Software Project Management

Lecture 1
Introduction to Software Project Management

Dr. Tayyaba Anees

Objective
• Course Introduction (learning objectives)
• Course Contents
• Motivation for Studying SPM
• What is a Project?
• What is Project Management?

2
Course Objectives
• Understand the fundamental principles of Software Project management.
• Student will have a good knowledge of responsibilities of project manager.

• Student will be familiar with the different methods and techniques used for project management.

• By the end of this course student will have good knowledge of the issues and challenges faced
while doing the Software project Management.
• Student will also be able to understand why majority of the software projects fail and how that
failure probability can be reduced effectively.
• Student will be able to do the Project Scheduling, tracking, Risk analysis, Quality management and
Project Cost estimation using different techniques

3
Text Books
• Text books:
• Software Project Management
By: Bob Hughes & Mike Cotterell,
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Reference books:
• A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)
By Project Management Institute
• Quality Software Project Management
By: Robert T. Futrell, Donald Shafer
Publisher: Prentice Hall

• Software Project Management in Practice

By: Pankaj Jalote
Publisher: Pearson Education
• Software Project Management
A Unified Framework
By: Walker Royce
Publisher: Addision-wesely
4
Subject Assessments

• Quizzes : 10%
• Assignments : 15%
• Class Activity : 5%
• Presentation : 10%
• Midterm : 30 %
• Final term : 30%

5
Motivation for Studying Project Management

• IT Projects have terrible track record

• A 1995 Standish Group study (CHAOS) found that only 16.2% of IT projects
were successful and over 31% were canceled before completion, costing over
81B$ in US alone
• The need for IT Projects keeps increasing
• In 1998, corporate America issued 200,000 new application development
projects
• In 2001, there were 300,000 new IT projects
• In 2003, over 500,000 new IT projects were started

6
SPM Study Topics
• Project Management - Study Topics
• What is project management?
• Project Selection
• The role of Project Manager
• Project Organization
• Project Costing, Planning, Budgeting, Scheduling
• Resource Allocation
• Project Monitoring and Controlling
• Risk management
• Software quality assurance plans
• Quality assurance, Legal issues
Laws of Project Management 
• No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the
same staff that started it. Yours will not be the first.
• Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then they
remain at 90% complete forever.
• When things are going well, something will go wrong.
• When things just can’t get any worse, they will
• When things appear to be going better you have overlooked
something
• If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will
exceed the rate of progress.
• No system is ever completely debugged: attempts to debug a system
inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find
• A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete
than expected, a planned project will take only twice as long.
Outline of talk
In this introduction the main questions to be
addressed will be:

• What is software project management? Is it really

different from ‘ordinary’ project management?

• How do you know when a project has been

successful? For example, do the expectations of
the customer/client match those of the
developers?

9
What is a project?
Some dictionary definitions:

“A specific plan or design”

“A planned undertaking”

“A large undertaking e.g. a public works scheme”

Longmans dictionary

Key points above are planning and size of task

10
Project?
• A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique
product or service

(PMI definition)
Jobs versus projects

‘Jobs’ – repetition of very well-defined and well understood tasks with

very little uncertainty

‘Exploration’ – e.g. finding a cure for cancer: the outcome is very uncertain

‘Projects’ – in the middle!

12
Characteristics of projects
A task is more ‘project-like’ if it is:

• Non-routine
• Planned
• Aiming at a specific target
• Work carried out for a customer
• Involving several specialisms
• Made up of several different phases
• Constrained by time and resources
• Large and/or complex
13
Different types of projects
• Realisation phase is outdoors, large capital = many
Civil Engineering contractors = communication headaches

Manufacturing • Development of specialised hardware, physical

Projects design

Management • Projects that do not result in a produced piece of

Projects hardware (including software projects?)

• Include a higher element of risk (including software

Research Projects projects?)

• Carried out within the normal organisational

structure
Revenue projects • Normally within a single accounting period

• May extend over a number of accounting periods

• Occupy considerable time employ considerable
Capital projects capital
• Not carried out within the normal organisational
structure
Are software projects really different
from other projects?
Not really! …but…

• Invisibility
• Complexity
• Conformity
• Flexibility

make software more problematic to build than other engineered

artefacts.

15
Question
Consider the following:
A. Reorder the list
1. Producing an edition of a newspaper in manner of
2. Putting a robot vehicle on Mars to search for signs of life the one closest
3. Getting married to the definition
of project
4. Amending a financial computer system to deal with a B. For each entry
common European currency in the ordered
5. A research project into what makes a good list, describe the
difference
human- computer interface between it and
6. An investigation into the reason why a user has a problem the item above
with a Computer system it
7. A third-and-four-year students programming assignment
8. Installing a new version of a word processing package in an organization
9. Writing an operating system
Management?
• To
• Plan
• Organize
• Co-ordinate other activities

• Benefits
• Lesser deadlocks
• Lesser overheads
• Smooth
• efficient
Project management?
‘Project management is principally concerned with the management of
change’
(Lockyer & Gordon, 1996)

• Progressively elaborated
• With repetitive elements
• A project manager
• Analogy: conductor, coach, captain
What needs to be managed in SDLC
Software project management
Activities covered by project
management

Feasibility study
Is project technically feasible and worthwhile from a business
point of view?
Planning
Only done if project is feasible
Execution
Implement plan, but plan may be changed as we go along
22
The software development life-cycle
(ISO 12207)

23
ISO 12207 life-cycle
Requirements analysis
• Requirements elicitation: what does the client need?
• Analysis: converting ‘customer-facing’ requirements
into equivalents that developers can understand
• Requirements will cover
• Functions
• Quality
• Resource constraints i.e. costs

24
ISO 12207 life-cycle
• Architecture design
• Based on system requirements
• Defines components of system: hardware, software,
organizational
• Software requirements will come out of this
• Code and test
• Of individual components
• Integration
• Putting the components together

25
ISO12207 continued
• Qualification testing
• Testing the system (not just the software)
• Installation
• The process of making the system operational
• Includes setting up standing data, setting system
parameters, installing on operational hardware
platforms, user training etc
• Acceptance support
• Including maintenance and enhancement

26
Some ways of categorizing projects

Distinguishing different types of project is important

as different types of task need different project
approaches e.g.

• Information systems versus embedded systems

• Objective-based versus product-based

27
Some ways of categorizing projects

Exercise Brightmouth college payroll is

administrated by a local government authority,
and pay slips and other output are produced at the
local authority’s computer center. The authority is
charging the college for such service. The college
management are of an opinion that it will be
cheaper to obtain an off the shelf package and do
the payroll processing at the college. The project of
converting to an independent payroll system, will it
be considered product or objective driven??

28
Categorizing software projects
•

Software

system application

information maintenance embedded Objective driven Product driven

drivers patches
What is management?
This involves the following activities:

• Planning – deciding what is to be done

• Organizing – making arrangements
• Staffing – selecting the right people for the job
• Directing – giving instructions
continued…

31
What is management?
(continued)
• Monitoring – checking on progress

• Controlling – taking action to remedy hold-ups

• Innovating – coming up with solutions when

problems emerge

• Representing – liaising with clients, users,

developers and other stakeholders

32