Unit 7

Software Process Management

Contents
Introduction to Software Project Management
 Rationale Management
 Configuration Management
 Activities of Software Project Management
 Structure of Project Plan
 Software Engineering Teams
 Software Cost Estimation
 Project Scheduling
 Tracking and Monitoring

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What is Software Project Management?

Project management encompasses all the activities

needed to plan and execute a project:
i) Deciding what needs to be done
ii) Estimating costs
iii)Ensuring there are suitable people to undertake the
project
iv) Defining responsibilities
v) Scheduling
vi) Making arrangements for the work
vii) Directing
viii) Being a technical leader
What is Software Project Management?
ix) Reviewing and approving decisions made by others
x) Building morale and supporting staff
xi) Monitoring and controlling
xii) Co-ordinating the work with managers of other projects
xiii) Reporting
xiv) Continually striving to improve the process

Note: Software process models are general approaches for organizing a project
into activities. They help the project manager and his or her team to decide:
—What work should be done;
—In what sequence to perform the work.
Choosing a process model
When planning a particular project, one can combine the best features
of the models.
• From the waterfall model one can
—Incorporate the notion of stages.
• From the phased-release model one can
—Incorporate the notion of doing some initial high-level analysis,
and then dividing the project into releases.
• From the spiral model one can
—Incorporate prototyping and risk analysis.
• From the evolutionary model one can
—Incorporate the notion of varying amounts of time and work,
with overlapping releases.
• From concurrent engineering one can
—Incorporate the notion of breaking the system down into
components and developing them in parallel.
Reengineering

Periodically project managers should set aside some time

to re-engineer part or all of the system
• The extent of this work can vary considerably:
—Cleaning up the code to make it more readable.
—Completely replacing a layer.
—Re-factoring part of the design.
• In general, the objective of a re-engineering activity is to
increase maintainability.
 Rationale Management
Rationale is the justification of decisions. (The models described
until now represent the system)
Rationale models represent the reasoning that leads to the
system, including its functionality and its implementation.
Rationale includes
• the issues that were addressed
• the alternatives that were considered
• the decisions that were made to resolve the issues
• the criteria that were used to guide decisions
• the debate developers went through to reach a decision.
Note: Slicing Ham Problem :: The rationale model represents why a given system
is structured and behaves the way it does. Why should we capture the why?

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An Overview of Rationale
A rationale is the motivation behind a decision. It includes
• Issue: To each decision corresponds an issue to be solved so
that development can proceed. An important part of the
rationale is a description of the specific issue that is being solved.
Issues are usually phrased as questions.
Eg: How should a ham be cooked?
• Alternatives: Alternatives are possible solutions that could
address the issue under consideration. These include
alternatives that were explored but discarded because they did not
satisfy one or more criteria.
Eg: Buying a wide stove costs too much.
• Criteria: Criteria are desirable qualities that the selected solution
should satisfy.
Eg: a recipe for ham should be realizable on standard
kitchen equipment. 8
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• Argumentation: Cooking and software development
decisions are not algorithmic. Cooks and developers
discover issues, try solutions, and argue their relative
benefits. It is only after much discussion that a
consensus is reached or a decision imposed. Argumentation
occurs during all aspects of the decision process,
including criteria, justifications, explored alternatives,
and trade-offs
. • Decisions: A decision is the resolution of an issue
representing the selected alternative according to the
criteria that were used for evaluation and the
justification of the selection.
Eg: Cutting an inch off each end of a ham

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Configuration management

Configuration management is the process of controlling and

monitoring change to work products. Once a baseline is
defined, configuration management minimizes the risks
associated with changes by defining a formal approval and
tracking process for changes.

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Configuration Management Activities
• Configuration item identification is the modeling of the
system as a set of evolving components.
• Promotion management is the creation of versions for
other developers.
• Release management is the creation of versions for the
client and the users.
• Branch management is the management of concurrent
development.
• Variant management is the management of versions
intended to coexist.
• Change management is the handling, approval, and
tracking of change requests.

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 Cost estimation
To estimate how much software-engineering time will be
required to do some work.
• Elapsed time
—The difference in time from the start date to the end
date of a task or project.
• Development effort
—The amount of labour used in person-months or
person-days.
—To convert an estimate of development effort to an
amount of money:
You multiply it by the weighted average cost (burdened
cost) of employing a software engineer for a month (or a
day).
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 1: Divide and conquer

• To make a better estimate, you should divide the project
up into individual subsystems.
• Then divide each subsystem further into the activities
that will be required to develop it.
• Next, you make a series of detailed estimates for each
individual activity.
• And sum the results to arrive at the grand total estimate
for the project.
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 2: Include all activities when making estimates

• The time required for all development activities must be
taken into account.
• Including:
- Prototyping
- Design
- Inspecting
- Testing
- Debugging
- Writing user documentation
- Deployment.
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 3: Base your estimates on past experience

combined with knowledge of the current project
• If you are developing a project that has many similarities
with a past project:
— You can expect it to take a similar amount of work.
• Base your estimates on the personal judgement of your
experts
or
• Use algorithmic models developed in the software industry
as a whole by analyzing a wide range of projects.
—They take into account various aspects of a project’s
size and complexity, and provide formulas to compute
anticipated cost.
Algorithmic models

Allow you to systematically estimate development effort.

• Based on an estimate of some other factor that you can
measure, or that is easier to estimate:
—The number of use cases
—The number of distinct requirements
—The number of classes in the domain model
—The number of widgets in the prototype user
interface
—An estimate of the number of lines of code
Algorithmic models

• A typical algorithmic model uses a formula like the

following:
—COCOMO COnstructive COst MOdel:

E = a + bNc

—Functions Points:

S = W1F1 + W2F2 +W3F3 + …

Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 4: Be sure to account for differences when

extrapolating from other projects
• Different software developers
• Different development processes and maturity levels
• Different types of customers and users
• Different schedule demands
• Different technology
• Different technical complexity of the requirements
• Different domains
• Different levels of requirement stability
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 5: Anticipate the worst case and plan for

contingencies
• Develop the most critical use cases first
—If the project runs into difficulty, then the critical
features are more likely to have been completed
• Make three estimates:
—Optimistic (O)
- Imagining a everything going perfectly
—Likely (L)
- Allowing for typical things going wrong
—Pessimistic (P)
- Accounting for everything that could go wring
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 6: Combine multiple independent estimates

• Use several different techniques and compare the results.
• If there are discrepancies, analyze your calculations to
discover what factors causing the differences.
• Use the Delphi technique.
—Several individuals initially make cost estimates in
private.
—They then share their estimates to discover the
discrepancies.
—Each individual repeatedly adjusts his or her
estimates until a consensus is reached.
Principles of effective cost estimation

Principle 7: Revise and refine estimates as work

progresses
• As you add detail.
• As the requirements change.
• As the risk management process uncovers problems.
Building Software Engineering Teams

Software engineering is a human process.

• Choosing appropriate people for a team, and assigning
roles and responsibilities to the team members, is
therefore an important project management skill
• Software engineering teams can be organized in many
different ways

a) Egoless b) Chief programmer c) Strict hierarchy

Software engineering teams

Egoless team:
• In such a team everybody is equal, and the team works
together to achieve a common goal.
• Decisions are made by consensus.
• Most suited to difficult projects with many technical
challenges.
Software engineering teams

Hierarchical manager-subordinate structure:

• Each individual reports to a manager and is responsible
for performing the tasks delegated by that manager.
• Suitable for large projects with a strict schedule where
everybody is well-trained and has a well-defined role.
• However, since everybody is only responsible for their
own work, problems may go unnoticed.
Software engineering teams

Chief programmer team:

• Midway between egoless and hierarchical.
• The chief programmer leads and guides the project.
• He or she consults with, and relies on, individual
specialists.
Choosing an effective size for a team

• For a given estimated development effort, in person

months, there is an optimal team size.
—Doubling the size of a team will not halve the
development time.
• Subsystems and teams should be sized such that the total
amount of required knowledge and exchange of
information is reduced.
• For a given project or project iteration, the number of
people on a team will not be constant.
• You can not generally add people if you get behind
schedule, in the hope of catching up.
Skills needed on a team

• Architect
• Project manager
• Configuration management and build specialist
• User interface specialist
• Technology specialist
• Hardware and third-party software specialist
• User documentation specialist
• Tester
 Project Scheduling and Tracking

• Scheduling is the process of deciding:

—In what sequence a set of activities will be
performed.
—When they should start and be completed.
• Tracking is the process of determining how well you are
sticking to the cost estimate and schedule.
Program Evolution Review Technique
(PERT) charts
A PERT chart shows the sequence in which tasks must
be completed.
• In each node of a PERT chart, you typically show the
elapsed time and effort estimates.
• The critical path indicates the minimum time in which it
is possible to complete the project.
Example of a PERT chart
Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is used to graphically present the start

and end dates of each software engineering task
• One axis shows time.
• The other axis shows the activities that will be
performed.
• The black bars are the top-level tasks.
• The white bars are subtasks
• The diamonds are milestones:
—Important deadline dates, at which specific events
may occur
Example of a Gantt chart
Earned value

• Earned value is the amount of work completed,

measured according to the budgeted effort that the work
was supposed to consume.
• It is also called the budgeted cost of work performed.
• As each task is completed, the number of person-months
originally planned for that task is added to the earned
value of the project.
Earned value charts

An earned value chart has three curves:

• The budgeted cost of the work scheduled.
• The earned value.
• The actual cost of the work performed so far.
Example of an earned value chart
 Contents of a Project Plan

A. Purpose
B. Background information
C. Processes to be used
D. Subsystems and planned releases
E. Risks and challenges
F. Tasks
G. Cost estimates
H. Team
I. Schedule and milestones
Difficulties and Risks in Project Management

• Accurately estimating costs is a constant challenge

—Follow the cost estimation guidelines.
• It is very difficult to measure progress and meet
deadlines
—Improve your cost estimation skills so as to account
for the kinds of problems that may occur.
—Develop a closer relationship with other members of
the team.
—Be realistic in initial requirements gathering, and
follow an iterative approach.
—Use earned value charts to monitor progress.
Difficulties and Risks in Project Management

• It is difficult to deal with lack of human resources or

technology needed to successfully run a project
—When determining the requirements and the project
plan, take into consideration the resources available.
—If you cannot find skilled people or suitable technology
then you must limit the scope of your project.
Difficulties and Risks in Project Management

• Communicating effectively in a large project is hard

—Take courses in communication, both written and
oral.
—Learn how to run effective meetings.
—Review what information everybody should have,
and make sure they have it.
—Make sure that project information is readily
available.
—Use ‘groupware’ technology to help people
exchange the information they need to know
Difficulties and Risks in Project Management

• It is hard to obtain agreement and commitment from

others
—Take courses in negotiating skills and leadership.
—Ensure that everybody understands
- The position of everybody else.
- The costs and benefits of each alternative.
- The rationale behind any compromises.
—Ensure that everybody’s proposed responsibility is
clearly expressed.
—Listen to everybody’s opinion, but take assertive
action, when needed, to ensure progress occurs.