products
Deliverable: Product handed over to user
• In this step identify each and every phase
• Identify what the project going to deliver
• Each and every stage considered as a product
Different types of products that we need to create include:
• Project Specification
• Module Specification
• System Product

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 Step 4: Cont..
Produce ideal activity network
• Identify the activities needed to create each product
• Several activities may be required to create a single module
• After completion, individual modules combine with all the
modules.
Modify ideal to take stages and checkpoints
• Check points to check the progress of the project.
• The project is divided into several product checkpoints to
identify whether every stage we checkpoints correctly or not.

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 Step 5: Estimate effort for each activity
Carry out estimation
Staff effort
 How much work is needed to complete the project
Product elapse time
 How much time taken to complete the project
Non-staff resources
 Designing tools
 Software need

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 Step 6: Identify activity risks
Identify and quantify activity based risks
• Identify risk for each activity
• Particularly during the design phase identify the risk
• Identify damage if occurs (measured in terms of time or money
loss)
• Identify possibilities of mistakes
Plan risk reduction and take measures where appropriate
• Review plan and do some steps to stop risk occurring

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 Step 7 : Allocate resources
Identify and allocate resources
• Identify the type of staff needed for each activity
• Staff availability are identified

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 Step 8 : Review Plan

Review quality aspects of the project plan

• To ensure each activity is completed with a quality product
• Each activity should have “exit requirements”.
• Check quality of phase before going to next stage

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 Step 9 & 10 :Execute plan / lower level of
planning

 Detail has to wait as more information becomes available

 Especially if you are using an iterative development approach

 Maintain provisional plans for more important later tasks

 Planning in great detail too soon could be a waste of time

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