Category: 03. Software Management

To manage the Project management system adequately and efficiently, we use Project management tools.

Here are some standard tools:

Gantt chart

Gantt Chart first developed by Henry Gantt in 1917. Gantt chart usually utilized in project management, and it is one of the most popular and helpful ways of showing activities displayed against time. Each activity represented by a bar.

Gantt chart is a useful tool when you want to see the entire landscape of either one or multiple projects. It helps you to view which tasks are dependent on one another and which event is coming up.

PERT chart

PERT is an acronym of Programme Evaluation Review Technique. In the 1950s, it is developed by the U.S. Navy to handle the Polaris submarine missile programme.

In Project Management, PERT chart represented as a network diagram concerning the number of nodes, which represents events.

The direction of the lines indicates the sequence of the task. In the above example, tasks between “Task 1 to Task 9” must complete, and these are known as a dependent or serial task. Between Task 4 and 5, and Task 4 and 6, nodes are not depended and can undertake simultaneously. These are known as Parallel or concurrent tasks. Without resource or completion time, the task must complete in the sequence which is considered as event dependency, and these are known as Dummy activity and represented by dotted lines.

Logic Network

The Logic Network shows the order of activities over time. It shows the sequence in which activities are to do. Distinguishing events and pinning down the project are the two primary uses. Moreover, it will help with understanding task dependencies, a timescale, and overall project workflow.

Product Breakdown Structure

Product Breakdown Structure (BBS) is a management tool and necessary a part of the project designing. It’s a task-oriented system for subdividing a project into product parts. The product breakdown structure describes subtasks or work packages and represents the connection between work packages. Within the product breakdown Structure, the project work has diagrammatically pictured with various types of lists. The product breakdown structure is just like the work breakdown structure (WBS).

Work Breakdown Structure

It is an important project deliverable that classifies the team’s work into flexible segments. “Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)” is a group of terminology that describes the work breakdown structure as a “deliverable-oriented hierarchical breakdown of the work which is performed by the project team.”

There are two ways to generate a Work Breakdown Structure ? The top-down and

The bottom-up approach.

In the top-down approach, the WBS derived by crumbling the overall project into subprojects or lower-level tasks.

The bottom-up approach is more alike to a brainstorming exercise where team members are asked to make a list of low-level tasks which is required to complete the project.

Resource Histogram

The resource histogram is precisely a bar chart that used for displaying the amounts of time that a resource is scheduled to be worked on over a prearranged and specific period. Resource histograms can also contain the related feature of resource availability, used for comparison on purposes of contrast.

Critical Path Analysis

Critical path analysis is a technique that is used to categorize the activities which are required to complete a task, as well as classifying the time which is needed to finish each activity and the relationships between the activities. It is also called a critical path method. CPA helps in predicting whether a project will expire on time.

Software Project Management consists of many activities, that includes planning of the project, deciding the scope of product, estimation of cost in different terms, scheduling of tasks, etc.

The list of activities are as follows:

1. Project planning and Tracking
2. Project Resource Management
3. Scope Management
4. Estimation Management
5. Project Risk Management
6. Scheduling Management
7. Project Communication Management
8. Configuration Management

Now we will discuss all these activities –

1. Project Planning: It is a set of multiple processes, or we can say that it a task that performed before the construction of the product starts.

2. Scope Management: It describes the scope of the project. Scope management is important because it clearly defines what would do and what would not. Scope Management create the project to contain restricted and quantitative tasks, which may merely be documented and successively avoids price and time overrun.

3. Estimation management: This is not only about cost estimation because whenever we start to develop software, but we also figure out their size(line of code), efforts, time as well as cost.

If we talk about the size, then Line of code depends upon user or software requirement.

If we talk about effort, we should know about the size of the software, because based on the size we can quickly estimate how big team required to produce the software.

If we talk about time, when size and efforts are estimated, the time required to develop the software can easily determine.

And if we talk about cost, it includes all the elements such as:

• Size of software
• Quality
• Hardware
• Communication
• Training
• Additional Software and tools
• Skilled manpower

4. Scheduling Management: Scheduling Management in software refers to all the activities to complete in the specified order and within time slotted to each activity. Project managers define multiple tasks and arrange them keeping various factors in mind.

For scheduling, it is compulsory –

• Find out multiple tasks and correlate them.
• Divide time into units.
• Assign the respective number of work-units for every job.
• Calculate the total time from start to finish.
• Break down the project into modules.

5. Project Resource Management: In software Development, all the elements are referred to as resources for the project. It can be a human resource, productive tools, and libraries.

Resource management includes:

• Create a project team and assign responsibilities to every team member
• Developing a resource plan is derived from the project plan.
• Adjustment of resources.

6. Project Risk Management: Risk management consists of all the activities like identification, analyzing and preparing the plan for predictable and unpredictable risk in the project.

Several points show the risks in the project:

• The Experienced team leaves the project, and the new team joins it.
• Changes in requirement.
• Change in technologies and the environment.
• Market competition.

7. Project Communication Management: Communication is an essential factor in the success of the project. It is a bridge between client, organization, team members and as well as other stakeholders of the project such as hardware suppliers.

From the planning to closure, communication plays a vital role. In all the phases, communication must be clear and understood. Miscommunication can create a big blunder in the project.

8. Project Configuration Management: Configuration management is about to control the changes in software like requirements, design, and development of the product.

The Primary goal is to increase productivity with fewer errors.

Some reasons show the need for configuration management:

• Several people work on software that is continually update.
• Help to build coordination among suppliers.
• Changes in requirement, budget, schedule need to accommodate.
• Software should run on multiple systems.

Tasks perform in Configuration management:

• Identification
• Baseline
• Change Control
• Configuration Status Accounting
• Configuration Audits and Reviews

People involved in Configuration Management: