Software Project Planning

Once a project is found to be possible, computer code project managers undertake

project designing. Project designing is undertaken and completed even before any
development activity starts. Project designing consists of subsequent essential activities:

Estimating the subsequent attributes of the project:

Project size:

What’s going to be downside quality in terms of the trouble and time needed to
develop the product?

Cost:

What proportion is it reaching to value to develop the project?

Duration:

However long is it reaching to want complete development?

Effort:

What proportion effort would be required

A Software Project is the complete methodology of programming advancement from

requirement gathering to testing and support, completed by the execution procedures,
in a specified period to achieve intended software product.

Need of Software Project Management

Software development is a sort of all new streams in world business, and there's next to
no involvement in structure programming items. Most programming items are
customized to accommodate customer's necessities. The most significant is that the
underlying technology changes and advances so generally and rapidly that experience
of one element may not be connected to the other one. All such business and
ecological imperatives bring risk in software development; hence, it is fundamental to
manage software projects efficiently.

Software Project Manager

Software manager is responsible for planning and scheduling project development.
They manage the work to ensure that it is completed to the required standard. They
monitor the progress to check that the event is on time and within budget. The project
planning must incorporate the major issues like size & cost estimation scheduling,
project monitoring, personnel selection evaluation & risk management. To plan a
successful software project, we must understand:

o Scope of work to be completed

o Risk analysis
o The resources mandatory
o The project to be accomplished
o Record of being followed

Software Project planning starts before technical work start. The various steps of
planning activities are:
The size is the crucial parameter for the estimation of other activities. Resources
requirement are required based on cost and development time. Project schedule may
prove to be very useful for controlling and monitoring the progress of the project. This
is dependent on resources & development time.

Project Scope management

Project scope is everything that’s needed to complete a project, including tasks, time,
and resources. So, project scope management the process of overseeing and regulating
all of those things so that you can complete your project on time and within budget.

Scope refers to the detailed set of deliverables or features of a project. These

deliverables are derived from a project’s requirements. PMBOK® defines Project Scope
as the “The work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result
with the specified features and functions.”

Following are the three processes of Project Scope Management:

 Planning

The planning process is when an attempt is made to capture and define the work that
needs to be done.

 Controlling

The controlling and monitoring processes focus on documenting tracking, scope creep,
tracking, and disapproving/approving project changes.

 Closing

In the final process, the closing includes an audit of the project deliverables and an
assessment of the outcomes against the original plan.

Why is project scope management important?

Chances are, you’re someone who’s guilty of an unexpectedly large shopping trip or a
project that somehow ballooned beyond the initial requirements. According to the
Project Management Institute (PMI), a whopping 52% of projects experience the
dreaded scope creep.

You don’t have an infinite amount of team members, time, and money. And, if your
project requirements continue to expand, your resources are going to be strapped.

Effective project scope management helps you stick as closely as possible to your
original plan and manage your resources more effectively, which leads to the following
benefits.

1. Realistic timelines

One PwC study of more than 10,600 projects found that only 2.5% of companies
complete their projects 100% successfully. The rest miss their original budget or
deadline (or both!).

Managing project scope will prevent you and your team from blowing past your original
end date. When you know exactly what’s required to complete a project, you have a
much easier time setting a realistic deadline you can actually honor.

Think of our grocery trip again. If you knew you had a long list of things to purchase
(and not just eggs), you would’ve set aside more time and grabbed a shopping cart
right away, rather than thinking you’d be in and out in five minutes. Now the rest of
your day has to be adjusted to make up for that lost hour.

2. Accurate budgets

It’s tough to understand how much a project will cost if its requirements and
deliverables are constantly shifting and evolving.
Defining the scope helps you set a reasonable budget in the first place, and monitoring
the scope as your team makes progress will help you stick with that number.

3. Efficient projects

We’ve all been there. You’re dealing with a project that won’t end because teams or
clients keep requesting new features, tweaks, or additions. The scope keeps expanding
and the project drags on and on and on.

It feels good to say “yes” to things, but project teams have the tendency to keep
agreeing to requests without realizing how far they’ve strayed from the initial plan.

Defining and managing your project scope enables your team to deliver projects
efficiently in accordance with the original requirements, rather than letting them
continue to snowball.

To put it simply, your scope (and the project scope statement you create) serves as the
project touchstone. It’s something that the project manager and team can return to and
use to guide their project-related decisions.

Importance of Project Scope Management

If you are managing a project, keeping an eye on the expectations of stakeholders and
clients can be one of the most challenging tasks. But with a clear scope and set timeline,
a project manager can more easily ensure that deadlines are met and time is efficiently
used throughout the life cycle of the project.

Project scope management helps avoid a number of common problems such as:

 Being reminded that the actual result was less than anticipated

 Regularly changing requirements

 Change your direction of the project once you are about halfway.

 Re-examining the budget discussion

 Fail to meet the project deadlines

Scope management is a necessity for long-term project management. It allows an

estimation of how much time, labor, and money will be necessary for accomplishing the
project. Scope is a critical component of project management; it sets parameters for the
changing aspects of the project life cycle.

BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE

What Is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?

A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a visual, hierarchical and deliverable-oriented

deconstruction of a project. It is a helpful diagram for project managers because it
allows them to break down their project scope and visualize all the tasks required to
complete their projects.

A Work Breakdown Structure includes dividing a large and complex project into simpler,
manageable and independent tasks.

The root of this tree (structure) is labelled by the Project name itself. For constructing a
work breakdown structure, each node is recursively decomposed into smaller sub-
activities, until at the leaf level, the activities becomes undividable and independent. It
follows a Top-Down approach.

Steps:

Step-1: Identify the major activities of the project.

Step-2: Identify the sub-activities of the major activities.

Step-3: Repeat till undividable, simple and independent activities are created.
Why Use a WBS In Project Management?

Making a WBS is the first step in developing a project schedule. It defines all the work
that needs to be completed (and in what order) to achieve the project goals and
objectives.

By visualizing your project in this manner, you can understand your project scope, and
allocate resources for all your project tasks.

A well-constructed work breakdown structure helps with important project

management process groups and knowledge areas such as:

Project Planning, Project Scheduling and Project Budgeting

Risk Management, Resource Management, Task Management and Team

Management

In addition, a WBS helps avoid common project management issues such as

missed deadlines, scope creep and cost overrun, among others.
In other words, a work breakdown structure serves as your map through complicated
projects. Your project scope may include several phases or smaller sub-projects—and
even those sub-projects can be broken down into tasks, deliverables, and work
packages! Your WBS can help you manage those items, and gain clarity into the details
needed to accomplish every aspect of your project scope.

Types of WBS

There are two main types of WBS: deliverable-based, and phase-based. They depend on
whether you want to divide your project in terms of time or scope.

Deliverable-Based Work Breakdown Structure

A deliverable-based WBS first break down the project into all the major areas of the
project scope as control accounts and then divides those into project deliverables and
work packages.

Here’s an example of a deliverable-based WBS that’s taken from our free work
breakdown structure template. Download the template today to practice building your
own work breakdown structure in Excel.
Phase-Based Work Breakdown Structure

The phase-based WBS displays the final deliverable on top, with the WBS levels below
showing the five phases of a project (initiation, planning, execution, control and
closeout). Just as in the deliverable-based WBS, the project phases are divided into
project deliverables and work packages. Our previous graphic in the “Work Breakdown
Structure Example” section contained a phase-based WBS example.

construction

Firstly, the project managers and top level management identifies the main deliverables
of the project.

After this important step, these main deliverables are broke down into smaller higher-
level tasks and this complete process is done recursively to produce much smaller
independent tasks. It depends on the project manager and team that upto which level
of detail they want to break down their project.

Generally the lowest level tasks are the most simplest and independent tasks and takes
less than two weeks worth of work.

Hence, there is no rule for upto which level we may build the work breakdown structure
of the project as it totally depends upon the type of project we are working on and the
management of the company.

The efficiency and success of the whole project majorly depends on the quality of the
Work Breakdown Structure of the project and hence, it implies its importance.

Uses:

 It allows to do a precise cost estimation of each activity.

 It allows to estimate the time that each activity will take more precisely.
 It allows easy management of the project.
 It helps in proper organisation of the project by the top management.
What is Outsourcing?

Contracting out non-core and regular activities in which a company lacks competence
to other agencies in order to benefit from their experience, knowledge, and efficiency is
called Outsourcing.

It is a business practice, known as contracting out or business process outsourcing in

which one company hires another company or an individual, such as a service provider
or vendor, or a third party to perform tasks, handle operations, or provide services that
are normally or previously performed by the company’s own employees.

This service provider/vendor arranges for its own personnel or computer systems to do
and focus on a certain activity or service, which it can do better, quicker, and cheaper
than the hiring firm, either on-site at the hiring company’s own facilities or some
external remote locations. Many types of jobs, including manufacturing operations,
human resource activities, and financial functions, like accounting and payroll
processing, can be outsourced. Companies can outsource whole departments, such as
their IT department, or even parts of a department.

Features of Outsourcing

1) Outsourcing implies contracting out

Outsourcing means sourcing from outside rather than performing it in-house or in

the organisation its own.

For example, Most businesses have recruited their own sanitation employees to
maintain the neatness, cleanliness, and overall housekeeping of their facilities. That is,
sanitation and housekeeping duties were carried out in-house.

However, many corporations have recently begun to outsource these tasks, i.e., they
have entrusted other agencies to undertake these activities for their organisations on
a contractual basis.
 2) Non-core business activities are generally outsourced
Most organisations do not prioritise sanitation and cleaning. Of course, for
municipalities and sanitation service providers, these tasks are important to their
business. A hotel’s main activity is housekeeping. In other words, depending on
the business a firm is in, some operations will be critical to its primary business
purpose. Other actions may be seen as secondary or incidental to achieving the
primary purpose.

For example, the goal of a school is to educate or develop children via academic
and co-curricular activities. These actions clearly define the main activities.
Running a cafeteria/canteen or a bookstore is not a school’s primary activity.

When Organisation first begin to experiment with outsourcing, they may

outsource solely non-core activities. However, as they gain experience managing
interdependencies, they may begin to receive even fundamental functions
provided by outsiders.
For example, a school may form a partnership with a computer training facility to
provide computer education to its students.

3) Processes might be outsourced to a captive unit or a third party

This represents how a company can outsource part of its activities to captive and third-
party service providers. A multinational corporation deals with a diverse range of
products and markets. A variety of procedures, including requirements, selection, and
training, may be outsourced. It will assist to reduce operating costs by avoiding
duplication of work.

Scope of Outsourcing

1) Outsource Financial Services

In today’s competitive market, with fluctuating economic conditions and high levels of
regulation, fund managers, bank managers, and investment banks are considering
middle and block offices as areas where they might gain competitive advantages. The
difficulty is to identify innovative methods to reduce expenses, enhance flexibility, and
improve processing efficiency while maintaining control. Financial services must be
outsourced to a provider with subject expertise as well as experience that differentiates
you from the competition.

2) Outsource Technological Services

The technological sector is changing at such a rapid pace that it is hard to keep up with
new innovations. Recent innovations in the industry might result in a new language
being used on a regular basis by stakeholders.

Documents containing out-of-date terms and information might indicate that the
technology utilised is out-of-date. One must rely on professionals who are aware of the
current developments in the world of technology in order to be on the leading edge of
technology.

3) Writing services

Writing may be outsourced in two ways: Copywriting and Proofreading.

Companies may not have the funds to engage a professional writer, but they still want
their advertising and marketing content to be appealing and captivating. As a result,
they outsource the job to freelance writers, who are hired on a contract basis to execute
particular tasks.

4) Customer care service

Customers require many types of information from a company. Sales and marketing
need interaction with customers.

1) Marketing: Marketing activities include telemarketing, surveys, marketing campaign

management, etc.

2) Customer analytics: It consists of profitability analytics, reporting, and complaint

analysis.

3) Sale: This includes inbound and outbound sales, as well as co-browsing.

4) Support: This includes account activation, new customer registration, and complaint
monitoring.
CPM
Critical Path Method (CPM) is a method used in project planning, generally for project
scheduling for the on-time completion of the project.

It actually helps in the determination of the earliest time by which the whole project
can be completed.

There are two main concepts in this method namely critical task and critical path.
Critical task is the task/activity which can’t be delayed otherwise the completion of the
whole project will be delayed. It must be completed on-time before starting the other
dependent tasks.

Critical path is a sequence of critical tasks/activities and is the largest path in the
project network. It gives us the minimum time which is required to complete the whole
project. The activities in the critical path are known as critical activities and if these
activities are delayed then the completion of the whole project is also delayed.

Major steps of the Critical Path Method:

 Identifying the activities

 Construct the project network
 Perform time estimation using forward and backward pass
 Identify the critical path

NUMERICAL NOTES

Staffing Level Estimation

Staffing level estimation is a critical task in software engineering that requires careful
consideration. The accuracy of the estimation can have a significant impact on the
success of the project.

Staffing level estimation in software engineering is a process of determining the optimal

number of resources required to complete a software project within a specified timeline
and budget.
It is a critical task that needs to be performed accurately to ensure that the project is
delivered on time, within budget, and with the required quality.

There are various methods and techniques available for staffing level estimation in
software engineering. These include expert judgment, historical data analysis, and
mathematical models.

Expert judgment involves seeking advice from experienced professionals who can
provide insights into the nature and scope of the project, which can be used to estimate
the required staffing levels. Historical data analysis involves analyzing data from past
projects to determine the number of resources needed for a similar project.

Mathematical models are used to calculate the required staffing levels based on various
project parameters such as project size, complexity, development methodology, and
technical skills required. COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) is a popular mathematical
model used for staffing level estimation in software engineering.

It is based on historical data and considers factors such as product complexity,

development environment, personnel experience, and project duration to estimate the
staffing levels.

Effect of schedule Change on Cost

Cost and Schedule Estimating Process

The cost and schedule estimation process helps in determining number of resources to
complete all project activities. It generally involves approximation and development of
costing alternatives to plan, perform or work, deliver, or give project. A good estimation
is very much essential for keeping a project under budget.
Two perspectives are generally required to derive project plans. These perspectives are
given

below :

1. Forward-Looking :

 The Forward-Looking approach is also known as Top-Down approach. This approach

generally starts with describing and explaining various project tasks that involve starting
with project aim or end deliverable and breaking it all down into smaller planning
chunks.

 Top-down budgeting also refers to a method of budgeting where project managers

prepare a high-level budget for organization.

 These project managers or senior management develops and creates a

characterization of overall size, process, environment, people, and quality that is
essential for software project. In this approach, duration of deliverable’s is estimated.

 It generally takes less time and effort than bottom-up estimate. With help of software
cost estimation model, an estimation of overall effort and schedule is done. The project
manager generally divides estimation of overall effort into a top-level of WBS (Work
Breakdown Structure).

 They also divide schedule into major milestones dates. At this stage, subproject
managers are simply given responsibility for decomposing every element of WBS into
lower levels with help of various allocations of top-level, staffing profile, and, major
milestones dates as constraints.

 The main benefit of this approach is use of holistic data from earlier projects or
products, along with unmitigated risks, and scope creeps. This also helps in reducing
risk of overlooked work activities or costs.
2. Backward-Looking :

 Backward-Looking approach is also known as Bottom-up approach.

 In this approach, project team breaks requirements of clients down, determining

lowest level appropriate to develop a range of estimates, covering overall scope of
project based on available definition of task.

 Overall elements of lowest level WBS are generally explained into detailed tasks, for
which WBS element manager is responsible for estimating budget and schedule.

 All of these estimates are joined and integrated into higher-level WBS budgets and
milestones

NUMERICAL HAI GOOGLE //GATE SMASSHERS