Software Project Management

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Software Project Management

• Session 9 Project Control

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Today

• Session 8 Review
• Project Control
• Status Reporting
• Earned Value Analysis
• MS Project

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Session 8 Review

• Project roles and team structure
• CMM
• Requirements

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Project Control

• Ongoing effort to keep your project on track
• 4 primary activities
• 1. Planning performance
• A SDP, schedule, and a control process
• 2. Measuring status of work performed
• Actuals
• 3. Comparing to baseline
• Variances
• 4. Taking corrective action as needed
• Response
• Prerequisite to good control is a good plan

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Project Control

• Control
• Power, authority, domination. No.
• Guiding a course of action to meet an objective.
  Yes.
• Principles
• Work is controlled, not workers
• Control helps workers be more effective
  efficient
• Control based on work completed
• Use concrete deliverables
• Balance
• Appropriate level between too much and too little
• Includes
• Micro-managing vs. neglect
• Too much tracking detail vs. too little

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Progress Monitoring

• The 3 key Progress Monitoring Questions
• What is the actual status?
• If theres a variance, what is cause?
• What to do about it?
• Possible responses
• 1. Ignore
• 2. Take corrective action
• 3. Review the plan

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Progress Monitoring

• Monitoring rates
• Daily, weekly, monthly
• If problems occur then adjust
• You may have to monitor problem areas more
  closely
• For some period of time
• Almost always theres one or more areas under
  closer scrutiny
• Status Reporting
• Part of the communications management plan
• Which is usually just a section of SDP

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Status Reports

• From team to PM, from PM to stakeholders
• Typical format for latter
• Summary
• Accomplishments for this period (done)
• Tasks, milestones, metrics
• Plans for next period (to-do)
• Risk analysis and review
• Issues Actions
• Shoot for weekly updates
• Email notes, then hold brief meeting
• More frequently during crises

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Programming Status Reporting

• A programmer reports that hes 90 done.
• What does this mean?
• A programmer reports completing 4,000 LOC on
  estimated 5,000 LOC effort.
• Is this 80 complete?
• Quality?
• Ratio, estimated to completed?
• Your estimates could have been wrong
• If you cant measure scope or quality you dont
  know reality
• You really only know cost (hours spent)
• How can you improve this?

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Binary Reporting

• Work packages (tasks) can only be in one of 2
  states complete or incomplete
• No partial credit
• Preferred to anything subjective!
• 90 Complete Syndrome
• Software is 90 complete 90 of the time
• Use lower-level task decomposition
• Tangible exit criteria
• Plan for 4-80 staff hours of effort per task

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Earned Value Analysis (EVA)

• a.k.a. Earned Value Management (EVM)
• a.k.a. Variance Analysis
• Metric of project tracking
• What you got for what you paid
• Physical progress
• Pre-EVA traditional approach
• 1. Planned time and costs
• 2. Actual time and costs
• Progress compare planned vs. actual
• EVA adds third dimension value
• Planned, actual, earned

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Earned Value Analysis

• Forecasting
• Old models include cost expenditure
• EVA adds schedule estimation
• Measured in dollars or hours
• Often time used in software projects
• Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB)
• Time-phased budget plan against which contract
  performance is measured
• Cost schedule variances go against this
• Best via a bottom-up plan

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Earned Value Analysis

• Different methods are available
• Binary Reporting
• Others include
• Based on complete
• Weights applied to milestones
• EVA can signal errors as early as 15 into
  project
• Alphabet Soup

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Earned Value Analysis

• 3 major components
• BCWS Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled
• Now called Planned Value (PV)
• Yearned
• How much work should be done?
• BCWP Budgeted Cost of Work Performed
• Now called earned value (EV)
• Earned
• How much work is done?
• BCWS complete
• ACWP Actual Cost of Work Performed
• Now called Actual Cost (AC)
• Burned
• How much did the work done cost?

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Derived EVA Variances

• SV Schedule Variance
• BCWP BCWS
• Planned work vs. work completed
• CV Cost Variance
• BCWP ACWP
• Budgeted costs vs. actual costs
• Negatives are termed unfavorable
• Can be plotted on spending curves
• Cumulative cost (Y axis) vs. Time (X axis)
• Typically in an S shape
• What is the project status?
• You can use variances to answer this

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Earned Value Analysis
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Derived EVA Ratios

• SPI Schedule Performance Index
• BCWP / BCWS
• CPI Cost Performance Index
• BCWP / ACWP
• Problems in project if either of these less than
  1 (or 100)

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Earned Value Analysis

• Other Derived Values
• BAC Budget At Completion
• Sum of all budges (BCWS). Your original budget.
• EAC Estimate At Completion
• Forecast total cost at completion
• EAC ((BAC BCWP)/CPI) ACWP
• Unfinished work divided by CPI added to sunk cost
• If CPI lt 1, EAC will be gt BAC
• CR Critical Ratio
• SPI x CPI
• 1 everything on track
• gt .9 and lt 1.2 ok
• Can be charted

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EVA Example

• As of 1-July where are we?
• BCWS
• BCWP
• ACWP

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EVA Example

• CV
• SV
• CPI
• SPI
• CR

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Earned Value Analysis

• BCWS
• Use loaded labor rates if possible
• Direct pay overhead
• Remember its an aggregate figure
• May hide where the problem lies
• Beware of counterbalancing issues
• Over in one area vs. under in another

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Earned Value Analysis

• Benefits
• Consistent unit of measure for total progress
• Consistent methodology
• Across cost and completed activity
• Apples and apples comparisons
• Ability to forecast cost schedule
• Can provide warnings early
• Success factors
• A full WBS is required (all scope)
• Beware of GIGO Garbage-in, garbage-out

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The MS-Project Process

• Move WBS into a Project outline (in Task Sheet)
• Add resources (team members or roles)
• Add costs for resources
• Assign resources to tasks
• Establish dependencies
• Refine and optimize
• Create baseline
• Track progress (enter actuals, etc.)

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Project Overview

• This is a quickie overview
• We will return to all of these steps individually
  over the next few weeks
• Sample project from McConnell

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Project UI

• Views
• Default is Gant Chart View
• 2 panes
• Task Sheet on left (a table)
• Gantt Chart on right
• View Bar on far left

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Project UI
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Create Your Project

• File/New
• Setup start date
• Setup calendar
• Menu Project/Project Information
• Often left with default settings
• Hours, holidays

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Enter WBS

• Outlining
• Sub-tasks and summary tasks
• Do not enter start/end dates for each
• Just start with Task Name and Duration for each
• Use Indent/Outdent buttons to define summary
  tasks and subtasks
• You can enter specific Start/End dates but dont
  most of the time

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Establish Durations

• Know the abbreviations
• h/d/w/m
• D is default
• Can use partial
• .5d is a half-day task
• Elapsed durations
• Estimated durations
• Put a ? after duration

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Add Resources

• Work Resources
• People
• Material Resources
• Things
• Can be used to track costs
• Ex amount of equipment purshased
• Not used as often in typical software project

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Resource Sheet

• Can add new resources here
• Or directly in the task entry sheet
• Beware of mis-spellings (Project will create
  near-duplicates)
• Setup costs
• Such as annual salary (put yr after Std. Rate)

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Effort-Driven Scheduling

• MS-Project default
• Duration Units Work
• Duration Work / Units (D W/U)
• Work Duration Units (W DU)
• Units Work / Duration (U W/D)
• Adding more resources to a task shortens duration
• Can be changed on a per-task basis
• In the advanced tab of Task Information dialog
  box
• Task Type setting
• Beware the Mythical Man-month
• Good for laying bricks, not always so for
  software development

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Link Tasks

• On toolbar Link Unlink buttons
• Good for many at once
• Or via Gantt chart
• Drag from one task to another

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Milestones

• Zero duration tasks
• Insert task normally but put 0 in duration

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Make Assignments

• Approach 1. Using Task Sheet
• Using Resource Names column
• You can create new ones by just typing-in here
• 2. Using Assign Resources dialog box
• Good for multiple resources
• Highlight task, Tools/Resources or toolbar button
• 3. Using Task Information dialog
• Resources tab
• 4. Task Entry view
• View/More Views/Task Entry
• Or Task Entry view on Resource Mgmt. toolbar

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Save Baseline

• Saves all current information about your project
• Dates, resource assignments, durations, costs

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Fine Tune

• Then is used later as basis for comparing against
  actuals
• Menu Tools/Tracking/Save Baseline

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Project 2002

• 3 Editions Standard, Professional, Server
• MS Project Server 2002
• Upgrade of old Project Central
• Includes Project Web Access, web-based UI
  (partial)
• Workgroup and resource notification features
• Requires SQL-Server and IIS
• Portfolio Analyzer
• Drill-down into projects via pivot tables
  charts
• Portfolio Modeler
• Create models and what-if scenarios
• SharePoint Team Services integration

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Project 2002

• MS-Project Professional
• Build Team feature
• Skills-based resource matching
• Resource Pools with skill set tracking
• Resource Substitution Wizard
• Project Guide feature
• Customizable process component

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MS-Project QA

• Your WBS in Project
• How did it go?
• Any questions?

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Homework

• Schwalbe 7 Project Quality Management
• URLs
• Introduction to Software Testing
• http//www.iplbath.com/pdf/p0820.pdf
• Introduction to Software Testing Principles
• http//www.qestest.com/principl.htm
• Project plan
• Develop and submit an initial copy of the project
  plan (limited to tasks milestones) for your
  individual project

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Questions?