Software Project Management

1
Software Project Management

• Lecture 8
• Software Project Performance Tracking and
  Monitoring

2
Overview

• Importance of tracking and monitoring
• Creating a management framework
• Tracking the performance
• Monitoring the progress and resource
• Getting project on the right track

3
Importance of tracking and monitoring

• Make sure the project
• Can be delivered on time and within budget
• Is of good quality
• Meets clients needs

4
What can go wrong in product?

• Inadequate functionality of a product
• Related to software requirements specification
• Poor quality of a product
• Related to quality management
• Late delivery of the product
• Overly exceeding the budget

5
Planning, Tracking and Monitoring

• Planning
• Know where we want to go
• Tracking
• Know where we are
• Monitoring
• How to go from where we are to where we want to go

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Tracking

• Finding out what is happening
• Need a plan and schedule
• To collect data

7
Monitoring

• Comparing the current status with the targets
• Need a plan, a schedule, collected data
• To exercise control over the project
• To ensure the targets are met
• To devise contingency plans

8
A suggested framework
No
Publish initial plan
Monitor the progress
Review the project
Yes
9
A suggestion framework (contd)
Monitor the progress
Take remedial action
Publish revised plan
No
gather project info.
compare progress vs targets
Yes
10
Tracking the performance

• Setting check points
• Collecting data

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Check Point

• Based on regular time intervals
• Can be weekly or monthly or quarterly
• Depend on what to check and how to
• Based on a particular event
• At the end of each activity
• In the middle of a critical activity

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Check Point (contd)

• Should be set before the plan was published
• Make sure everyone knows when and what the check
  points are

13
Collecting data

• Partial completion report
• Risk report

14
Partial completion report

• Indicate the work done by the personnel and the
  time spent on the work
• Optional items
• likelihood of failing to complete the task by the
  scheduled date
• Estimated time of completion

15
Partial completion report Example
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Risk reporting

• Indicate the likelihood of meeting the scheduled
  target date
• Instead of asking the estimated completion date
• Use the traffic-light method

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The traffic-light method

• For assessing a product
• Identify the key (first-level) elements
• Break them into smaller components
• Assess each component by
• Green as on target
• Amber as not on target but recoverable
• Red as not on target and recoverable only with
  difficulty

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The traffic-light method (Contd)

• Assess the key-level element based on the
  assessments of their components
• Assess the overall product based on all the
  assessments (key elements and their components)

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The traffic-light method Example
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Monitoring the progress

• Need to monitor time
• Need to monitor cost

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Monitoring the time

• Tools for visualizing the progress
• Presenting the collected data in a way that is
  easy to understand
• Help to easily identify the problem activities or
  areas that need to be taken care of

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Visualizing Techniques

• The Gantt chart
• A static picture showing the current progress of
  the project
• The Timeline
• A dynamic picture showing the progress of the
  project and how the project has changed through
  time

23
The Gantt Chart

• An activity bar chart showing
• the activities, their scheduled dates and
  duration
• the reported progress of the activities
• today cursor

24
The Gantt Chart (contd)
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The Slip Chart

• Add a slip line on the Gantt chart
• The slip line indicates those activities that are
  either ahead or behind the schedule
• Too much bending indicates a need for
  rescheduling of the overall plan

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The Slip Chart (contd)
Today
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The Timeline

• A plot of the elapsed time against the planned
  time of the activities indicating
• the actual progress of the activities and
• the rescheduled activities by the end of each
  week
• show where and when the targets have changed
  through the life of a project

28
The Timeline (contd)
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The Timeline (contd)

• Can show the slippage of the activities through
  the life of the project
• The Gantt chart cannot
• Help to analyze and understand the trends and
  reason for changes
• to avoid slippage in future projects

30
Monitoring the Cost

• Earned Value Analysis
• A cost monitoring technique recommended by DoD of
  US and Australia

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Earned Value Analysis

• Produce a baseline budget from the project plan
• Calculate the earned value of each activity
• Earned value time for an activity / total time
  for the project
• E.g. earned value number of days for an
  activity / number of days for the project

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Earned Value Analysis (contd)

• Monitor the earned value
• Once an activity is completed, its elapsed time
  is recorded and its earned value (EV) is
  accumulated to the cumulative EV

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Earned Value Analysis (contd)
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Earned Value Analysis (contd)
35
Earned Value Analysis (contd)
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Earned Value Analysis (contd)

• Budget variance
• Actual cost to date - Baseline budget
• Indicates how actual cost differs from the
  planned cost

37
Earned Value Analysis (contd)

• Schedule variance
• Earned Value Baseline budget
• Indicates how the actual schedule differs from
  the planned schedule
• Schedule performance index
• Earned Value / Baseline budget
• SPI gt 1 means better than planned
• SPI lt 1 means slower than planned

38
Earned Value Analysis (contd)

• Cost variance
• Earned Value Actual cost to date
• Indicates how the planned cost differs from
  actual cost
• Cost Performance index, CPI
• Earned Value / Actual cost to date
• CPI gt 1 means better than planned
• CPI lt 1 means slower than planned

39
Prioritizing Monitoring

• Priority list of activity to monitor
• Critical activities
• Non-critical activities with no free float
• Non-critical activities with less than a
  specified float
• High risk activities
• Activities with critical resources

40
Bringing the Project Back to Target

• You are now behind the schedule
• Possible actions
• Reschedule the target date
• Reschedule other activities with shorter duration
• Reorder the activities

41
Shorten the Critical Activities

• Putting pressure on the personnel
• Increasing the resources
• Personnel work longer hours
• Additional analysts to interview users
• Competent programmer to code modules in the
  critical activity

42
Reorder the activities

• Relax the constraints on the start of an activity
  before the completion of the previous one
• Subdivide the components of an activity so that
  they can be done in parallel

43
References

• Hughes, B., and Cotterell, M. (1999) Software
  Project Management, 2nd ed., McGraw Hill.
• Down, A., Coleman, M., and Absolon, P. (1994)
  Risk Management for Software projects, McGraw
  Hill.