SOFTWARE PROJECT

MANAGEMENT

Prof. Kanchana Devi V

Project Planning

Step 0: Select Project

Step 1: Identify Project Scope & Objectives

Step 2: Identify Project Infrastructure

Step 3: Analyse Project Characteristics

Step 4: Identify Project Products & Activities

Step 5: Estimate Effort for Each Activity

Project Planning- Continued…

Step 6: Identify Activity Risks

Step 7: Allocate Resources

Step 8: Review/ Publicize Plan

Step 9 & 10: Execute Plan/Lower Level

Planning

Step 0: Select Project

It is outside the main project planning

process.

A feasibility study might suggest that there is

a business case for the project.

Step 1 : Identify Project Scope and

Objectives

1.1 Identify objectives and measures of

effectiveness in meeting them

1.2 Establish a project authority

1.3 Identify Stakeholders

1.4 Modify objectives in light of stakeholder

analysis adding new features

1.5 Establish methods of communication with

all parties

Step 2 : Identify Project Infrastructure

2.1 Establish relationship between project and

strategic planning Compliance with enterprise architecture.

2.2 Identify installation standards and procedures Define development procedures, Normal stages in software life

cycle.

Change control and Configuration Management

2.3 Identify project team organization Decision about grouping business analysts and software

developers.

Step 3 : Analyze Project

Characteristics

Ensure appropriate methods are used for

project.

3.1 Distinguish project either objective or

product driven

3.2 Analyze other project characteristics

System will be safety critical, where human life could be

threatened.

3.3 Identify high level project risks Most risks attributed to operational or development

environment.

3.4 Take into account user requirements

concerning implementation. Client may have own procedural requirement

3.5 Select development methodology and

life-cycle approach

3.6 Review overall resource estimate Re-estimate the effort and other resources required to

implement the project.

Step 4 : Identify project products and

activities

Longer term planning is broad and in outline,

while more immediate tasks are planned in detail.

4.1 Identify and describe project products(deliverables)

4.2 Document generic product flows A program design must be created before program can be

written

Program specification must exist before design can be commenced.

Relationships can be portrayed in Product Flow Diagram(PFD)

Product Description Contains

Name/Identity of the product

Purpose of the product

Derivation of the product

Composition of the product

Relevant Standards

Quality criteria that define whether the

product is acceptable.

Fragment of Product Flow

Diagram

…

4.3 Recognize product instances Component software modules in the software to be

built.

4.4 Produce ideal activity network

Resources are available for both software modules

to be developed in parallel.

Example of Activity Network

4.5 Modify the ideal to take into account

need for stages and checkpoints

Dividing the project into stages and introducing

checkpoint activities.

Checkpoint activities are often useful milestones.

Activity with no duration that indicates the start or

end of group of activities.

Step 5 : Estimate Effort for each

Activity

5.1 Carry out bottom up estimates.

Estimates of effort, cost and duration will already have

been done.

5.2 Revise plan to create controllable activities.

System testing involving longer time

Step 6: Identify Activity Risks

6.1 Identify and Quantify activity based risks.

6.2 Plan risk reduction and contingency

measures where appropriate

6.3 Adjust overall plans and estimates to take

account of risks

Step 7 : Allocate resources

7.1 Identify and Allocate Resources

Type of staff needed for each activity and provisionally

allocated for each tasks.

7.2 Revise plans and estimates to take into

account resource constraints

Some staff may be needed for more than one task at the

same time and order of priority to be established.

Decisions made will have an effect on overall duration of

project.

Step 8: Review/ Publicize plan

8.1 Review quality aspects of the project plan

8.2 Document plans and obtain agreement

Steps 9 and 10: Execute

plan/Lower levels of planning

Provisional plans for more distant tasks has

to be performed

Software Effort Estimation

Successful project is that the system is

delivered on time and within budget and

with the required quality.

Software effort estimation

Difficulties in Software estimation

Subjective Nature of estimating

Political Implications

Changing Technology

Lack of homogeneity of project experience

Project Data

Note:

SLOC - Source Number of Lines of Code

WM - Work in Month

Where are estimates done?

Estimates are carried out at various stages of software project.

Strategic Planning Decide priority to each project.

Feasibility Study Benefits of potential system

System Specification Detailed requirement analysis at design stage.

Evaluation of Suppliers Proposals Tender Management

Project Planning Detailed estimates of smaller work components during

implementation.

Software Effort Estimation

Techniques

Algorithmic Models

Expert Judgment

Analogy – Similar Completed Project

Parkinson – Staff Effort available to do project

Price to Win – Sufficiently low to win a contract.

Top-down – Overall estimate is formulated

Bottom-up – Individual components are

aggregated

Bottom-up Estimating

Work Breakdown Structure

Assumptions about characteristics of final

system

Number and Size of software modules.

Appropriate at detailed stages of project

planning.

When a project is completely novel or no

historical data available.

Top-down Approach and

Parametric Models

Effort = (system size ) * (productivity rate)

System size in the form of KLOC

Productivity rate 40 days per KLOC

Software module to be constructed is 2 KLOC

Effort = 2 * 80 = 160 days

Note:

KLOC- Thousands of Lines of Code

Expert Judgment

Asking for estimate of task effort from

someone who is knowledgeable about either

application or development environment.

Experts use the combination of informal

analogy approach where similar projects

from past are identified and bottom up

estimating.

Estimating by Analogy

Called “Case Based Analogy”

Estimator identifies completed projects

source cases with similar characteristics to

new project (target case)

Effort of the source case used as base

estimate for target.

TOOL – ANGEL software tool

Measuring Euclidean Distance between the

cases

Euclidean Distance

Problems with Over and Under

Estimates

Parkinson’s Law

“Given an easy target staff will work less hard”

Brook’s Law

Effort required to implement a project will go up

disproportionately with the number of staff assigned

to the project

“ Putting more people on a late job makes it later”

Measure of Work

Measure such as SLOC ( Source Lines of Code)

KLOC ( Thousand Lines of Code)

Albrecht Function Point Analysis

Top - down method devised by Allan Albrecht(IBM)

Developed the idea of Function Points(FPs)

Basis of function point analysis has five components:

External Input Types

External Output Types

External Inquiry Types – US spelling inquiry

Logical Internal File Types – Data store

External Interface File Types – To & Fro (BACS)

Albrecht Complexity Multipliers

IFPUG File Type Complexity

Function Points Mark II

Sponsored by CCTA(Central Computer and

Telecommunications Agency)

Mark II – Improvement and replacement in

Albrecht method

In Albrecht method

Information Processing Size is measured in

UFPs(Unadjusted Functional Points)

Then TCA(Technical Complexity Adjustment) is

applied

Model of Transaction

Data Store

Process From User Return to

User

Input Output

For each transaction UFPs are

calculated

UFAs = Wi * (number of input data element types)+

We * (number of entity types referenced)+ Wo *

(number of output data element types)

Wi We Wo are weightings derived by asking

the developers the proportions of effort

spent.

FP counters use industry averages which are:

Wi = 0.58

We = 1.66

Wo = 0.26

COSMIC Full Function Points

Cosmic deals with decomposing the system architecture into hierarchy of software layers.

Inputs and outputs are aggregated into data groups

Each data group brings together data items that relate to the same object of interest

Groups can be moved in 4 ways: Entries(E)

Exits(X)

Reads ( R)

Writes(W)