LESSON 3

Software Project Management

The job pattern of an IT company engaged in software
development can be seen split in two parts:

 Software Creation
 Software Project Management

A project is well-defined task, which is a collection of several

operations done in order to achieve a goal (for example, software
development and delivery). A Project can be characterized as:

 Every project may has a unique and distinct goal.

 Project is not routine activity or day-to-day operations.
 Project comes with a start time and end time.
 Project ends when its goal is achieved hence it is a
temporary phase in the lifetime of an organization.
 Project needs adequate resources in terms of time,
manpower, finance, material and knowledge-bank.

Software Project
A Software Project is the complete procedure of software
development from requirement gathering to testing and
maintenance, carried out according to the execution
methodologies, in a specified period of time to achieve intended
software product.

Need of software project management

Software is said to be an intangible product. Software
development is a kind of all new stream in world business and
there’s very little experience in building software products. Most
software products are tailor made to fit client’s requirements. The
most important is that the underlying technology changes and
advances so frequently and rapidly that experience of one
product may not be applied to the other one. All such business
and environmental constraints bring risk in software development
hence it is essential to manage software projects efficiently.
The image above shows triple constraints for software projects. It
is an essential part of software organization to deliver quality
product, keeping the cost within client’s budget constrain and
deliver the project as per scheduled. There are several factors,
both internal and external, which may impact this triple constrain
triangle. Any of three factor can severely impact the other two.

Therefore, software project management is essential to

incorporate user requirements along with budget and time
constraints.

Project Management Definition

Project management involves applying processes, methods, skills,

knowledge, and experience to meet specific project goals within
the defined criteria and agreed-upon parameters. It is
characterized by having final deliverables that must be completed
within a set timeframe and budget.

What sets project management apart from general management

is its focus on achieving a specific end result within a limited time
period, whereas management is a continuous activity. Therefore,
a project manager needs a diverse skill set, including technical
abilities, people management skills, and strong business acumen.

Software Project Manager

A software project manager is a person who undertakes the
responsibility of executing the software project. Software project
manager is thoroughly aware of all the phases of SDLC that the
software would go through. Project manager may never directly
involve in producing the end product but he controls and
manages the activities involved in production.

A project manager closely monitors the development process,

prepares and executes various plans, arranges necessary and
adequate resources, maintains communication among all team
members in order to address issues of cost, budget, resources,
time, and quality and customer satisfaction.

Let us see few responsibilities that a project manager shoulders -

Managing People

 Act as project leader

 Liaison with stakeholders
 Managing human resources
 Setting up reporting hierarchy etc.

Managing Project

 Defining and setting up project scope

 Managing project management activities
 Monitoring progress and performance
 Risk analysis at every phase
 Take necessary step to avoid or come out of problems
 Act as project spokesperson

Software Management Activities

Software project management comprises of a number of
activities, which contains planning of project, deciding scope of
software product, estimation of cost in various terms, scheduling
of tasks and events, and resource management. Project
management activities may include:

 Project Planning
 Scope Management
 Project Estimation
 Scheduling tasks
 Resource management

Project Planning
Software project planning is task, which is performed before the
production of software actually starts. It is there for the software
production but involves no concrete activity that has any direction
connection with software production; rather it is a set of multiple
processes, which facilitates software production. Project planning
may include the following:

Scope Management
It defines the scope of project; this includes all the activities,
process need to be done in order to make a deliverable software
product. Scope management is essential because it creates
boundaries of the project by clearly defining what would be done
in the project and what would not be done. This makes project to
contain limited and quantifiable tasks, which can easily be
documented and in turn avoids cost and time overrun.

During Project Scope management, it is necessary to -

 Define the scope

 Decide its verification and control
 Divide the project into various smaller parts for ease of
management.
 Verify the scope
 Control the scope by incorporating changes to the scope

Project Estimation
For an effective management accurate estimation of various
measures is a must. With correct estimation managers can
manage and control the project more efficiently and effectively.

Project estimation may involve the following:

 Software size estimation

Software size may be estimated either in terms of KLOC
(Kilo Line of Code) or by calculating number of function
points in the software. Lines of code depend upon coding
practices and Function points vary according to the user or
software requirement.
 Effort estimation
The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel
requirement and man-hour required to produce the
 software. For effort estimation software size should be
known. This can either be derived by managers’ experience,
organization’s historical data or software size can be
converted into efforts by using some standard formulae.
 Time estimation
Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to
produce the software can be estimated. Efforts required is
segregated into sub categories as per the requirement
specifications and interdependency of various components of
software. Software tasks are divided into smaller tasks,
activities or events by Work Breakthrough Structure (WBS).
The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day basis or in calendar
months.
The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or
days is the total time invested to complete the project.
 Cost estimation
This might be considered as the most difficult of all because
it depends on more elements than any of the previous ones.
For estimating project cost, it is required to consider -
o Size of software
o Software quality
o Hardware
o Additional software or tools, licenses etc.
o Skilled personnel with task-specific skills
o Travel involved
o Communication
o Training and support

Project Estimation Techniques

We discussed various parameters involving project estimation
such as size, effort, time and cost.

Project manager can estimate the listed factors using two broadly
recognized techniques –

Decomposition Technique

This technique assumes the software as a product of various

compositions.

There are two main models -

  Line of Code Estimation is done on behalf of number of line of
codes in the software product.
 Function Points Estimation is done on behalf of number of
function points in the software product.

Empirical Estimation Technique

This technique uses empirically derived formulae to make

estimation.These formulae are based on LOC or FPs.

 Putnam Model
This model is made by Lawrence H. Putnam, which is based
on Norden’s frequency distribution (Rayleigh curve). Putnam
model maps time and efforts required with software size.
 COCOMO
COCOMO stands for COnstructive COst MOdel, developed by
Barry W. Boehm. It divides the software product into three
categories of software: organic, semi-detached and
embedded.

Project Scheduling
Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities
to be done with specified order and within time slot allotted to
each activity. Project managers tend to define various tasks, and
project milestones and arrange them keeping various factors in
mind. They look for tasks lie in critical path in the schedule, which
are necessary to complete in specific manner (because of task
interdependency) and strictly within the time allocated.
Arrangement of tasks which lies out of critical path are less likely
to impact over all schedule of the project.

For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -

 Break down the project tasks into smaller, manageable form

 Find out various tasks and correlate them
 Estimate time frame required for each task
 Divide time into work-units
 Assign adequate number of work-units for each task
 Calculate total time required for the project from start to
finish

Resource management
All elements used to develop a software product may be assumed
as resource for that project. This may include human resource,
productive tools and software libraries.

The resources are available in limited quantity and stay in the

organization as a pool of assets. The shortage of resources
hampers the development of project and it can lag behind the
schedule. Allocating extra resources increases development cost
in the end. It is therefore necessary to estimate and allocate
adequate resources for the project.

Resource management includes -

 Defining proper organization project by creating a project

team and allocating responsibilities to each team member
 Determining resources required at a particular stage and
their availability
 Manage Resources by generating resource request when
they are required and de-allocating them when they are no
more needed.

Project Risk Management

Risk management involves all activities pertaining to
identification, analyzing and making provision for predictable and
non-predictable risks in the project. Risk may include the
following:

 Experienced staff leaving the project and new staff coming

in.
 Change in organizational management.
 Requirement change or misinterpreting requirement.
 Under-estimation of required time and resources.
 Technological changes, environmental changes, business
competition.

Risk Management Process

There are following activities involved in risk management
process:

 Identification - Make note of all possible risks, which may

occur in the project.
  Categorize - Categorize known risks into high, medium and
low risk intensity as per their possible impact on the project.
 Manage - Analyze the probability of occurrence of risks at
various phases. Make plan to avoid or face risks. Attempt to
minimize their side-effects.
 Monitor - Closely monitor the potential risks and their early
symptoms. Also monitor the effects of steps taken to
mitigate or avoid them.

Project Execution & Monitoring

In this phase, the tasks described in project plans are executed
according to their schedules.

Execution needs monitoring in order to check whether everything

is going according to the plan. Monitoring is observing to check
the probability of risk and taking measures to address the risk or
report the status of various tasks.

These measures include -

 Activity Monitoring - All activities scheduled within some task

can be monitored on day-to-day basis. When all activities in
a task are completed, it is considered as complete.
 Status Reports - The reports contain status of activities and
tasks completed within a given time frame, generally a
week. Status can be marked as finished, pending or work-
in-progress etc.
 Milestones Checklist - Every project is divided into multiple
phases where major tasks are performed (milestones) based
on the phases of SDLC. This milestone checklist is prepared
once every few weeks and reports the status of milestones.

Project Communication Management

Effective communication plays vital role in the success of a
project. It bridges gaps between client and the organization,
among the team members as well as other stake holders in the
project such as hardware suppliers.

Communication can be oral or written. Communication

management process may have the following steps:
  Planning - This step includes the identifications of all the
stakeholders in the project and the mode of communication
among them. It also considers if any additional
communication facilities are required.
 Sharing - After determining various aspects of planning,
manager focuses on sharing correct information with the
correct person on correct time. This keeps every one
involved the project up to date with project progress and its
status.
 Feedback - Project managers use various measures and
feedback mechanism and create status and performance
reports. This mechanism ensures that input from various
stakeholders is coming to the project manager as their
feedback.
 Closure - At the end of each major event, end of a phase of
SDLC or end of the project itself, administrative closure is
formally announced to update every stakeholder by sending
email, by distributing a hardcopy of document or by other
mean of effective communication.

After closure, the team moves to next phase or project.

Configuration Management
Configuration management is a process of tracking and
controlling the changes in software in terms of the requirements,
design, functions and development of the product.

IEEE defines it as “the process of identifying and defining the

items in the system, controlling the change of these items
throughout their life cycle, recording and reporting the status of
items and change requests, and verifying the completeness and
correctness of items”.

Generally, once the SRS is finalized there is less chance of

requirement of changes from user. If they occur, the changes are
addressed only with prior approval of higher management, as
there is a possibility of cost and time overrun.

Baseline

A phase of SDLC is assumed over if it baselined, i.e. baseline is a

measurement that defines completeness of a phase. A phase is
baselined when all activities pertaining to it are finished and well
documented. If it was not the final phase, its output would be
used in next immediate phase.

Configuration management is a discipline of organization

administration, which takes care of occurrence of any change
(process, requirement, technological, strategical etc.) after a
phase is baselined. CM keeps check on any changes done in
software.

Change Control

Change control is function of configuration management, which

ensures that all changes made to software system are consistent
and made as per organizational rules and regulations.

A change in the configuration of product goes through following

steps -

 Identification - A change request arrives from either internal

or external source. When change request is identified
formally, it is properly documented.
 Validation - Validity of the change request is checked and its
handling procedure is confirmed.
 Analysis - The impact of change request is analyzed in terms
of schedule, cost and required efforts. Overall impact of the
prospective change on system is analyzed.
 Control - If the prospective change either impacts too many
entities in the system or it is unavoidable, it is mandatory to
take approval of high authorities before change is
incorporated into the system. It is decided if the change is
worth incorporation or not. If it is not, change request is
refused formally.
 Execution - If the previous phase determines to execute the
change request, this phase take appropriate actions to
execute the change, does a thorough revision if necessary.
 Close request - The change is verified for correct
implementation and merging with the rest of the system.
This newly incorporated change in the software is
documented properly and the request is formally is closed.

Project Management Tools

The risk and uncertainty rises multifold with respect to the size of
the project, even when the project is developed according to set
methodologies.

There are tools available, which aid for effective project

management. A few are described -

Gantt Chart

Gantt charts was devised by Henry Gantt (1917). It represents

project schedule with respect to time periods. It is a horizontal
bar chart with bars representing activities and time scheduled for
the project activities.

PERT Chart

PERT (Program Evaluation & Review Technique) chart is a tool

that depicts project as network diagram. It is capable of
graphically representing main events of project in both parallel
and consecutive way. Events, which occur one after another,
show dependency of the later event over the previous one.
Events are shown as numbered nodes. They are connected by
labeled arrows depicting sequence of tasks in the project.

Resource Histogram

This is a graphical tool that contains bar or chart representing

number of resources (usually skilled staff) required over time for
a project event (or phase). Resource Histogram is an effective
tool for staff planning and coordination.
Critical Path Analysis

This tools is useful in recognizing interdependent tasks in the

project. It also helps to find out the shortest path or critical path
to complete the project successfully. Like PERT diagram, each
event is allotted a specific time frame. This tool shows
dependency of event assuming an event can proceed to next only
if the previous one is completed.

The events are arranged according to their earliest possible start

time. Path between start and end node is critical path which
cannot be further reduced and all events require to be executed
in same order.

End