Planning a Software

Project
Agenda
 Background
 Process planning
 Effort estimation
 Schedule and resource estimation
 Quality Planning
 Risk management
 Configuration Management
 Project monitoring plans

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Software Project

 Goal: Build a software system to meet

commitments on cost, schedule, quality
 Worldwide - many projects fail
 one-third are runaways with cost or schedule
overrun of more than 125%

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 Project Failures
 Major reasons for project runaways
 unclear objectives
 bad planning
 no project management methodology
 new technology
 insufficient staff
 All of these relate to project management
 Effective project management is key to successfully
executing a project
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Why improve PM?

 Better predictability leading to commitments

that can be met
 Lower cost through reduced rework, better
resource mgmt, better planning,..
 Improved quality through proper quality
planning and control
 Better control through change control, CM,
monitoring etc.
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Why improve PM ….

 Better visibility into project health and

state leading to timely intervention
 Better handling of risks reducing the
chances of failure
 All this leads to higher customer
satisfaction
 And self and organization improvement

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Two Dimensions in project
execution

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Process-based Project
Execution

 Small project both engg and PM can be

done informally
 Large projects require formality
 Formality: well defined processes used for
each task; measurements used to control
 Here we focus on processes for PM only

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The Project Mgmt Process

 Has three phases - planning, monitoring

and control, and closure
 Planning is done before the main
engineering LC and closure after the LC
 Monitoring phase is in parallel with LC

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Project Planning
 Basic objective: To create a plan to meet
the commitments of the project, I.e. create
a path that, if followed, will lead to a
successful project
 Planning involves defining the LC process to
be followed, estimates, detailed schedule,
plan for quality, etc.
 Main output - a project management plan
and the project schedule
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Key Planning Tasks
 Define suitable processes for executing the project
 Estimate effort
 Define project milestones and create a schedule
 Define quality objectives and a quality plan
 Identify risks and make plans to mitigate them
 Define measurement plan, project-tracking
procedures, training plan, team organization, etc.

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Process Planning
 Plan how the project will be executed, I.e.
the process to be followed
 Process will decide the tasks, their
ordering, milestones
 Hence process planning is an important
project planning task
 Should plan for LC and PM processes as
well as supporting processes

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Life Cycle Process
 Various LC models - waterfall, iterative,
prototyping; diff models suit different projects
 During planning can select the model that is
best for the project
 This gives the overall process which has to be
fine-tuned to suit the project needs
 Usually done by process tailoring - changing the
process to suit the project
 Tailoring finally results in adding, deleting,
modifying some process steps

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Effort Estimation
 For a project total cost and duration has
to be committed in start
 Requires effort estimation, often in terms
of person-months
 Effort estimate is key to planning -
schedule, cost, resources depend on it
 Many problems in project execution stem
from improper estimation

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Estimation..

 No easy way, no silver bullet

 Estimation accuracy can improve with more
information about the project
 Early estimates are more likely to be
inaccurate than later
 More uncertainties in the start
 With more info, estimation becomes easier

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Estimation accuracy

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Effort Estimation Models..
 A model tries to determine the effort
estimate from some parameter values
 A model also requires input about the
project, and cannot work in vacuum
 So to apply a model, we should be able to
extract properties about the system
 Two types of models - top-down and
bottom-up

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Effort Estimation Models

Knowledge about
SW project

Effort Estimate

Extract Estimation Model

Values of some
characteristics

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Top-down Estimation
 First determines the total effort, then effort for
components
 Usually works with overall size
 One method is to see estimate as a function of
effort; the common function used is
Effort = a * size b
 E is in person-months,
 Constants a and b determined through
regression analysis of past project data

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Top down estimation
 Can also estimate from size and productivity
 Get the estimate of the total size of the software
 Estimate project productivity using past data and project
characteristics
 Obtain the overall effort estimate from productivity and
size estimates
 Effort distribution data from similar project are used
to estimate effort for different phases

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Bottom-up Estimation

 Effort for components and phases first

estimated, then the total
 Can use activity based costing - all
activities enumerated and then each
activity estimated separately
 Can group activities into classes - their
effort estimate from past data

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 An Estimation Procedure
 Identify programs in the system and classify
them as simple, medium, or complex (S/M/C)
 Define the average coding effort for S/M/C
 Get the total coding effort.
 Use the effort distribution in similar projects to
estimate effort for other tasks and total
 Refine the estimates based on project specific
factors
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Scheduling and Staffing
Project Schedule

 A project Schedule is at two levels -

overall schedule and detailed schedule
 Overall schedule comprises of major
milestones and final date
 Detailed schedule is the assignment of
lowest level tasks to resources

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Overall Schedule

 Depends heavily on the effort estimate

 For an effort estimate, some flexibility
exists depending on resources assigned
 Eg a 56 PM project can be done in 8
months (7 people) or 7 months (8 people)
 Stretching a schedule is easy;
compressing is hard and expensive

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Determining Overall
Schedule from past data
Effort in person-days

400

350

300
Schedule (Days)

250

200

150

100

50

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800

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Determining Milestones

 With effort and overall schedule decided,

avg project resources are fixed
 Manpower ramp-up in a project decides the
milestones
 Manpower ramp-up in a project follows a
Rayleigh curve - like a normal curve
 In reality manpower build-up is a step
function
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Manpower Ramp-up

PTS

Design Build Test

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 An Example Schedule
# Task Dur. Work (p- Start End
(days) days) Date Date
2 Project Init tasks 33 24 5/4 6/23

74 Training 95 49 5/8 9/29

104 Knowledge sharing 78 20 6/2 9/30

114 Elaboration iteration I 55 55 5/15 6/23

198 Construction iteration I 9 35 7/10 7/21

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Detailed Scheduling

 To reach a milestone, many tasks have to be

performed
 Lowest level tasks - those that can be done
by a person (in less than 2-3 days)
 Scheduling - decide the tasks, assign them
while preserving high-level schedule
 Is an iterative task - if cannot “fit” all tasks,
must revisit high level schedule
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Detailed Scheduling
 Detailed schedule not done completely in
the start - it evolves
 Can use tools (MS Project) for keeping it
 Detailed Schedule is the most live
document for managing the project
 Any activity to be done must get reflected
in the detailed schedule

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An example task in detail
schedule

Module Act Code Task Duration Effort

History PUT Unit test # 1 day 7 hrs

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St. date End date %comp Depend. Resource

7/18 7/18 0% Nil SB

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Detail schedule

 Each task has name, date, duration,

resource etc assigned
 % done is for tracking (tools use it)
 The detailed schedule has to be consistent
with milestones
 Tasks are sub-activities of milestone level
activities, so effort should add up, total
schedule should be preserved

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Team Structure

 To assign tasks in detailed schedule, need

to have a clear team structure
 Hierarchic team org is most common
 Project manager has overall responsibility;
also does design etc.
 Has programmers and testers for executing
detailed tasks
 May have config controller, db manager, etc

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Team structure..

 An alternative – democratic teams

 Can work for small teams; leadership rotates
 Another one used for products
 A dev team led by a dev mgr, a test team led
by test mgr, and a prog. Mgmt team
 All three report to a product mgr
 Allows specialization of tasks and separate
career ladders for devs, tests, PMs

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SCM process and planning
 Have discussed SCM(software configuration
management) process earlier
 During planning, the SCM activities are planned
along with who will perform them
 Includes defining CM items, naming scheme,
directory structure, access restrictions, change
control, versioning, release procedure etc.

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Quality Planning

 Delivering high quality is a basic goal

 Quality can be defined in many ways
 Current industry standard - delivered defect
density (e.g. #defects/KLOC)
 Defect - something that causes software to
behave in an inconsistent manner
 Aim of a project - deliver software with low
delivered defect density
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Defect Injection and
Removal

 Software development is labor intensive

 Defects are injected at any stage
 As quality goal is low delivered defect
density, these defects have to be removed
 Done primarily by quality control (QC)
activities of reviews and testing

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Defect Injection and
Removal

Defect Injection

Development
Process

Req.
R Design R Coding R UT IT/ST AT
Analysis

Defect Removal

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Approaches to Quality
Management

 Ad hoc - some testing, some reviews done

as and when needed
 Procedural - defined procedures are
followed in a project
 Quantitative - defect data analysis done to
manage the quality process

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Procedural Approach

 A quality plan defines what QC tasks will

be undertaken and when
 Main QC tasks - reviews and testing
 Guidelines and procedures for reviews and
testing are provided
 During project execution, adherence to
the plan and procedures ensured

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Quantitative Approach

 Goes beyond asking “has the procedure been

executed”
 Analyzes defect data to make judgements
about quality
 Past data is very important
 Key parameters - defect injection and
removal rates, defect removal efficiency
(DRE)
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Quality Plan

 The quality plan drives the quality

activities in the project
 Level of plan depends on models available
 Must define QC tasks that have to be
performed in the project
 Can specify defect levels for each QC
tasks (if models and data available)

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Risk Management

 Any project can fail - reasons can be technical,

managerial, etc.
 Project management aims to tackle the project
management aspect
 Engineering life cycles aim to tackle the
engineering issues
 A project may fail due to unforeseen events -
risk management aims to tackle this
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Risk Management

 Risk: any condition or event whose

occurrence is not certain but which can
cause the project to fail
 Aim of risk management: minimize the
effect of risks on a project

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Risk Management Tasks

RISK IDENTIFICATION

RISK ASSESSMENT RISK ANALYSIS

RISK PRIORITIZATION
RISK
MANAGEMENT RISK MANAGEMENT
PLANNING

RISK CONTROL RISK RESOLUTION

RISK MONITORING

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Risk Identification

 To identify possible risks to a project, i.e.

to those events that might occur and
which might cause the project to fail
 No “algorithm” possible, done by “what
ifs”, checklists, past experience
 Can have a list of “top 10” risks that
projects have seen in past

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Top Risk Examples

 Shortage of technically trained manpower

 Too many requirement changes
 Unclear requirements
 Not meeting performance requirements
 Unrealistic schedules
 Insufficient business knowledge
 Working on new technology
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Risk Prioritization

 The number of risks might be large

 Must prioritize them to focus attention on
the “high risk” areas
 For prioritization, impact of each risk must
be understood
 In addition, probability of the risk
occurring should also be understood

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Risk Prioritization ...

 Risk exposure (RE) = probability of risk

occurring * risk impact
 RE is the expected value of loss for a risk
 Prioritization can be done based on risk
exposure value
 Plans can be made to handle high RE risks

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A Simple approach to Risk
Prioritization

 Classify risk occurrence probabilities as:

Low, Medium, High
 Classify risk impact as: Low, Medium, High
 Identify those that are HH, or HM/MH
 Focus on these for risk mitigation
 Will work for most small and medium sized
projects

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Risk Control

 Can the risk be avoided?

 E.g. if new hardware is a risk, it can be
avoided by working with proven hardware
 For others, risk mitigation steps need to
be planned and executed
 Actions taken in the project such that if the
risk materializes, its impact is minimal
 Involves extra cost

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Risk Mitigation Examples

 Too many requirement changes

 Convince client that changes in requirements
will have an impact on the schedule
 Define a procedure for requirement changes
 Maintain cumulative impact of changes and
make it visible to client
 Negotiate payment on actual effort.

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Examples ...

 Manpower attrition
 Ensure that multiple resources are assigned
on key project areas
 Have team building sessions
 Rotate jobs among team members
 Keep backup resources in the project
 Maintain documentation of individual’s work
 Follow the CM process and guidelines strictly

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Examples ...

 Unrealistic schedules
 Negotiate for better schedule
 Identify parallel tasks
 Have resources ready early
 Identify areas that can be automated
 If the critical path is not within the schedule,
negotiate with the client
 Negotiate payment on actual effort

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Risk Mitigation Plan

 Risk mitigation involves steps that are to be

performed (hence has extra cost)
 It is not a paper plan - these steps should
be scheduled and executed
 These are different from the steps one
would take if the risk materializes - they are
performed only if needed
 Risks must be revisited periodically
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 A plan is a mere document that can guide
 It must be executed
 To ensure execution goes as per plan, it
must be monitored and controlled
 Monitoring requires measurements
 And methods for interpreting them
 Monitoring plan has to plan for all the
tasks related to monitoring
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Measurements
 Must plan for measurements in a project
 Without planning, measurements will not be
done
 Main measurements – effort, size, schedule, and
defects
 Effort – as this is the main resource; often tracked
through effort reporting tools
 Defects – as they determine quality; often defect
logging and tracking systems used
 During planning – what will be measured, how,
tool support, and data management

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Project Tracking

 Goal: To get visibility in project execution

so corrective actions can be taken when
needed to ensure project succeeds
 Diff types of monitoring done at projects;
measurements provide data for it

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Tracking…
 Activity-level monitoring
 Each activity in detailed schd is getting done
 Often done daily by managers
 A task done marked 100%; tools can determine
status of higher level tasks
 Status reports
 Generally done weekly to take stock
 Summary of activities completed, pending
 Issues to be resolved

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Tracking…
 Milestone analysis
 A bigger review at milestones
 Actual vs estimated for effort and sched is
done
 Risks are revisited
 Changes to product and their impact may be
analyzed
 Cost-schedule milestone graph is another
way of doing this
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Cost-schedule milestone graph

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Project Management Plan
 The project management plan (PMP) contains
outcome of all planning activities - focuses on
overall project management
 Besides PMP, a project schedule is needed
 Reflects what activities get done in the project
 Microsoft project (MSP) can be used for this
 Based on project planning; is essential for day-to-
day management
 Does not replace PMP !

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PMP Structure - Example

 Project overview - customer, start and

end date, overall effort, overall value,
main contact persons, project milestones,
development environment..
 Project planning - process and tailoring,
requirements change mgmt, effort
estimation, quality goals and plan, risk
management plan, ..
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PMP Example ...

 Project tracking - data collection, analysis

frequency, escalation procedures, status
reporting, customer complaints, …
 Project team, its organization, roles and
responsibility, …

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Project Planning -
Summary
 Project planning forms the foundation of
project management
 Key aspects: effort and schedule estimation,
quality planning, risk mgmt., …
 Outputs of all can be documented in a PMP,
which carries all relevant info about project
 Besides PMP, a detailed project schedule
maintains tasks to be done in the project

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