International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.

6, 2011

Software Project Managenment with Control Based Monitoring

Chetan Nagar1 and Dr Anurag Dixit2
1

Ph.D Student, Mewar University (Gangrar) Chittodgarh Rajasthan India [email protected]

2

Dean-Professor (CS/IT) BRCM CET,Bahal Bhiwani [email protected]

Abstract
Monitoring is one of important activity of software development. Monitoring has to be performing on regular basis .Suppose a Project A is divided into six module, we have assign a start date and end date of each module. We are perform monitoring after completion of first module and we find that module end after a long time from expected date .So it become much difficult to compensate the schedule. This paper is suggesting that monitoring has to be performing on every function level. If any function not completed on time than we have to identify the reason and rectify it so it cannot prorogate .Every year 24% of software projects are failed 60% 80% of project failures can be attributed directly to poor requirements gathering, analysis, and management (Meta Group). Companies with poor business analysis capability will have three times as many project failures as successes. A project is not delivered on time and budget because of two reasons poor efforts estimation and loose monitoring. A strong monitoring can overcome poor estimation. This paper is suggesting a control based monitoring strategy by which we can finish our project on time and budget.

Keywords: Efforts Estimation, Monitoring, Work Break Down Structure, Control Based Monitoring. 1. Introduction
Software project management is consisting of many activities as shown in figure-1. In this paper we are concentrating on project monitoring, which is an important activity of software project management.

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Figure 1 .Software Project Management activities Project progress monitoring and control is one of the most important tasks of software project management. Every team member needs to know, in a timely and accurate manner, how is the project progressing, where they are currently in comparison to the initially set plans, whether deadlines are met, budgets are safely measured and followed. The successful project completion requires the concerted effort of the project team to carry out the various project activities, and it is the project manager who at the centre of the project network is responsible for orchestrating the whole development process. The project manager has to maintain the project network and monitor against slippages in cost, time and quality for the duration of project. In achieving this, the project manager relies heavily on a reliable monitoring system that can provide timely signaling of project problems, whether they are real or potential. In practice little has been done to address the problem of project progress monitoring and control.

2. Work Breakdown Structure

One of the most important WBS design principles is called the 100% Rule. The Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures (Second Edition), published by the Project Management Institute (PMI) defines the 100% Rule as follows: The 100% Rule...states that the WBS includes 100% of the work defined by the project scope and captures ALL deliverables internal, external, and interim in terms of the work to be completed, including project management. The 100% rule is one of the most important principles guiding the development, decomposition and evaluation of the WBS. The rule applies at all levels within the hierarchy: the sum of the work at the child level must equal 100% of the work represented by the parent and the WBS should not include any work that falls outside the actual scope of the project, that is, it cannot include more than 100% of the work It is important to remember that the 100% rule also applies to the activity level. The work represented by the activities in each work package must add up to 100% of the work necessary to complete the work package [6]. Project planning usually starts with the development of work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS is a hierarchical set of independent tasks. As a part of WBS, development costs and duration of tasks need to be estimated. After defining the set of tasks, project managers define the precedence relationship that exists among tasks. This information can be presented in the form of precedence networks and Gantt charts. The time needed to complete the project is defined by the longest path through the network. This path is called the critical path. Project managers can use the critical path method (CPM), which is available in most project management software, to identify the critical path [1,2].In most cases, duration, start and finish time, cost, and other task parameters are uncertain. The PERT model (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was developed in 1950s to address uncertainty in the estimation of project parameters. According to classic PERT, expected task duration is calculated as the weighted average of the most optimistic, the most pessimistic, and the most likely time estimates. The expected duration of any path on the precedence network can be found by summing up the expected durations. The main problem with classic PERT is that it gives accurate results only if there is a single dominant path through a precedence network. When a single path is not dominant, classic PERT usually provides overly optimistic results. Fortunately, most software projects have a single dominant path [3].

3. Control Based Monitoring

Timely completion of any task depends on the strong monitoring policies. This paper is suggesting a control based monitoring system. Shown in figure 2 Component of fig are as follows.

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Figure 2. Control Based Monitoring System.

3.1. Prepare a task list with date of completion:As we know that 4 phases used in software development life cycle first Analysis, design, coding and testing. Divide the project into module, module into sub module and sub module into function. Assign a date of completion to every function. We are not treating a module as a milestone, but function as milestone. Make a check list what functions must be completed on what time.

3.2 Monitoring:We have to check the check list on a regular basis (may be daily or weekly) and find which task is completed and which is not completed. If task is completed than assign next task to team. If task is not completed on time than perform control.

3.3 Controlling:During the monitoring phase we are just checking which task is completed and which is not completes on the time. In controlling we are applying controlling strategies, if any task not completed on time .Find the reason why any task is not completed on time and provide a suggested solution as follows: 1. Any team member was left the team. - Add other team member at same time when any one leaving the team. 2. More no of holydays. - Cancel all leaves and compensate these leaves in off session. 3. Team members are not skilled. - Provide proper training to development for better work.

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4. 5. 6.

High complexity of task.-If task is really complex than give sufficient time for successful completion. Requirements not completely clear to developers.- Manager has to give complete explanation of project. Poor coordination among team member, - Manager has to lead and motivate his team members to work in team with a healthy relationship. If project is slipping from expected schedule and dead line is near than increase the working time of your team. Such situation will not arrive if project manager will perform monitoring and controlling on regular basis.

Project manager is in fact responsible for managing the controlling of the projects. However, it is essential to firstly analyze the basic reasons of such kind of difficulties before establishing of a new structure. The lack of the proper interc ommunication skill is often the one of the major problems held with functional novices which can be consistently handling the routine designs. So far no such kind of handbook yet exists for software projects management and hence the mistakes are often repeated on project after project and year after year.

4. How to make a check list

This paper is suggesting a format of check list of every activity. Some of the activities are suggested, we can add or remove activities as per requirement.

4.1 Perform Efforts Estimation:First activity that we have to perform in software project management is efforts estimation; it is provide basis for other software development activities like planning, scheduling, monitoring etc. Total efforts estimated for this project is 5100 person-hours. Distribution of these efforts as follows: Table 1. Percent wise effort distribution. Phase/Activity Person-hours required
Analysis Design Coding Testing Implementation Documentation 900 1050 2450 450 100 150

We are delivering this project in increments. So if any change is required than we can incorporate it in next increment.

4.2 WBS for analysis:Analysis is the first phase software development. Following activities are performed in analysis (Table containing the check list for analysis). Table 2. Check list (WBS) of Analysis Phase: Analysis S No Name of Start Date Date of Actual Reason Action Function/Activity Completion Date of Taken Completion
Requirement Analysis SRS Efforts Estimation Feasibility Analysis

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4.3 WBS for Design:Design is the Second phase software development. Following activities are performed in design (Table containing the check list for design). Table 3. Check list(WBS) of Design Phase: Design Start Date of Actual Date of Date Completion Completion

S No

Name of Function/Activity
Database Design UML Design System of

Reason

Action Taken

4.4 WBS for Coding:Coding is the third phase software development. Following activities are performed in coding (Table containing the check list for coding). We are using incremental approach for this project so have to divide the project into increments and make below specified check list for every increment. Here we are writing I1-F1, means Increment-1 and we are implementing functionality-1. Table 4. Check list (WBS) of Increment Phase: Coding S No Name of Function/Activity
I1-F1 I1-F2 I1-F3 I1-F4 . .

Start Date

Date of Completion

Actual Date of Completion

Reason

Action Taken

This table is for an increment. We are also making a table which contains abstract information of completion of every increment. Table 5. Check list of Increments Phase: Coding Start Date of Actual Date Completion Date of Completion

S No

Name of Function/Activity
Increment -1 Increment-2 Increment-3 Increment-4

Reason

Action Taken

1 2 3 4 . .

. .

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6. How to make project monitoring successful

In the monitoring we are checking that the either given task is completed on time or not. A monitoring said to be successful if most of the time given work is completed on time. If we want more tasks in lesser time than we have to increase the time size instead of saying that task is completing of time due to poor monitoring of work. Following point must be considered to make a project monitoring successful. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Complete and clear definition of the project objectives, scope, and practical work to be performed is a key success factor. Make a practical schedule. Always give sufficient time to team to complete a particular task. A quite effective leadership is required to keep the project development as well as management teams being focused and very much motivated throughout the project life. The success of projects is greatly dependant on the deployment of an effective mechanism for the anticipating and problems solving. Software development team must be a combination of experience and less experience person.

7. Conclusion
This paper addressed some of the issue of monitoring and provides some suggestion for improvement, a better project management can save an immense amount of revenue along with the better quality control and optimized development schedules. Success of schedule is depending on the monitoring policies used. Proper construction and execution of WBS is key element for proper monitoring.

8. References
List and number all bibliographical references in 10-point Times New Roman, single-spaced, at the end of your paper. For example, [1] is for a journal paper, [2] is for a book and [3] is for a conference (symposium) paper. , [1] Futrell R.T., Shafer D.F., Shafer L.I.: Quality Software Project Management Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, (2002) [2] Klastorin T.: Project Management. Tools and Trade-Offs. Wiley, (2004) [3] Cho J.G., Yum B.J.: An Uncertainty Importance Measure of Activities in PERT [4] Aneerav Sukhoo, Andries Barnard, Mariki M. Eloff and John A. Van der Poll : An Evolutionary Software Project Management Maturity Model for Mauritius, Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management, Volume 2, 2007. [5] Standish Research Report, Issue 2009.

[6] Project Management Institute. Project Management Institute Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures, Second Edition (2006). ISBN 1-933890-13-4 (Note: The Second Edition is an extensive re-write of the Practice Standard).
[7] M. Aqeel Iqbal, Farooque Azam, Ahmed Ali Qureshi : Critical Aspects of Project Management Causing Major Impacts on Software Development, International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 8887), Volume 27 No.9, August 2011. [8] Author1_Name, Author2_Name, Web Caching and Replication, Addison-Wesley(Publication_ Name), USA, 2014. [9] Author1_Name, Author2_Name, Exploring the bounds of Web latency reduction from caching and prefetching, In Proceeding(s) of the IICIT Symposium(Conference) on Internet Technologies, pp.13-22, 2009.

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