Software Engineering

PREPARED BY :YORDANOS A.

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 Lecture Seven: Software Project Management
❑ Software project management is the process of planning, organizing, and
overseeing the development, testing, and deployment of software products.

❑ It involves managing resources, timelines, budgets, and risks to ensure that

the software project is completed on time, within budget, and to the
satisfaction of the stakeholders.

❑The software project manager is responsible for coordinating the work of

software developers, testers, and other project team members to achieve
project goals.

❑ Effective software project management is critical to the success of any

software development project.
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 Causes of Project Management Failure

❖Bad Communications

❖Poor schedule or resource Management (mismanagement)

❖Weak requirements definitions (leads to inadequate planning)

❖Inadequate planning, assumptions, risks, or resources

❖Use of new or unproven technologies/methods

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▪ Software development can be seen split in two parts:
1) Software Creation
2) Software Project Management

A project is well-defined task, which is a collection of several operations

done in order to achieve a goal (for example, software development and
delivery).

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 ❑ Project can be characterized as:
✓ Every project may have a unique and distinct goal.
✓ Project comes with a start and end time.
✓ Project ends when its goal is achieved.
✓Project needs adequate resources in terms of time, manpower, finance,
material, and knowledge-bank.

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 Software Project
▪ A Software Project is the complete procedure of software development
from requirement gathering to testing and maintenance, carried out
according to the execution methodologies, in a specified period of time to
achieve intended software product.

Need of software project management

▪ Software is said to be an intangible product. Software development is a
kind of all new stream in world business and there is very little experience
in building software products.
▪ The most important is that the underlying technology changes and
advances so frequently and rapidly that the experience of one product may
not be applied to the other one.
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▪ All such business and environmental constraints bring risk in software
development hence it is essential to manage software projects efficiently.

The image above shows triple constraints for software projects.

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▪ It is an essential part of software organization to deliver quality product,
keeping the cost within client’s budget constrain and deliver the project as
per scheduled.

▪ There are several factors, both internal and external, which may impact
this triple constrain triangle. Any of the three factors can severely impact
the other two.

▪ Therefore, software project management is essential to incorporate user

requirements along with budget and time constraints.

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 Software Project Manager

▪ A software project manager is a person who undertakes the responsibility

of executing the software project.
▪ A project manager closely monitors the development process, prepares
and executes various plans, arranges necessary and adequate resources,
maintains communication among all team members in order to address
issues of cost, budget, resources, time, quality and customer
satisfaction.

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❑ Let us see few responsibilities that a project manager shoulders
Managing People
Act as project leader
discuses with stakeholders
Managing human resources
Setting up reporting hierarchy etc.

Managing Project
Defining and setting up project scope
Managing project management activities
Monitoring progress and performance
Risk analysis at every phase
Take necessary step to avoid or come out of problems
Act as project spokesperson
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 Software Management Activities

▪ Software project management comprises of a number of activities,

which contains planning of project, deciding scope of software product,
estimation of cost in various terms, scheduling of tasks and events, and
resource management.
▪ Project management activities may include:

Project Planning
Scope Management
Project Estimation

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▪ Project Planning
Software project planning is task, which is performed before the
production of software actually starts.

➢ Scope Management
▪ It defines scope of the project; this includes all the activities, process
need to be done in order to make a deliverable software product.

Scope management is essential because it creates boundaries of the

project by clearly defining what would be done in the project and what
would not be done.

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During Project Scope management, it is necessary to -
Define the scope
Decide its verification and control
Divide the project into various smaller parts for ease of management.
Verify the scope
Control the scope by incorporating changes to the scope

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 Project Estimation

▪ For an effective management, accurate estimation of various measures is

a must. With the correct estimation, managers can manage and control
the project more efficiently and effectively.

Project estimation may involve the following

Software size estimation

▪ Software size may be estimated either in terms of KLOC (Kilo Line of
Code) or by calculating number of function points in the software.
▪ Lines of code depend upon coding practices. Function points vary
according to the user or software requirement.

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 Effort estimation
▪ The manager estimates efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-
hour required to produce the software. For effort estimation software size
should be known.
▪ This can either be derived by manager’s experience, historical data of
organization, or software size can be converted into efforts by using some
standard formulae.
Time estimation
▪ Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the
software can be estimated.
▪ Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the requirement
specifications and interdependency of various components of software.
▪ Software tasks are divided into smaller tasks, activities or events by Work
Breakthrough Structure (WBS). The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day
basis or in calendar months.
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 Cost estimation
▪ This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on
more elements than any of the previous ones. For estimating project cost,
it is required to consider
Size of the software
Software quality
Hardware
Additional software or tools, licenses etc.
Skilled personnel with task-specific skills
Travel involved
Communication
Training and support

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 Project Estimation Techniques
▪ Project manager can estimate the listed factors using two broadly
recognized techniques.

Decomposition Technique
This technique assumes the software as a product of various compositions.
There are two main models -
Line of Code: Here the estimation is done on behalf of number of line of
codes in the software product.
Function Points: Here the estimation is done on behalf of number of
function points in the software product.

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 Project Scheduling

▪ Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be

done with specified order and within time slot allotted to each activity.
▪ Arrangement of tasks which lies out of critical path are less likely to impact
over all schedule of the project.

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For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -
Break down the project tasks into smaller, manageable form
Find out various tasks and correlate them
Estimate time frame required for each task
Divide time into work-units
Assign adequate number of work-units for each task
Calculate total time required for the project from start to finish

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 Project Risk Management
▪ Risk management involves all activities pertaining to identification,
analyzing and making provision for predictable and non-predictable risks in
the project.
Risk may include the following:
Experienced staff leaving the project and new staff coming in.
Change in organizational management.
Requirement change or misinterpreting requirement.
Under-estimation of required time and resources.
Technological changes, environmental changes, business competition.

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Risk Management Process
There are following activities involved in risk management process:
Identification - Make note of all possible risks, which may occur in the
project.
Categorize - Categorize known risks into high, medium and low risk
intensity as per their possible impact on the project.
Manage - Analyze the probability of occurrence of risks at various phases.
Make plan to avoid or face risks. Attempt to minimize their side-effects.
Monitor - Closely monitor the potential risks and their early symptoms.
Also monitor the effective steps taken to mitigate or avoid them.

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 Project Communication Management
➢ Effective communication plays vital role in the success of a project.
➢ It bridges gaps between client and the organization, among the team
members as well as other stake holders in the project such as hardware
suppliers.
➢ Communication can be oral or written. Communication management
process may have the following steps:

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Planning - This step includes the identifications of all the stakeholders in the project
and the mode of communication among them. It also considers if any additional
communication facilities are required.
Sharing - After determining various aspects of planning, manager focuses on sharing
correct information with the correct person at the correct time.
This keeps every one involved in the project up-to-date with project
progress and its status.
Feedback - Project managers use various measures and feedback
mechanism and create status and performance reports. This mechanism
ensures that input from various stakeholders is coming to the project
manager as their feedback.
Closure - At the end of each major event, end of a phase of SDLC or end of the
project itself, administrative closure is formally announced to update every
stakeholder by sending email, by distributing a hardcopy of document or by other
mean of effective communication.
After closure, the team moves to next phase or
project.
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