Project Planning & Management Christian Rodriguez

Topics Overview  Progress Tracking  Estimating Completion  Progress Tracking Tools  Project Personnel  Project Organization  Effort Estimation

Topics Overview (cont.)  Risk Management  Project Plan  Process Models & Management  Accountability Model  Activity Roadmap  Earned-value Chart  Win-win Spiral Model

Progress Tracking  When planning a project it is important to understand the customer’s concerns in regards to the project’s schedule  A project should be split up properly into appropriate phases, steps and activities  Once these steps are followed progress tracking can be performed with activity an graph

Progress Tracking  Example: Making Cake Activity Graph

Estimating Completion  Critical path method (CPM) is one of several related techniques for doing project planning  CPM is for projects that are made up of a number of individual “activities”  If some of the activities require other activities to finish before they can start, then the project becomes a complex web of activities  CPM chart

Estimating Completion  Example: CPM Graph

Progress Tracking Tools  A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management, is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time.  Example:

Progress Tracking Tools  A Resource Histogram is a graphical tool that contains bar or chart representing number of resources (usually skilled staff) required over time for a project event (or phase)  Examples:

Project Personnel  In any project it is important to properly plan out assignments  Project size: The scale of the project can directly affect the number of employees needed  Experience: The experience of the team can also affect if a project is successful or not  Expertise: Certain projects may require few employees with high expertise in order to accomplish the job properly

Project Personnel  The requirements for choosing appropriate project personnel are directly involved with the type of assignment  If there are problems in communication between personnel this can directly affect the final product  Different personnel may have different work styles, but it is important to make a best effort for these different work styles to not conflict with each other or cause a bad work environment

Project Organization  A chief programmer team represents a new managerial approach to production programming that incorporates a fundamental change in managerial framework  It includes restructuring the work of programming into specialized jobs, defining relationships among specialists, developing new tools to permit these specialists to interface effectively with a developing, visible project, and providing for training and career development of personnel with these specialties

Project Organization  Egoless programming is an approach to software development based on consensus within a small team  The aim is to produce software that is the product of the team rather than one or a few individuals  The motivation is to avoid personal identification with output, promote group identification, and thus to make it easier for the team to conduct an objective evaluation of the programs produced

Project Organization  The combination of the two:  Decentralizing decision-making process  Appropriate whenever a problem requires synergistic effect of group interaction

Effort Estimation  What are the major cost factors?  Hardware and software costs including maintenance  Travel and training costs  Effort costs (the costs of paying software engineers)  How much the cost changes over time?  Once a project is underway, project managers should regularly update their cost and schedule estimates

Effort Estimation: Expert Judgment  One or more experts in both software development and the application domain use their experience to predict costs  Process iterates until some consensus is reached  Pros: Relatively cheap estimation method  Cons: Very inaccurate if there are no experts

Effort Estimation: Delphi Technique ① Group of experts, make “secret” guesses ② “secret” guesses are used to compute group average ③ Group average is presented to the group ④ Group, once again makes “secret” guesses ⑤ Individual guesses are again averaged ⑥ If new average is different from previous, goto (4) ⑦ Otherwise E = new average

Effort Estimation: Wolverton Technique  Uses a software type matrix where the column headings come from the cross product  {old, new}X{easy, moderate, hard}  For example:

Effort Estimation: Algorithmic Method  Cost is estimated as a mathematical function of product, project and process attributes whose values are estimated by project managers  The function is derived from a study of historical costing data  Most commonly used product attribute for cost estimation is LOC (code size)  Most models are basically similar but with different attribute values

Effort Estimation: COCOMO  Developed at TRW, a US defense contractor  Based on a cost database of more than 60 different projects  Exists in three stages:  Basic – Gives a ‘ball-park’ estimate based on product attributes  Intermediate – Modifies basic estimate using project and process attributes  Advanced – Estimates project phases and parts separately

Effort Estimation: Machine Learning  Machine Learning (ML) techniques learn patterns from historical project data and use these patterns for effort prediction  Examples of ML include:  Artificial neural network (ANN)  Decision tree  Naïve Bayes

Risk Management: Sources  Managers face several kinds of risk when dealing with any project  Scope Risk: Defining what is required is not always easy, so the deliverables, the objectives, the project charter, and the scope need to be clearly defined  Schedule Risk: Keeping to timelines and agreed critical paths is one of the most difficult situations that project managers can now face  Resource Risk: If the people are unskilled or incompetent to perform the task at hand, if the project is understaffed from the beginning, or if key project members come on aboard far after the inception of the project, there is an obvious project risk that has ill-planned human resources as its base

Risk Management: Prevention  Risk Identification: Managers face many difficulties when it comes to identifying and naming the risks that occur when undertaking projects, but it’s important to identify which team(s) are responsible for handling which risks  Risk Quantification: Risks can be evaluated based on quantity, and project managers need to analyze the likely chances of a risk occurring with the help of a Probability/Impact matrix  Risk Response: Project managers can choose between four risk response strategies including: avoidable risks; pass on the risk; take corrective measures to reduce risk impact; and acknowledge risk  Risk Monitoring and Control: Risks can be monitored on a continuous basis to check if any change is made and new risks can be identified through the constant monitoring and assessing mechanisms

Risk Management: Top Risks [1-5] ① Undefined Goals ② Scope Changes ③ Inadequate Skills for the Project ④ Lack of Accountability ⑤ Improper Risk Management

Risk Management: Top Risks [6-10] ⑥ Ambiguous Contingency Plans ⑦ Poor Communication ⑧ Impossible Deadlines ⑨ Resource Deprivation ⑩ Lack of Stakeholder Engagement

Project Plan  A formal, approved document used to guide both project execution and project control  The primary uses of the project plan are to document planning assumptions and decisions, facilitate communication among stakeholders, and document approved scope, cost, and schedule baselines

Project Plan: Contents  Scope Management  Requirements Management  Schedule Management  Financial Management  Quality Management  Resource Management  Stakeholder Management  Communications Management  Project Change Management  Risk Management  Procurement Management

Process Models & Management: Enrollment Management  Enrollment Management is a term that is used frequently in higher education to describe well-planned strategies and tactics to shape the enrollment of an institution and meet established goals  Example:

Process Models & Management: Accountability Modeling  Accountability is forward-looking  Accountability is based on willingness  Accountability is about the quality of dialog  Accountability involves negotiation

Process Models & Management: Teams & Stakeholders  Instigate Social and Team Work Skills  Develop Self Leadership Skills  Establish Insights on Global Culture  Use Virtual Collaboration Software and Client Management Tools  Create Communication Plans for a Virtual Management

Activity Roadmap  Plan that matches short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions to help meet those goals  Example:

Earned-value Chart  A project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner  Example:

Process Models & Management: Life-cycle Objectives  At the end of the inception phase is the first major project milestone  Evaluation Criteria:  Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost/schedule estimates  Agreement that the right set of requirements have been captured and that there is a shared understanding of these requirements  Agreement that the cost/schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process are appropriate  All risks have been identified and a mitigation strategy exists for each

Process Models & Management: Life-cycle Architecture  At the end of the elaboration phase you examine the detailed system objectives and scope, the choice of the architecture, and the resolution of the major risks  Evaluation criteria:  The product Vision and requirements are stable  The architecture is stable  The key approaches to be used in test/eval are proven  Test and eval show major risk elements are addressed  Iteration plans for construction phase are sufficient detail  Iteration plans for construction phase are supported  All stakeholders agree that current vision can be met  Actual resource expenditure versus planned expenditure are acceptable

Process Models & Management: Operational Capability  The product is ready to be handed over to the Transition Team and all functionality has been developed  Evaluation criteria:  Is the product release stable and mature enough to be deployed?  Are all the stakeholders ready for the transition into the community?  Are actual resource expenditures versus planned still acceptable?

Win-win Spiral Model  The approach is called Win-win because it is a winning situation for the development team and for the customer  Example:

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