Module 2

Managing Software Project

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 Project Management
 Software project management is aimed to
ensure that the software is delivered on
time, within budget and schedule
constraints, and satisfies the requirements
of the client.

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 Project Management Activities

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 Project Management Activities
The feasibility study assesses whether a project is worth
starting – that it has a valid business case

Planning If the feasibility study indicates that the proposed

project appearsviable, then project planning can start.

For larger projects, we would not do all our detailed planning

at the beginning. We create an outline plan for the whole
project and a detailed one for the first stage

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 Project Management Activities

Project execution The project can now be executed. The

execution of a project often contains design and
implementation sub-phases

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 Project Management Activities
Figure shows the typical sequence of software development activities
recom- mended in the international standard ISO 12207.

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 Requirements analysis starts with requirements gathering which
establishes what the potential users and their managers require of
the new system.
Architecture design The components of the new system that
fulfil each requirement have to be identified

Detailed design Each software component is made up of a

number of software units that can be separately coded and tested.
The detailed design of these units is carried out separately

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 Code and test refers to writing code for each software unit. Initial
testing to debug individual software
units would be carried out at this stage.
Integration: The components are tested together to see if they meet
the overall requirements.
Qualification testing The system, including the software
components, has to be tested carefully to ensure that all the
requirements have been fulfilled.

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 Installation This is the process of making the new system
operational. It would include activities such
as setting up standing data (for example, the details for employees
in a payroll system),

Acceptance support This is the resolving of problems with the newly

installed system, including the correction of any errors, and
implementing agreed extensions and improvements.

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 Role of a Project Manager

The task of the project manager is to guide, monitor and regulate the project
from start to finish. Here are some of the operations undertaken by a project
manager:

The project manager has to identify the project, decrease it to a collection of

manageable activities, get adequate funds and create a squad to do the job.

The project manager has to set the project's ultimate objective and motivate
the project squad to finish the project on time.

The project manager must regularly report advancement to all stakeholders.

The project manager must evaluate and monitor and mitigate the hazards to
the project.

No project will ever go as scheduled. Project managers need to know how to

adapt and handle the transition.
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 The Management Spectum
The management spectrum describes the management of a software
project.

The management spectrum focuses on the four P’s; people, product,

process and project. Here, the manager of the project has to control
all these P’s to have a smooth flow in the progress of the project and
to reach the goal.

The four P’s of management spectrum are

People

Product

Process

Project

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 The Project Management Spectum

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 The Management Spectum
People

The most important component of a product and its successful

implementation is human resources.

In building a proper product, a well-managed team with clear-cut roles

defined for each person/team will lead to the success of the product.

We need to have a good team in order to save our time, cost, and effort.
The Stakeholders
The software process (and every software project) is populated by
stakeholders who can be categorized into one of five categories:
1. Senior managers who define the business issues that often have a
significant influence on the project.
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 2. Project (technical) managers who must plan, motivate,
organize, and control the practitioners who do software
work.

3. Practitioners who deliver the technical skills that are

necessary to engineer a product or application.

4. Customers who specify the requirements for the software

to be engineered and other stakeholders who have a
peripheral interest in the outcome.

5. End users who interact with the software once it is

released for production use

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 The Management Spectum
Team Leader
An excellent book of technical leadership, Jerry Weinberg [Wei86]
suggests an MOI model of leadership:
Motivation. The ability to encourage (by “push or pull”) technical
people to produce to their best ability.
Organization. The ability to mold existing processes (or invent new
ones) that will enable the initial concept to be translated into a final
product.
Ideas or innovation. The ability to encourage people to create and
feel creative even when they must work within bounds established
for a particular software product or application.

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 The Management Spectum
The Product:

The product is the ultimate goal of the project.

This is any type of software product that has to be developed.

To develop a software product successfully, all the product objectives

and scopes should be established, alternative solutions should be
considered, and technical and management constraints should be
identified beforehand.
Lack of these information it is impossible to define reasonable and
accurate estimation of the cost,identify possible risk and define
manageable project schedule.

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 Software Scope
The first software project management activity is the determination of
software scope.
The scope identifies what the product will do and what it will not do,
what the end product will contain and what it will not contain.

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 The Management Spectum

The Process:

>Project manager and Team members should have a

methodology and plan that complete project as per
customer requirements

>Without a clarley defined process,team members will not

know what to do and when to carry out project activities.

>Using the right process will increase the project

execution success rate that meets its original goals and
objectives.

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 The Management Spectum

>The processes have several steps:

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 The Management Spectum
The Project:

The project is the complete software project that includes requirement

analysis, development, delivery, maintenance and updates. The project
manager of a project or sub-project is responsible for managing the people,
product and process.
In an excellent paper on software proj- ects, John Reel [Ree99]
defines 10 signs that indicate that the project is in failure:
1. Software people don’t understand their customer’s needs.
2. The product scope is poorly defined.
3. Changes are managed poorly.
4. The chosen technology changes.

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 The Management Spectum
5. Business needs change .

6 .Deadlines are unrealistic.

7. Users are resistant.

8. Sponsorship is lost .

9. The project team lacks people with appropriate

skills.

10. Managers [and practitioners] avoid best practices

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and lessons learned.
 The Management Spectum

How does a manager act to avoid the problems just

noted:
Start on the right foot. This is accomplished by working hard
(very hard) to understand the problem that is to be solved and
then setting realistic objectives and expectations for everyone
who will be involved in the project.

Maintain momentum:Many projects get off to a good start and

then slowly disintegrate.The team should emphasize quality in
every task it performs, and senior management
should do everything possible to stay out of the team’s way.

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 The Management Spectum

Track progress. For a software project, progress is tracked as work

products (e.g., models, source code, sets of test cases) are produced and
approved (using technical reviews) as part of a quality assurance
activity.
Make smart decisions. In essence, the decisions of the project manager
and the software team should be to “keep it simple

Conduct a postmortem analysis. Establish a consistent mechanism for

extracting lessons learned for each project. Evaluate the planned and
actual schedules, collect and analyze software project metrics, get
feedback from team members and customers, and record findings in
written form
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 Why Is Project Management
Important?
1. Strategic Alignment

Project management is important because it ensures what is being

delivered, is right, and will deliver real value against the business
opportunity.
2 Leadership

Project management is important because it brings leadership and

direction to projects.
3. Clear Focus & Objectives
Project management is important because it ensures there’s a proper plan
for executing on strategic goals
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 Why Is Project Management
Important?
3. Clear Focus & Objectives

Project management is important because it ensures there’s a

proper plan for executing on strategic goals

4. Realistic Project Planning

Project management is important because it ensures proper

expectations are set around what can be delivered, by when,
and for how much.

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 5. Risk Management

Project management is important because it ensures risks

are properly managed and mitigated against to avoid
becoming issues.

6. Orderly Process

Project management is important because it ensure the right people do the

right things,at the right time – it ensures proper project management
process is followed throughout the project life cycle.

7. Continuous Oversight

Project management is important because it ensures a

project’s progress is tracked and reported properly.
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 8. Subject Matter Expertise

Project management is important because someone needs to be

able to understand if everyone’s doing what they should.

9. Managing and Learning from Success and Failure

Project management is important because it learns from the

successes and failures of the past.

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 Software projects versus other
types of project

Invisibility -When a physical artifact such as a bridge or road is

being constructed the progress being made can actually be seen.
With software, progress is not immediately visible.

Complexity -software products contain more complexity than other

engineered artefacts.

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 Software projects versus other
types of project

Flexibility- The ease with which software can be changed is usually

seen as one of its strengths. The software systems are likely to be
subject to a high degree of change.

Conformity–
Software developers have to conform to the requirement of
human clients. It is not just that individuals can be
inconsistent.

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 Some ways of categorizing projects

•Compulsory versus voluntary users

•Information systems versus embedded systems
• objective-based versus product-base
•Outsourced projects

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• Voluntary systems :Here it is difficult to get precise requirements
from potential users as we could with a business system such as
computer games .

•Compulsory systems: In workplaces there are systems that staff

have to use if they want to do something, such as recording a sale.

• Information systems(Enable staff to carry out office processes) :. A

stock control system would be an information system

Embedded systems(-which controls machine) An embedded, or

process control, system might control the air conditioning equipment
in a building.

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• Objective-based versus product-based-Project may be distinguished
by whether their aim is to produce a product or meet certain
objectives.

With objective-based projects, a general objective or problem is

defined, and there are several different ways in which that objective
could be reached. The project team have freedom to select what
appears to be the most appropriate approach.

With product-based projects, the product is already very strictly

defined and the development team’s job is to implement the
specification with which they have been presented.
Out-sourced: while developing a large project sometimes it makes
good commercial sense for a company to outsourse some parts of its
work to another companies

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 Stakeholders
These are people who have a stake or interest in the
project
●Internal to the project team This means that they will be under the
direct managerial control of the project leader.

● External to the project team but within the same organization:

For example, the project leader might need the assistance of the
users to carry out systems testing. Here the commitment of the
people involved has to be negotiated.

● External to both the project team and the organization External

stakeholders may be customers (or users) who will benefit from
the system that the project implements.

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 Setting objectives
Among all these stakeholders are those who actually own the project.
They control the financing of the project.

They also set the objectives of the project. The objectives should define
what the project team must achieve for project success.

Objectives should be SMART

S–specific, that is, concrete and well-defined

M–measurable, that is, satisfaction of the objective can be objectively

judged

A–achievable, that is, it is within the power of the individual or group

concerned to meet the target

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 Setting objectives

R–relevant, the objective must relevant to the true purpose of the

project

T–time constrained: there is defined point in time by which the

objective should be achieved

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 The Business Case
A business case is developed during the early stages of a project and
outlines the why, what, how, and who necessary to decide if it is
worthwhile continuing a project.

One of the first things you need to know when starting a new project
are the benefits of the proposed business change and how to
communicate those benefits to the business.

The business case, which is first developed during the project

initiation phase, has much more detail and should be reviewed by the
project sponsor and key stakeholders before being accepted,
rejected,, deferred, or revised.

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 Why you need a business case

Preparing the business case involves an assessment of:

Business problem or opportunity

Benefits

Risk

Costs including investment appraisal

Technical solutions

Timescale

Impact on operations

Organizational capability to deliver the project outcomes

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 The Business Case

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 Project Sucess and Failure

 The project plan should be designed to

ensure project success by preserving
business case for the project.
 We can distinguish between project
objectives and business objectives.
The project objectives are the targets that
the team is expected to achieve
 In case of software project,they can usually
be summarized as delivering
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  1 The agreed functionality
 2 to the required level of quality
 3 on time
 4 within budget
the project could meet these targets but the
application once delivered could fail to meet
the business case.A computer game could
be delivered on time and within budject,but
might then not sell
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  A commercial website used for online sale
could be created successfully,but
customers might not use it to buy
product,because they could buy the goods
more cheaply elsewhere
 We have seen that in business terms it
can generally be said that a project is a
success if the value of benefits exceed the
cost.
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 MANAGENT ACTIVITIES
 Planning-Deciding what is to be done
 Organizing-making arrangements
 Staffing-selecting the right people for the job
 Directing-giving instructions
 Monitoring-checking on progress
 Controlling-taking action to remedy holds up
 Innovating-comming up with new solutions
 Representing-cooprrate with
clients,users,developers,suppliers and other
stakeholders

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 MANAGEMENT CONTROL

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 Traditional vs Modern Project
Management

Planning Incremental Delivery:

The traditional long-term planning has given way to adaptive
short-term planning.

Instead of making a long-term project completion plan, the project

manager now plans all incremental deliveries with evolving
functionalities.

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 Traditional vs Modern Project
Management

Quality Management :Of late, customer awareness about product

quality has increased signifi cantly.
Tasks associated with quality management have become an important
responsibility of the project manager.
The key responsibilities of a project manager now include assessment
of project progress and tracking the quality of all intermediate
artifacts.

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 Traditional vs Modern Project
Management

Change Management : Earlier, when the requirements were signed off

by the customer, any changes to the requirements were rarely
entertained.

Now , the project manager plays a key role in product base lining and
version control. This has made change management a crucial
responsibility of the project manager

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