Software Project Management

Irfan Ahmad Muddassir.

Objectives:

 PM Knowledge Areas
 Introduction to PM Tools
 Technical Fundamentals in SPM
 Lifecycle Relationship
 Classical Mistakes: Product-Process-People-
Technology
Project Phases
 All projects are divided into phases
 All phases together are known as the Project
Life Cycle
 Each phase is marked by completion of
Deliverables
 PM Knowledge Areas
PM Process Initiating Process Planning Process Group Executing Process Group Monitoring & Controlling Closing
Groups / Group Process Group Process
Knowledge Area Group
Processes

Project Develop Project Charter Develop Project Management Direct and Manage Project Monitor and Control Project Work Close Project
Management Develop Prelim Project Plan Execution Integrated Change Control
Integration Scope Statement

Project Scope Scope Planning Scope Verification

Management Scope Definition Scope Control
Create WBS

Project Time Activity Definition & Sequencing Schedule Control

Management Resource Estimating
Duration Estimating
Schedule Development

Project Cost Cost Estimating Cost Control

Management Cost Budgeting

Project Quality Quality Planning Perform Quality Assurance Perform Quality Control
Management

Project HR Human Resources Planning Acquire Project Team Manage Project Team
Management Develop Project Team

Project Communications Planning Information Distribution Performance Reporting

Communications Manage Stakeholders
Management

Project Risk Risk Management Planning Risk Monitoring and Control

Management Risk Identification
Qualitative / Quantitative Risk
Analysis
Risk Response Planning

Project Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Request Seller Responses Contract Administration Contract
Procurement Plan Contracting Select Sellers Closure
Management
Project Management Tools
Tools & Techniques by Knowledge Area
Work breakdown example
PM Tools - Software
 Low-end
 Basic features, tasks management, charting
 MS Excel, Milestones Simplicity
 Mid-market
 Handle larger projects, multiple projects, analysis tools
 MS Project (approx. 50% of market)
 High-end
 Very large projects, specialized needs, enterprise
 AMS Realtime
 Primavera Project Manager
Technical Fundamentals
 Requirements
 Analysis
 Design
 Construction
 Quality Assurance
 Deployment
Lifecycle Relationships
Classical mistakes
 People related

 Process related

 Product related

 Technology related
People Related
 Undermined motivation – Studies have shown that giving suspicious talks at
the beginning, asking to work overtime reduces the motivation of the people.
Sometimes team leaders take long vacations while team is working overnights. The
researchers highlighted that team lead has to work along with other team members
is a positive motivation.
 Weak personnel – If a team need an efficient development throughout the
project, the recruitment needs to hire talented developers. Also carefully filter
people who could do most of the work until the end of the project.
 Uncontrolled problem employees – Failure to take actions for problems with
team members and team leads will eventually affect the development speed. Some
higher management should actively look into those and sort out.

 Heroics – Heroics within the team increases the risk and discourages cooperation
among the other members of the team
 Adding people to a late project – Adding new people when the project is
behind schedule, can take more productivity away from team members.
Process Related
 Overly optimistic schedules – This sort of scheduling will result in failure by
under-scoping the project and hurt long-term morale and productivity of the
developers.
 Insufficient risk management – If projects risks are not actively managed, the
project will lead in to slow-development mode.
 Contractor failure – weak relationship with contractors can lead to slow-down
the project
 Insufficient planning
 Short-changed upstream activities – Start coding without properly design the
project plans will costs 10 or 100 times than doing it with properly designed plans.
 Short-changed quality assurance – Eliminating design and code reviews,
eliminating test planning and do only perfunctory testing will reduce the
development of the project and ends up with major bugs.
 Omitting necessary tasks from estimates – People forget about the less
visible tasks and those tasks add up.
 Code-like-hell programming – Developers should be sufficiently motivated
rather forcing them to work hard.
Product Related
 Requirements gold-planting – More requirements that are not really
necessary, and pay less attention on complex features.

 Feature creep – On average 25% of requirements can be changed and affect the
project schedule.

 Developer gold planting – It is frequent that developers attempt to try new

technologies that they saw in other projects, which is not actually necessary.
Technology Related
 Silver-bullet syndrome – Thinking that certain approach
will solve every issue.
 Overestimated savings from new tools or methods –
New practices will introduce a new risk as team has to go through a
learning-curve to become familiar.
 Switching tools in the middle of a project – Using new tools
will add a learning curve, rework and inevitable mistakes to project schedule
 Lack of automated source-code control – If two or more
developers are working on the same part of the project, it is necessary to
adhere to source-code control practices. If not developers have to spend time
on resolving conflicting changes.
THANK YOU