UNIT 1:

INTRODUCTION TO
SOFTWARE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
Includes…
Er. Uttam Karki (PhD Scholar)
1. Software Engineering problem and software
product, software product attributes
2. Definition of Software Project, Software Project
Versus Other projects
3. Activities covered y SPM, Categorizingg SPs
4. Project Management Cycle, SPM framework, types
of project plan
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What is a project?
• Dictionary definition – a planned activity
• Being planned assumes that to a large extent we can determine how we are
going to carry out a task before we start.
• Planning sometimes may not be an essence.
▫ for example; routine maintenance : might have been performed so many times that
everyone involved knows exactly what needs to be done, and thus planning
hardly seems necessary but the procedures might need to be documented to
ensure consistency and to help newcomers to the job.
• The first time you do a routine task ‐‐‐‐‐‐ > > it will be like a project.
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Characteristics of a Project
• non routine tasks are involved
• planning is required
• specific objectives are to be met or specified product is to be created
• the project has a pre‐determined time span
• work is carried out for someone other than yourself
• work involves several specialism
• work is carried out in several phases
• the resources that are available for use on the project are constrained
• the project is large or complex
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What is a Software Project?

• Collection and integration of various components of the software
• Begins with the early investigation and ends with implementation
• A complete life cycle of software development can been seen…
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What is management?
• The Open University Software Project management module (1987) suggested
that management involves the following activities:
▫ Planning: deciding what is to be done;
▫ Organizing: making arrangements ;
▫ Staffing: selecting the right people for the right job;
▫ Directing: giving instructions;
▫ Monitoring: checking on progress;
▫ Controlling: taking action to remedy hold ups;
▫ Innovating: Coming up with new solutions;
▫ Representing: coordinate with users;
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Software project versus other types of project

• The product of software project have certain characteristics which make them
different.
▫ Invisibility: When a physical artifact such a bridge or road is being constructed the
progress being made can actually be seen. With software, progress is not immediately
visible.

▫ Complexity: Per dollar, pound or euro spent, software products contain more
complexity than other engineered artifacts.

▫ Conformity: The traditional engineer is usually working with physical systems and
physical materials like cement and steel. These systems can have some complexity
but are governed by physical laws that are consistent. Software developers have to
confirm to the requirements of human clients that certainly keeps on fluctuating.

▫ Flexibility: The ease with which software can be changed is usually seen as one of its
strengths. Software systems are subject to a high degree of change.
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Activities covered by SPM

• A software project is not only concerned with the actual writing of software.
• “Off the shelf software” ???
▫ Is still fundamentally a software project as so many of the other elements associated with this
type of project is present.
• Three successive processes bring a new system into being.

Feasibility Study How do

we do
it?

Is it Plan
worth DO it!
doing?

Project
Execution
Fig: The feasibility study/plan/execution cycle
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Activities covered by SPM (contd…)

• The feasibility study:
▫ Is an investigation into whether a prospective project is worth starting or
not ?
▫ Information gathering (about the proposed application)
▫ Probable development and operational costs ???
▫ Estimation of benefits from new system.
▫ A strategic planning for the following studies
🞄 Technical – hardware, software infrastructure ???
🞄 Economical – investment vs rate of return???
🞄 Legal – legal procedures, IT policy, cyber law, cyber ethics ????
🞄 Operational – will the system come into operation as per the requirement or
not????
🞄 Schedule – tentative time period of completion
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Activities covered by SPM (contd…)

• Contents list for a feasibility study
▫ Introduction : identifies what the
document is;
▫ Description of the current situation;
▫ Problem description;
▫ Proposed development;
🞄 Business and financial aspects
🞄 Technical aspects
🞄 Organizational aspects;
▫ Estimated costs
🞄 Development costs
🞄 Operational costs;
▫ Envisaged benefits;
▫ Recommendation;
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Activities covered by SPM (contd…)

• Planning:
▫ Starts of the feasibility study proves to be viable
▫ For a large project, detailed planning is not done right at the beginning.
▫ An outline is formulated for the whole project and detailed planning is done for the first
stage.
▫ Detailed planning of later stages is done as they approach >>>>>> this is done because we
would have more detailed and accurate information upon which to base our plans nearer to the
start of the later stages.
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Activities covered by SPM (contd…)

• Contents list for a project plan
▫ Introduction;
▫ Background: including reference to the business case;
▫ Project objectives;
▫ Constraints : these could be included with project objectives
▫ Project products: both deliverable products that the client will receive and
intermediate products;
▫ Methods;
▫ Activities to be carried out;
▫ Resources to be used;
▫ Risks to the project;
▫ Management of the project, including
🞄 Organizational responsibilities
🞄 Management of quality
🞄 Configuration of quality
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Activities covered by SPM (contd…)

• Project Execution:
▫ The project can now be executed.
▫ Often contains two subphases
🞄 Design
🞄 Implementation
▫ Design is thinking and making decisions about the precise form of the products that the project is to
create.
▫ This could be the user interface design or the data flow design or internal architecture design.
▫ Implementation refers to the real time execution of the final product of the software project.
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A typical project life

cycle
Requirement Specification Design
Analysis

Implementation/ Verification and Coding

Installation validation

Maintenance and
Support

Fig: Project Life Cycle

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A typical project life cycle

(contd…)
• Requirement Analysis:
▫ This is finding out in detail what the users require of the system that the project is to
implement. Some works along these lines will almost certainly have been carried out
when the project was evaluated, but now the original information obtained needs to be
updated and supplemented. Several different approaches to the users’ requirements
may be explored.
• Specification:
▫ Detailed documentation of what the proposed system is to do.
• Design:
▫ A design has be to drawn up which meets the specification.
▫ Design will be in two stages.
▫ One will be the external or user design concerned with the external appearance of the
application.
▫ The other produces the physical design which tackles the way that the data and software
and procedures are to be structured internally.
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A typical project life cycle

(contd…)
• Coding:
▫ This may refer to writing code in a programming language or use any application
builder.
▫ Even where software is not being built from scratch, some modification to the base
package could be required to meet the needs of the new application.
• Verification and Validation:
▫ Whether software is developed specially for the current application or not, careful
testing will be needed to check that the proposed system meets its requirements.
• Implementation/Installation
▫ Whole of the project after design VS. installation of the system after the software has been
developed
▫ The later case includes setting up operational data files and system parameters, writing
user manuals and training users of the new system.
• Maintenance and Support
▫ Once the system goes live, there is a continuous need for error correction as well as
extensions and improvements to the system
▫ May be corrective, adaptive or perfective.
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Categorizing Software Projects

1. INFORMATION SYSTEMS VS. EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
▫ A distinction may be made between information systems and embedded systems.

Information System Embedded System ( Real Time /

Industrial Systems )
It interfaces with the organization. It interfaces with a machine.

A stock control system that controls when A process control system that may have
the organization reorders stock. elements of the air conditioning equipment
in a building

Would an operating system on a computer be an information system or an embedded

system?
Many large organizations that are committed to computer based information systems
specialists
have responsible for the maintenance of operating systems. However, an operating
Answer ???
system is primarily concerned with driving the hardware it is argues that is has more in
common with embedded system.
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Categorizing Software Projects

2. OBJECTIVES VS. PRODUCTS
▫ Projects may be distinguished by whether their aim is to produce a product or to meet an
objective.
Objectives Products

The project may be required to meet A project might be to create a product, the
certain objectives. details of which have been specified by
the client.
The first stage of a project is always The objective driven project a software
objective driven product.
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Concept Check???
• Brightmouth College is a higher education institution which used to be managed by a local
government authority but has now become autonomous. Its payroll is still administered by
the local authority and pay slips and other output are produced in the local authority’s
computer center. The authority now charges the college for this service. The college
management are of the opinion that it would be cheaper to obtain an “off‐the‐shelf” payroll
package and do the payroll processing themselves.

• Would the project to implement an independent payroll system be an objective driven

project or a product driven project?

.
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Problems with Software Project

• One way of deciding what ought to be covered in SPM is to consider what the
problems are that it should address.

• Commonly experienced problems from manager’s point of view

• Poor estimates and plans

• Lack of quality standards and measures
• Lack of guidance about making organizational decisions
• Lack of techniques to make progress visible
• Poor role definition – who does what?
• Incorrect success criteria
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Problems with Software Project

• Commonly experienced problems from other stakeholders (Staff who make up the members
of the project team)
• Inadequate specification of work
• Management ignorance of IT
• Lack of knowledge of application area
• Lack of standard
• Lack of up to date documentation
• Narrow scope of technical expertise
• Changing software environment
• Changing statutory requirements
• Deadline pressure
• Lack of quality control
• Remote management
• Lack of training
• Lack of communication between users and technicians
• Lack of commitment
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Problems with Software Project

• Commonly experienced problems by the customers
• The US Internal Revenue System was to abandon its tax system modernization programme
after having spent $4 billion.
• The state of California spent $1 billion on its non functional welfare database system
• The 339 million pound UK air traffic control system was reported as being two
years behind schedule.
• In the UK, a Home Office Immigration service computerization project was reported as
having missed two deadlines and was nine months late.
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Types of Project Plan

Plan Description
Quality plan Describes the quality procedures and standards that will
be used in a project.
Validation plan Describes the approach, resources
and schedule used for system
validation.
Configuration
management plan Describes the configuration management
procedures and structures to be used.
Maintenance plan
Predicts the maintenance requirements of the system,
maintenance costs and effort required.
Staff development plan
Describes how will
team members the be
skills and experience of the project
developed.
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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
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The Project Control Cycle

The Real
World

Data
Collection
d
Define a
Objectives t
Processing
a
Datainformatio
n
Modelling Making
Decisions/Plans
decisions
Implementation
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ASSIGNMENT -1
• Paul Duggan is the manager of a software development section. On Tuesday at 11 a.m.
he hand his fellow section heads have a meeting with their group manager about the
staffing requirements for the coming year. Paul has already drafted a document
“bidding” for staff. This is based on the work planned for his section for the next year.
The document is discussed at the meeting. At 2:00 pm Paul has a meeting with his senior
staff about an important project his section is undertaking. One of the programming staff
has just had a road accident and will be in hospital for some time. It is decided that the
project can be kept on schedule by transferring another team member from less urgent
work to this project. A temporary replacement is to be brought in to do the less urgent
work, but this may take a week or so to arrange. Paul has to phone both the personnel
manager about getting a replacement and the user for whom the less urgent work is
being done explaining why it is likely to be delayed.

• Identify of the eight management responsibilities listed above Paul

which
responding to at different
was points during his day.
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Assignment # 2 (Submit a softcopy with necessary details

• Brightmouth College is a higher education institution which used to be managed by a local

government authority but has now become autonomous. Its payroll is still administered by
the local authority and pay slips and other output are produced in the local authority’s
computer center. The authority now charges the college for this service. The college
management are of the opinion that it would be cheaper to obtain an “off‐the‐shelf” payroll
package and do the payroll processing themselves.

• What would be the main stages of the project to convert to independent payroll processing
by the college? Bearing in mind that an off‐the‐shelf package is to be used, how would this
project differ from one where the software was to be written from scratch?