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
Software
project planning is task, which is performed before the production of software
actually starts. It is there for the software production but involves no
concrete activity that has any direction connection with software production;
rather it is a set of multiple processes, which facilitates software
production. Project planning may include the following:
It
defines the scope of 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. This makes project to
contain limited and quantifiable tasks, which can easily be documented and in
turn avoids cost and time overrun.
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
For
an effective management accurate estimation of various measures is a must. With
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 and Function points vary according to the user or
software requirement.
● Effort
estimation
● The
managers estimate 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 managers’ experience, organization’s
historical data 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.
● The sum of
time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time invested
to complete the project.
● 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
software
○ Software
quality
○ Hardware
○ Additional
software or tools, licenses etc.
○ Skilled
personnel with task-specific skills
○ Travel
involved
○ Communication
○ Training
and support