Project Management(part 1)

Project

A project is a (temporary) sequence of unique complex and connected activities that have one goal or purpose and that must be completed by a specific time, within budget and according to specification.(slideplayer)

Project Management

Software project management is an essential part of software engineering project management evolves the planning, monitoring and control of the person, process and events that occur as software evolves from a primary concept to an operational implementation; software managers are responsible for planning scheduling project development.They supervise the work to ensure that it is carried out to the required standards and monitor program to check that development is on time within budget.(Sommerville SE_book)

A project is considered success if:

• The resulting information system is acceptable to the customer.
• The system is delivered “on time”.
• The system is delivered “within budget”.
• The system development process had minimal impact ongoing business operations.

A project is considered failure if:

• Lack of organization’s commitment to the system development method.
• The project gets behind schedule.
• The project is over budget.
• The team is not trained or skilled.
• poor planning
• Lack of communication between end users and developers.

Management Activities

It is impossible to write a standard job description for software manager. The job varies depending on the organization and the software product being developed. However, most managers take responsibilities at some stage for some all of the following activities.

1. Personal Writing:The first stage in software project may involve writing a proposal to carry out the work and win the contract. The personal describes the objectives of the project and how it will be carried out. It usually includes cost and schedule estimation and justify why the project contract should be awarded to a particular organization. Proposal writing is a critical task as the existence of many software organizations.
2. Project planning and scheduling:Project planning is concerned with identifying activities, objective and deliverable produced by a project. The software manager and software team must estimate the work to be done. The resource that will be spend from start to finish. A plan is drawn up to guide the development towards the project goal.
3. Project cost:Cost estimation is related activity that is concerned with estimating resources required to accomplish the project. Estimation begins with a description of the scope of the project. Until the scope is bounded, it is not possible to develop meaningful estimation.
4. Project monitoring and reviews:Project monitoring is the continuing project activities. The manager must keep the track of the progress of the project and compare actual and planned progressed and cost. Although, most organization has formal mechanism for monitoring, a skilled manager can often form a clear picture of what is going on through informal discussion with the project staff. (coursehero)
5. Personal selection and evaluation:Project manager usually have to select personal to work on their project. Skilled staff will appropriate experience will be available to work on the project. (coursehero) However, in most cases manager have to settle for a less experience projecting.
6. Report writing and presentation:Project manager are usually responsible for writing on the project to both for client and contractor
   organization. They have to write concise, clear document that abstract critical information from the detail project report. They must be able to present this information during project review.

Project Planning

Project involves making detailed plan to achieve the objectives.Effective management of software depends on the planning of the project. Manager must anticipate problem that may arise and prepare temptation solution to these problems. A plan draw up at the start of project should be used as the driver for the project. This initial plan should be the best possible plan that gives the available information. Planning is an iterative process which is only complete when the project itself is complete. (Sommerville SE_book) As project information available during the project the plan should be regularly revised.

At the beginning of planning process, manager should estimate the constraints such as delivery date, staff available, budget etc, that effect the project.(Sommerville SE_book) Manager should also estimate project parameter such as its structure, size and distribution of function. Then manager define the progress then enter a loop. A estimated schedule for the project and the activities defined in the schedule are started. After some time, manager should review progress and discrepancies from the project parameters are tentative, manager will always have to modify the original plan. As more information becomes available, manager revises his original assumption about the project and the project schedule.

Types of plan:

1. Quality plan:It describes quality procedures and standards that will be used in a project.(slidepalyer)
2. Validation plan:It describes the approach, resources and schedules used for system validation.
3. Configuration management plan: it describes the configuration management procedures and structures to be used.
4. Maintenance plan: It predicts the maintenance requirements of the system maintenance costs and effort required.(slidepalyer)
5. Staff development plan: It describes how the skills and experience of the project team members will be developed.(coursehero)

Project planning process

Establish the project constraints
Make initial assessments of the project parameters
Define project milestones and deliverables
While project has not been completed or cancelled loop
Draw up project schedule
Initiate activities according to schedule
Wait ( for a while )
Review project progress
Revise estimates of project parameters
Update the project schedule
Re-negotiate project constraints and deliverables
if ( problems arise ) then
Initiate technical review and possible revision
end if
end loop

(Sommerville SE_book)

Project Plan

The project plan sets out the resources required for the project, resource available to the project, the work brisk down and schedule for carrying out the work. The detail of the project plan depending on the type of project and organization. Most plans should include the following section.

1. Introduction:It describes the objective the project and sets out the constraint such as budget, time, resource etc that
   affect the project management.
2. Project organization: It describes the way in which the development team is organized, the person involved and their role in
   the team.
3. Risk analysis:It describe possible project risk, the likelihood of this risk arise and the risk reduction strategy that are
   proposed.
4. Hardware and software resources requirement: It specifies the hardware and the supported software required to carry out the development. If hardware has to be bought estimate its price.(Sommerville SE_book)
5. Work break down: It sets out the breakdown of activities of the project into activities and identifies milestone and
   deliverables associated with each activity.
6. Project schedule: This shows the dependencies between activities, the estimated time required to reach each milestone and the allocation of people to activities.(coursehero)
7. Monitoring and reporting mechanisms: This defines the management reports that should be produced, when these should be produced and the project monitoring mechanisms used.(Sommerville SE_book)

Milestone and deliverables

• Milestones are the end-point of a process activity.(slideplayer)
• A project milestone is a predictable state where a formal report of progress is presented to management.
• Deliverables are project results delivered to customers. It is usually delivered at the end of some major phase such as specification or design. Deliverables are usually milestones, but milestones need not be deliverables.
• Milestones may be internal project results that are used by the project manager to check project delivered to the customer.
• The waterfall process allows for the straightforward definition of progress milestones.
• To establish milestones, the software process must be broken down into basis activities with associated outputs. The fig (below) shows possible activities involved in requirement specification when prototyping is used to help validate requirements. The milestones in this case are completion of the outputs for each activity. The project deliverables, which are delivered to the customer, are the requirements definition and the requirements specification.

Reference:

• Sommerville, Ian. Software engineering. eight edition. Newyork: pearson, 2007.
• coursehero. <https://www.coursehero.com/file/10421924/Lesson3-1/>.
• csitprogram. <https://books.google.com.np/books?id=CDWRq0B9e5kC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=+Software+Software+is+computer+programs+and+associated+documentation.&source=bl&ots=fuFOT7wYOS&sig=0tkbWoER8gf7RxbScRjIQc7W_d0&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Software Software is%>.
• slidepalyer. <http://slideplayer.com/slide/5725835/>.
• slideplayer. <http://slideplayer.com/slide/8567602/>.