Software Project Management

Fifth Edition

Module 7

Monitoring
and
control

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The control cycle

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Responsibilities

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 Assessing progress
Checkpoints – predetermined times when progress
is checked
– Event driven: check takes place when a
particular event has been achieved
– Time driven: date of the check is pre-
determined

Frequency of reporting
The higher the management level then generally the
longer the gaps between checkpoints

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 Collecting progress details
Need to collect data about:
• Achievements
• Costs
A big problem: how to deal with partial completions
99% completion syndrome
Possible solutions:
• Control of products, not activities
• Subdivide into lots of sub-activities

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 Red/Amber/Green reporting
• Identify key tasks
• Break down into sub-tasks
• Assess subtasks as:
Green – ‘on target’
Amber – ‘not on target but recoverable’
Red – ‘not on target and recoverable only with
difficulty’
• Status of ‘critical’ tasks is particularly
important
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 Visualizing progress
• Manager needs some way of presenting that
data to greatest effect.
• It try to show how the project has progressed
and changed through time.
– The gantt chart
– The slip chart
– Ball chart
– Timeline

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 The gantt chart
• Tracking the project progress
• Indicate the activity date and duration
frequently with activity floats.
• Today cursor- provides an immediate visual
indication of which activites are ahead or
behind schedule.

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Gantt charts

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 The slip chart
• Manager who believes it provides a more
striking indication of those activites that are
not progressing to schedule.
• More slip line bends, the greater the variation
from the plan.
• Additional slip lines are added at intervals and,
as they build up, the project manger will gain
an idea as to whether project is improving.

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 Slip charts

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• This records the way that targets have
changed throughout the project.
• Planned time is plotted on the horizontal
axis, and actual time on the vertical axis.
The bendy lines going from top to bottom
represent the scheduled completion date
for each activity e.g.

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 Example
• ‘analyse existing system’ – at start this
was due finish on the Monday of week 3
and it did finish then
• ‘obtain user requirements’ was originally
planned to finish on the Thursday of week
5, but at the end of the first week it was
rescheduled to finish on the Tuesday of
week 6.

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 The
timeline

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 Cost monitoring
• A project could be late because the staff originally committed have not
been deployed
• In this case the project will be behind time but under budget
• A project could be on time but only because additional resources have
been added and so be over budget
• Need to monitor both achievements and costs

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 Earned value analysis
• Planned value (PV) or Budgeted cost of work
scheduled (BCWS) – original estimate of the
effort/cost to complete a task (compare with
idea of a ‘price’)

• Earned value (EV) or Budgeted cost of work

performed (BCWP) – total of PVs for the work
completed at this time

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 Accounting conventions
• Work completed allocated on the basis
– 50/50 half allocated at start, the other half on
completion. These proportions can vary e.g.
0/100, 75/25 etc
– Milestone current value depends on the
milestones achieved
– Units processed
• Can use money values, or staff effort as a
surrogate
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 Earned value – an example
• Tasks
– Specify module 5 days
– Code module 8 days
– Test module 6 days
• At the beginning of day 20, PV = 19 days
• If everything but testing completed EV = 13 days
• Schedule variance = EV-PV i.e. 13-19 = -6
• Schedule performance indicator (SPI) = 13/19 = 0.68
• SV negative or SPI <1.00, project behind schedule

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 Earned value analysis – actual cost
• Actual cost (AC) is also known as Actual cost of work performed (ACWP)
• In previous example, if
– ‘Specify module’ actually took 3 days
– ‘Code module’ actually took 4 days
• Actual cost = 7 days
• Cost variance (CV) = EV-AC i.e. 13-7 = 6 days
• Cost performance indicator = 13/7 = 1.86
• Positive CV or CPI > 1.00 means project within budget

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 Earned value analysis – actual costs

• CPI can be used to produce new cost estimate

• Budget at completion (BAC) – current budget allocated to total costs of
project
• Estimate at completion (EAC) – updated estimate = BAC/CPI
– e.g. say budget at completion is £19,000 and CPI is 1.86
– EAC = BAC/CPI = £10,215 (projected costs reduced because work being
completed in less time)

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 Time variance
• Time variance (TV) – difference between time
when specified EV should have been reached
and time it actually was
• For example say an EV of £19000 was
supposed to have been reached on 1st April
and it was actually reached on 1st July then TV
= - 3 months

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Earned value chart with revised forecasts

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 Prioritizing monitoring
We might focus more on monitoring certain
types of activity e.g.
• Critical path activities
• Activities with no free float – if delayed later
dependent activities are delayed
• Activities with less than a specified float
• High risk activities
• Activities using critical resources

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 Getting back on track: options
• Renegotiate the deadline – if not possible then
• Try to shorten critical path e.g.
– Work overtime
– Re-allocate staff from less pressing work
– Buy in more staff
• Reconsider activity dependencies
– Over-lap the activities so that the start of one
activity does not have to wait for completion of
another
– Split activities
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 Exception planning
• Some changes could affect
– Users
– The business case (e.g. costs increase reducing the
potential profits of delivered software product)
• These changes could be to
– Delivery date
– Scope
– Cost
• In these cases an exception report is needed

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 Exception planning - continued
• First stage
– Write an exception report for sponsors (perhaps
through project board)
• Explaining problems
• Setting out options for resolution
• Second stage
– Sponsor selects an option ( or identifies another
option)
– Project manager produces an exception plan
implementing selected option
– Exception plan is reviewed and accepted/rejected
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 Change control
The role of configuration librarian:
• Identifying items that need to be subject to
change control
• Management of a central repository of the
master copies of software and documentation
• Administering change procedures
• Maintenance of access records

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 Typical change control process
1. One or more users might perceive the need for a
change
2. User management decide that the change is valid
and worthwhile and pass it to development
management
3. A developer is assigned to assess the practicality
and cost of making the change
4. Development management report back to user
management on the cost of the change; user
management decide whether to go ahead

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 Change control process contd.
5. One or more developers are authorized to
make copies of components to be modified
6. Copies modified. After initial testing, a test
version might be released to users for
acceptance testing
7. When users are satisfied then operational
release authorized – master configuration
items updated

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