Software Development Module Code: CST 240 Chapter 2: Project Management

Software Development

Module Code: CST 240

Chapter 2: Project Management

Al Khawarizmi International College,Abu Dhabi, U.A.E

1.Design and make a plan for project management activities .2. Discuss the types of plan required by Software Managers.3.Design a critical path and identify the

minimum duration for project completion.4. Discuss the risk management in software

development. 5. Illustrate a good understanding of MS Project

software.

Chapter 2: Project Management 2

Management activities Project planning Project scheduling Project Cost Estimation Activity Organization Activity Network Diagram Risk management MS-Project



Project Management is the process of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling the production of a software system.

A software project is managed by a Project Manager / Software Manager.



To complete a project:

• On time

• On budget

• With required functionality

• To the satisfaction of the client

• Without exhausting the team



Responsibilities of Software Manager: 1- Planning, scheduling and supervising

the project development.2- Ensuring that the software

development is consistent with the organization policies, goals and requirements.

3- Monitoring progress to check that the development is on time and within budget.



1. The product is intangible2. Software development process is not

standardized 3. Large software projects are often 'one-off'

projects





•Proposal writing.•Project planning and scheduling.•Project costing.•Project monitoring and reviews.•Personnel selection and evaluation.•Report writing and presentations.

May not be possible to appoint the ideal people to work on a project◦ Project budget may not allow for the use of

highly-paid staff;◦ Staff with the appropriate experience may not

be available within an organization or externally;

◦ An organisation may wish to develop employee skills on a software project.



Project Planning is probably the most time-consuming project management activity.

Continuous activity from initial concept through to system delivery. Plans must be regularly revised as new information becomes available.

Various different types of plan may be developed to support the main software project plan that is concerned with schedule and budget.



Types of plan required by Software Managers:-1- Quality plan: Describes the quality

procedures that will be used in a project. 2- Validation plan: Describes the approach,

resources and schedule used for system validation.

3- Configuration plan: Describes the

configuration management procedures and structures to be used.



4- Maintenance plan: Describes the maintenance requirements of the system, maintenance cost and effort required.

5- Staff development plan: Describes how the skills and experience of the project team members will be developed.



The project plan sets the resources available to the project.

A single document includes all the different types of plans.

The project plan is concerned with the development process.

The details of the project plan vary depending on the type of the project and organization.



1- Introduction: Describes the objectives and, and constrains of the project

2- Project organization: Describes the roles of the team involved.

3- Risk management: Describes possible project risks and strategies to reduce that risk.



4 - Hardware and software resources requirements: Describes the hardware and the software required to carry out the development.

5- Work breakdown: Describes the activities that will be set during the process, and the milestones and deliverables with each activity.

6- Project Schedule: Describes the dependencies between activities (The estimated time required to reach each milestone).



7- Monitoring and reporting mechanisms: Describes the management reports which should be produced, when these should be produced and the project monitoring mechanism used.

Note: The project plan should be regularly

revised during the project.



Scheduling is estimating the time and resources required to complete activities and organize them through the project period of time (project life).

Organize tasks concurrently to make optimal use of workforce.

Minimize task dependencies to avoid delays caused by one task waiting for another to complete.



• Managers when estimating schedule should keep in mind, unexpected problems that may delay the activity timing like illness, hardware breakdown, and delay in a new hardware delivery time, etc.

A guideline for estimation is to allocate activity timing as if every thing goes well for all activities, then some extra time should be added for unexpected problems.



• Project scheduling is usually represented on charts showing the work breakdown activity, dependencies, staff allocation and the activity timing.

Scheduling dependent on project managers intuition and experience.



Activities in a project should be organised to produce tangible outputs for management to judge progress.

A milestone is an end-point of the software process activity. At each milestone, a formal progress report is generated to be presented to management.

Deliverables are project results delivered to customers.



MilestoneDeliverable

1 .Milestones are the formal progress report that are given to the

management .

1 .Deliverable are the project result which are given to the Customers.

2 .Delivered at the end of some software process activity.

2 .Delivered at the end of some major project phases such as specification, design,etc.




MilestoneDeliverable

3 .Milestones are not necessarily deliverables .

3 .Deliverables are usually milestones.

4.Milestones need not be large documents.

4 .Deliverables are usually large documents.


To establish milestones, the software process which is being followed for a particular project, must be broken down into activities.

The next slide shows activities involved in requirements engineering when prototyping is used to help validate requirement. It also shows

the principle stages of each activity.





Feasibility Study

Requirements analysis

Prototype developme

nt

Design Study

Requirements Specifications

Feasibility report

Requirements definition

Evaluation report

Architectural design

Requirements specifications

Milestones

Activities

It is necessary for all activities to end at a milestone.

The waterfall model of the software process is widely adopted as it allows for the straightforward definition of progress milestones.

Alternative approach, such as Exploratory programming the milestone definition is a more difficult and less certain process.



Bar charts: are graphical notations which used to represent the project schedule and show who are responsible for each activity and when the activity is scheduled to begin and to end.

Activity network: are graphical notations

which is used to represent the project schedule and show the dependencies between the different activities making up a project.



Critical path: is the minimum time required to finish the project, also it's the longest path in duration in the activity network graph. So a critical path has the

Longest path Shortest time within which project can be

completed Zero slack (or float)




Task Duration(Days) DependenciesT1 8T2 15T3 15 T1(M1)T4 10T5 10 T2, T4 (M2)T6 5 T1, T2 (M3)T7 20 T1 (M1)T8 25 T4 (M5)T9 15 T3, T6 (M4)T10 15 T5, T7 (M7)T11 7 T9 (M6)T12 10 T11 (M8)

Example:

Task ,durations and dependencies



start

T2

M3T6

Finish

T10

M7T5

T7

M2T4

M5

T8

4/7/03

8 days

14/7/03 15 days

4/8/03

15 days

25/8/03

7 days

5/9/03

10 days

19/9/03

15 days

11/8/03

25 days

10 days

20 days

5 days25/7/03

15 days

25/7/03

18/7/03

10 days

T1

M1 T3T9

M6

T11

M8

T12

M4


Risks are consequences of something that may go wrong because of incomplete information. Risk is related to the amount and quality of available information. The less information, the higher risk.

The principle task of a Project manager is to minimize risk.

Categories of Risk:> Project Risk> Product Risk> Business Risk



The process of risk management involves several stages:

1. Risk Identification: Possible project, product and business risks are identified.

2. Risk Analysis: the likelihood and consequences of risk are assessed.

3. Risk Planning: Plans to address the risk either by avoiding it or minimizing its effects on the project are determined.



4. Risk Monitoring: The risk is constantly assessed and plans for risk reduction are revised as the information about the risk become available.



Gantt Charts Critical Path Method (CPM) Program Evaluation and Review Technique

(PERT)



Ms-Project helps us to plan and manage a project.

Major views of Ms-Project◦ Gantt Chart◦ Calendar View◦ Network Diagram◦ Resource Sheet◦ Resource Usage



Created 1800 Standard format for displaying project

schedules◦ activities, durations, start/end finish dates

displayed in calendar format Advantages

◦ enforces planning◦ easy to create & understand◦ preferred for summary/exec-level information



Symbols include:◦ black diamond: milestones◦ Thick black bars: summary tasks◦ Lighter horizontal bars: tasks◦ Arrows: dependencies between tasks



Resources can be broadly divided into consumables and non-consumables. A consumable resource is consumed as it goes into a task, for example, when money is spent on paying contractors it cannot be used again. Non-consumable resources can be used over and over again - manpower and equipment used on a project are obvious examples of non-consumable resources.



To open Project Information◦ Click Project Menu -> Project Information

To change Calendar settings◦ Lick Tools Menu -> Change Working Time..

To set up dependencies between tasks◦ Click Project Menu->Task Information◦ Shortcut key is Shift+F2



Software Development Module Code: CST 240 Chapter 2: Project Management

Documents

Transcript of Software Development Module Code: CST 240 Chapter 2: Project Management