Applied Software Project Management - LESSON 2: SOFTWARE PROJECT PLANNING doc

Software Project Management

LESSON 2:
SOFTWARE PROJECT
PLANNING
Applied Software Project
Management

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Software Project Management

WHO NEEDS SOFTWARE?

 Most software is built in organizations for people with specific

needs.
◦ A

stakeholder is a anyone who has an interest (or stake) in the software being

completed
◦ A

user is someone who will need to use the software to perform tasks.

◦ Sometimes stakeholders will be users; but often the stakeholder will not use the

software.

 For example, a senior manager (like a CEO - chief executive
officer

or CTO - Chief technology officer in a company) will

usually have a stake in the software that is built (since it affects
the bottom line), even if she won’t ever use it.

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Software Project Management

STAKEHOLDER:
- SPONSOR
- CUSTOMER
- FUNCTIONAL/MANAGERS
- PROJECT MANAGER
- PROJECT TEAM MEMBER

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Software Project Management

CLASSIFYING STAKEHOLDERS
 Example:

Classifying stakeholders – an airline booking

system
 An international airline is considering introducing a new
booking system for use by associated travel agents to sell
flights directly to the public.
 Primary stakeholders: travel agency staff, airline booking
staff
 Secondary stakeholders: customers, airline management
 Tertiary stakeholders: competitors, civil aviation
authorities, customers’ travelling companions, airline
shareholders
 Facilitating stakeholders: design team, IT department staff

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Software Project Management

WHO BUILDS SOFTWARE?


Software is typically built by a team of software engineers, which
includes:

◦

Business analysts or requirements analysts who talk to users and stakeholders, plan
the behavior of software and write software requirements

◦

Designers and architects who plan the technical solution

◦

Programmers who write the code

◦

Testers who verify that the software meets its requirements and behaves as expected

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Software Project Management

PROJECT MANAGEMENT


The project manager plans and guides the software project
◦

The project manager is responsible for identifying the users and stakeholders and
determining their needs

◦

The project manager coordinates the team, ensuring that each task has an
appropriate software engineer assigned and that each engineer has sufficient
knowledge to perform it

◦

To do this well, the project manager must be familiar with every aspect of
software engineering

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Software Project Management

IDENTIFYING NEEDS
The

project manager drives the scope of the

project.


Why?



The project manager should identify and talk to the main stakeholder



The effective way to show stakeholders that their needs are
understood and that those specific needs will be addressed is with a
vision and scope document

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Software Project Management



VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT

A typical vision and scope document follows an outline like this
one:
1. Problem Statement
a) Project background
b) Stakeholders
c) Users
d) Risks
e) Assumptions

2. Vision of the Solution
a) Vision statement
b) List of features

(optional)
d) Features that will not be developed
c) Scope of phased release

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT
 Project


background

a summary of the problem that the project will solve.
 It should provide a brief history of the problem and an explanation of how

the organization justified the decision to build software to address it.
 cover the reasons why the problem exists, the organization's history with

this problem, any previous projects that were undertaken to try to address
it, and the way that the decision to begin this project was reached.

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT
 Stakeholders


This is a bulleted list of the stakeholders.



Each stakeholder may be referred to by name, title, or role ("support
group manager," "CTO," "senior manager").



The needs of each stakeholder are described in a few sentences.

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT


Users
◦

This is a bulleted list of the users. As with the stakeholders, each user can either be referred to by
name or role ("support rep," "call quality auditor," "home web site user")

◦

however, if there are many users, it is usually inefficient to try to name each one. The needs of each
user are described.

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT


Risks



lists any potential risks to the project.



It should be generated by a project team's brainstorming session.



It could include external factors that may impact the project, or
issues or problems that could potentially cause project delays or
raise issues. (The process for assessing and mitigating risk below can
be used to generate the risks for this section.)

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT


Assumptions
◦

the list of assumptions that the stakeholders, users, or project team have made.

◦

Often, these assumptions are generated during a Wideband Delphi estimation session (Lesson 3).
 If Wideband Delphi is being used, the rest of the vision and scope document should be ready

before the Delphi meeting and used as the basis for estimation.
◦

If Wideband Delphi is not being used to generate the assumptions, the project manager should hold
a brainstorming session with the team to come up with a list of assumptions instead (Lesson 3).

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Software Project Management

VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT


Vision statement
◦

The goal of the vision statement is to describe what the project is expected to accomplish. It
should explain what the purpose of the project is.

◦

This should be a compelling reason, a solid justification for spending time, money, and resources on
the project. The best time to write the vision statement is after talking to the stakeholders and
users and writing down their needs; by this time, a concrete understanding of the project should be
starting to jell.

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Software Project Management

List


of features

A feature is as a cohesive area of the software that fulfills a specific need by providing a set of services or
capabilities.



Any software package in fact, any engineered product can be broken down into features.



The project manager can choose the number of features in the vision and scope document by changing
the level of detail or granularity of each feature, and by combining multiple features into a single one.



It is useful to describe a product in about 10 features in the vision and scope document , because this
usually yields a level of complexity that most people reading it are comfortable with.



Each feature should be listed in a separate paragraph or bullet point. It should be given a name, followed
by a description of the functionality that it provides. This description does not need to be detailed; it can
simply be a few sentences that give a general explanation of the feature. However, if there is more
information that a stakeholder or project team member feels should be included, it is important to
include that information.

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Software Project Management


Scope of phased release (optional)
◦

Sometimes software projects are released in phases: a version of the software with some subset of
the features is released first, and a newer, more complete version is released later. This section
describes the plan for a phased release, if that approach is to be taken.

◦

This is useful when there is an important deadline for the software, but developing the entire
software project by that deadline would be unrealistic. The most common way to compromise on
this release date is to divide the features into two or more releases.



If a project manager needs to release a project in phases, it is critical that the
project team be consulted.
◦

Some features are much more difficult to divide than others, and the engineers might see
dependencies between features that are not clear to the stakeholders and project manager.

◦

After the phased release plan is written down and agreed upon, the project team should always be
asked to re-estimate the effort and a new project plan should be generated (see below). This will
ensure that the phased release is feasible and compatible with the organization's priorities.

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Software Project Management

 Features


that will not be developed

Features are often left out of a project on purpose. It should be added to this section to tell the
reader that a decision was made to exclude it.



For example, one way to handle an unrealistic deadline is by removing one or more features from the
software, in which case the removed features should be moved into this section.

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Software Project Management



Once the vision and scope document has been written, it
should be reviewed by every stakeholder, by the members of
the project team, and, ideally, by at least a few people who will

actually be using the software.
 Performing this review
◦

can be as simple as emailing the document around and asking for comments.

◦

The document can also be inspected (see Chapter 5).

◦

it is important that the project manager follow up with each individual person and work to understand
any issues that the reviewer brings up.

◦

The project manager should make sure that everyone agrees that the final document really reflects the
needs of the stakeholders and the users.

Once the document has been reviewed and
REVIEW goal and theVISIONeveryone agreesSCOPE the team is unified
THE project can be planned.
AND that it is complete,
toward a single
DOCUMENT
◦

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Software Project Management

PROJECT PLAN


The project plan defines the work that will be done on the
project and who will do it. It consists of:
◦

A statement of work (SOW) that describes all work products that will be
produced and a list of people who will perform that work

◦

A resource list that contains a list of all resources that will be needed for
the product and their availability

◦

A work breakdown structure and a set of estimates

◦

A project schedule

◦

A risk plan that identifies any risks that might be encountered and
indicates how those risks would be handled should they occur

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Software Project Management

STATEMENT OF WORK
 The

statement of work (SOW) is a detailed description of

all of the work products which will be created over the
course of the project. It includes:


A list of features that will be developed



A description of each intermediate deliverable or work product that will be built.



The estimated effort involved for each work product to be delivered

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Software Project Management

RESOURCE LIST
 The

project plan should contain a list of all resources that
will be used on the project.


A resource is a person, hardware, room or anything else that is necessary for the project but
limited in its availability



The resource list should give each resource a name, a brief one-line description, and list the
availability and cost (if applicable) of the resource

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Software Project Management

ESTIMATES AND PROJECT SCHEDULE
 The

project plan should also include estimates and a project
schedule:
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is defined. This is a list of tasks which,
if performed, will generate all of the work products needed to build the
software.
 An estimate of the effort required for each task in the WBS is generated.
 A project schedule is created by assigning resources and determining the
calendar time required for each task.


Estimates and project schedules will be discussed in detail in later
slides.

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Software Project Management

RISK PLAN
A

risk plan is a list of all risks that threaten the project,
along with a plan to mitigate some or all of those risks.


The project manager selects team members to participate in a risk planning session:

 The team members brainstorm potential risks
 The probability and impact of each risk is estimated
 A risk plan is constructed

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Software Project Management

RISK PLAN EXAMPLE

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