Chapter 5 Software Project Planning One of the most important jobs of a project is to plan the project. The best people on your staff should be in charge of this.

Software Project Planning The overall goal of project planning is to establish a pragmatic strategy for controlling, tracking, and monitoring a complex technical project. Why? So the end result gets done on time, with quality! It is an overall view of how are you going to manage the project and react when things go wrong

The Steps Scoping—understand the problem and the work that must be done Estimation—how much effort? how much time? Risk—what can go wrong? how can we avoid it? what can we do about it? Schedule—how do we allocate resources along the timeline? what are the milestones? Control strategy—how do we control quality? how do we control change? Some of the things we do is to scope out the work and try to get your mind around how much effort the project entails. Estimation is also a tedious task. You can estimate how mmuch effort you will need next week but for the next two years is TOO difiicult. So your plan and estimate pretty well for the time closest to today and then the times out from that are at best tenative plans and guesstimates. Every project is risky. If we did not do risky projects, no progress would be made in the field. However syou TRY to manage, calculate, and plan how to handle risks as they esculate. Just estimating the time is not enough If you have 400 programmers/database analyst/networking persons/ managers/ secretaries are needed more at some times that others. All their time must be scheudled. You have to know if there is time for vacations, etc. You need to schedule as carefully as possible. You need to have quality assurance steps to assure that the deliverables are correct precise, etc.

Write it Down! Project Scope Software Estimates Project Risks Plan Schedule Control strategy Software Project Plan

To Understand Scope ... Understand the customers needs understand the business context understand the project boundaries understand the customer’s motivation understand the likely paths for change understand that ... Even when you understand, nothing is guaranteed!

Cost Estimation project scope must be explicitly defined task and/or functional decomposition is necessary historical measures (metrics) are very helpful at least two different techniques should be used remember that uncertainty is inherent

Estimation Techniques past (similar) project experience conventional estimation techniques task breakdown and effort estimates size (e.g., FP) estimates tools (e.g., Checkpoint)

Functional Decomposition perform Statement a functional decomposition "grammatical of Scope parse" You review the scope of the project. In our case you review what the scope is of the system. You then begin funcitonally decomposing that scope into parts. One method is to write shall lists The system. Shall……..

Creating a Task Matrix Obtained from “process framework” framework activities application functions Effort required to accomplish each framework activity for each application function You can look at the process model used, the activities prescribed, the related tasks to be done, and the deliverables to be produced You then look at the effort to accomplish the application functions (items on the shall lists)

Conventional Methods: LOC/FP Approach compute LOC/FP using estimates of information domain values use historical effort for the project You can compute the LOC or FPh

Example: LOC Approach

Example: FP Approach measurement parameter count weight number of user inputs 40 x 4 = 160 number of user outputs 25 x 5 = 125 number of user inquiries 12 x 4 = 48 number of files 4 x 7 = 28 number of ext.interfaces 4 x 7 = 28 algorithms 60 x 3 = 180 count-total 569 0.25 p-m / FP complexity multiplier We take the elements such as the number of user inputs, the count of those, in this case 40. We then multiply it by a weight. This in this case is 4. To give a value of 160 for inputs. We then continue with each element. After we complete each element we multiply by a multiplier of the environment for development. After we computer the feature points then we multiply the productivity matrix of a particular company by the feature points and yield a value for estimation purposes. If our labor rate is 8000.00 per month Remember that is about 4,500 per month with (54,000) about 3,500 for fringe benefits Retirement, healthcare, 401, etc for a total cost of 8000.00 per month per employee And this brings the cost per FP to about 1230.00 with 6.5 FP per month Thus the cost of this system is 1230 * 120 = 147,000 dollars .84 feature points 478 = 120 p-m

Tool-Based Estimation project characteristics calibration factors LOC/FP data

Estimation Guidelines estimate using at least two techniques get estimates from independent sources avoid over-optimism, assume difficulties you've arrived at an estimate, sleep on it adjust for the people who'll be doing the job—they have the highest impact

The Make-Buy Decision $380,000 $450,000 build $275,000 reuse $310,000 system X reuse simple (0.30) difficult (0.70) minor changes (0.40) major (0.60) simple (0.20) complex (0.80) (0.30) (0.70) $380,000 $450,000 $275,000 $310,000 $490,000 $210,000 $400,000 buy contract without changes (0.60) with changes (0.40) $350,000 $500,000 build We are making a decision on a planned piece of software to build, reuse, buy or contract. There is a 70 percent chance that the software is difficult and 30 percent it is simple. These estimates allow us to look objectively about the resulting software decision.