Project planning is an important part of software project management that involves breaking down the work, allocating resources, and creating a schedule. It occurs at three stages: proposal, project startup, and periodically throughout the project. The project plan sets out the resources, work breakdown structure, and schedule. It identifies risks and describes the organization, requirements, activities, milestones, and monitoring mechanisms. The planning process establishes constraints and assesses parameters, defines deliverables and milestones, draws up and updates the schedule, and reviews progress, revising estimates as needed.

1. CS8494-Software Engineering
Software Project Planning
By,
V.Sutha Jebakumari, AP/CSE
KCET.

2. Project Planning
Software project management process
begins with project planning
Objective of software project planning -
to provide a framework for manager to
make reasonable estimates of
resources, costs and schedules

3. Project planning
The most important job of a software
project manager who has to break down
the work into parts and assign these to
project team members, anticipate
problems that might arise, and prepare
tentative solutions to those problems.
The project plan, which is created at the
start of a project, is used to communicate
how the work will be done to the project
team and customers, and to help assess
progress on the project.

4. Project planning takes place at
three stages
1. At the proposal stage
- when bidding for a contract to develop or
provide a software system.
-to decide if we have the resources to
complete the work and to work out the price
that we should quote to a customer.

5. 2. During the project startup
phase
During the project startup phase
• who will work on the project
• how the project will be broken down into
increments
• how resources will be allocated across
the company, etc.

6. 3. Periodically throughout the
project
While modifying the plan in light of
experience gained and information from
monitoring the progress of the work.
The software requirements are likely to
change and therefore the work
breakdown has to be altered and the
schedule extended.

7. Project plans
A project plan sets out the resources
available to the project, the work
breakdown, and a schedule for carrying
out the work.
The plan should identify risks to the
project and the software under
development, and the approach that is
taken to risk management.

8. Project plan structure
Introduction
Project organisation
Risk analysis
Hardware and software resource
requirements
Work breakdown
Project schedule
Monitoring and reporting mechanisms

9. 1. Introduction
This briefly describes the objectives of
the project and sets out the constraints
(e.g., budget, time, etc.) that affect the
management of the project.

10. 2. Project organization
This describes the way in which the
development team is organized, the
people involved, and their roles in the
team.

11. 3. Risk analysis
This describes possible project risks,
the likelihood of these risks arising, and
the risk reduction strategies that are
proposed.

12. 4. Hardware and software
resource requirements
This specifies the hardware and support
software required to carry out the
development. If hardware has to be
bought, estimates of the prices and the
delivery schedule may be included

13. 5. Work breakdown
This sets out the breakdown of the
project into activities and identifies the
milestones and deliverables associated
with each activity.
Milestones are key stages in the project
where progress can be assessed;
deliverables are work products that are
delivered to the customer.

14. 6. Project schedule
This shows the dependencies between
activities, the estimated time required to
reach each milestone, and the
allocation of people to activities.

15. 7. Monitoring and reporting
mechanisms
This defines the management reports
that should be produced, when these
should be produced, and the project
monitoring mechanisms to be used.

16. Project plan supplements
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 the skills and experience of
the project team members will be
developed.

17. The planning process

18. 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 cancelledloop
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