This material covers introduction to the Software Project Planning activities.And how each planning activity to be carried out for the successful completion of the software project.
2. INTRODUCTION-SPM
Software Project Management(SPM) is defined as the task of managing the
various project planning activities namely
Planning
Organizing
Staffing
Directing and
Controlling the project team.
In other words, it is termed as the management of any software to be
developed within the stipulated time , with the allocated team members ,
estimated budget ,and within the time limit .
3. ELEMENTS OF SOFTWARE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
The various elements of Software Project Management are nothing but,
Planning ,Organizing , Staffing, Directing and Controlling the project
team.
In Planning, the Project Manager usually plans all sorts of activities to be
carried out for the successful delivery of the software.
In Organizing , the project team members are decided , assigned the
tasks for the completion of the software.
Staffing deals with the selection of the software team, intended for
development as well as training of the software to the team.
4. ELEMENTS OF SOFTWARE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT-Cont’d
Directing, is nothing but the capability of the team manager to Lead the
entire project team, motivate the team members for successful and timely
completion of the project.
The Monitoring or controlling is the overall monitoring of the software
project by the project manager, for the fruitful completion of the project ,
along with the risk identification that could hampers the project completion.
It also looks into the budget exceedance, completion of the project duration,
if it exceeds beyond the already planned budget and schedule .
5. ELEMENTS OF SOFTWARE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT-Cont’d
The Controlling phase deals with the identification software risks and the
overall risk management related to the entire software project.
Controlling is an activity in which we control all the things involved in
software production.
Can be thought of as software project management activity if any activities
take more time than assigned time.
Controlling the software risk by risk assessment.
Controlling faults and errors by software testing etc.
6. Software Project Planning
Software Project Planning is an important activity, for the commencement of
any software project:
First , we have to Produce an activity plan for the software project
Second, do the Estimatimation of the overall duration of the project
Then ,Create the critical path and precedence network for the project
7. Software Project Planning-Project Scheduling
For effective Software Project Scheduling ,
The Project Manger should ensure that the appropriate resources will be
available precisely, when required.
Schedule the planning activities in such a way to avoid different activities
competing for the same resources at the same time.
A detailed schedule of the project showing which staff carry out each activity,
must be readily available.
8. Objectives of Software project planning
and Scheduling.
Completing the project within a minimum time at an acceptable cost is
highly important for any software project.
Meeting the set target dates at minimum cost is needed for any software
project to be a successful one.
One effective way of shortening project duration is to carry out activities
in parallel
Not all activities can be carried out in parallel .
9. Objectives of Activity Planning.
The following points can be considered as the main objectives of
Software Activity Planning:
Providing of project and resource schedules.
Feasibility assessment: to find out whether the project is possible within
required time limits?
Resource allocation: Mentioning of the most effective way of allocating
resources are to be listed out in the detailed project planning.
10. Objectives of Activity Planning-Cont’d
Detailed costing: How much will be the project cost and when that
expenditure utilization to take place? , should be mentioned.
Motivation: Providing targets is an effective way of motivating staff.
Coordination: About coordinating with other team , i.e; when do other staff
will be available?
11. References
Walker Royce, “Software Project Management A Unified Framework”, Pearson
Education, Fifth Edition, 2009.
Ramesh Gopalaswamy, “Managing Global Projects”, Tata McGraw Hill, First
Edition, 2006.
Bob Hughes, Mikecotterell, “Software Project Management”, Tata McGraw
Hill, Third Edition, 2004.
Robert T. Futrell, Donald F. Shefer and Linda I. Shefer, “Quality Software
Project Management”, Pearson Education, 2003.
S. A. Kelkar,” Software Project Management” PHI, 2012.
