Project planning Flashcards
Project planning
involves breaking down the work into
parts and assign these to project team members,
anticipate problems that might arise and prepare
tentative solutions to those problems
Planning stages
At the proposal stage, when you are bidding for a
contract to develop or provide a software system.
During the project startup phase, when you have to plan
who will work on the project, how the project will be
broken down into increments, how resources will be
allocated across your company, etc.
Periodically throughout the project, when you modify
your plan in the light of experience gained and
information from monitoring the progress of the work
Planning stages
At the proposal stage, when you are bidding for a
contract to develop or provide a software system.
During the project startup phase, when you have to plan
who will work on the project, how the project will be
broken down into increments, how resources will be
allocated across your company, etc.
Periodically throughout the project, when you modify
your plan in the light of experience gained and
information from monitoring the progress of the work.
Factors affecting software pricing
Contractual terms A customer may be willing to allow the developer to retain
ownership of the source code and reuse it in other projects.
The price charged may then be less than if the software
source code is handed over to the customer.
Cost estimate
uncertainty
If an organization is unsure of its cost estimate, it may
increase its price by a contingency over and above its
normal profit
Financial health Developers in financial difficulty may lower their price to
gain a contract
Market opportunity A development organization may quote a low price
because it wishes to move into a new segment of the
software market
Requirements volatility If the requirements are likely to change, an organization
may lower its price to win a contract
Pricing strategies
Under pricing
A company may underprice a system in order to gain a contract
that allows them to retain staff for future opportunities
A company may underprice a system to gain access to a new
market area
Increased pricing
The price may be increased when a buyer wishes a fixed-price
contract and so the seller increases the price to allow for
unexpected risks
Plan-driven development
Plan-driven or plan-based development is an approach
to software engineering where the development process
is planned in detail.
Plan-driven development – pros and cons
The arguments in favor of a plan-driven approach are
that early planning allows organizational issues
(availability of staff, other projects, etc.) to be closely
taken into account, and that potential problems and
dependencies are discovered before the project starts,
rather than once the project is underway.
The principal argument against plan-driven development
is that many early decisions have to be revised because
of changes to the environment in which the software is to
be developed and used.
Project plan supplements
Configuration management plan Describes the configuration management procedures
and structures to be used.
Deployment plan Describes how the software and associated hardware
(if required) will be deployed in the customer’s
environment. This should include a plan for migrating
data from existing systems.
Maintenance plan Predicts the maintenance requirements, costs, and
effort.
Quality plan Describes the quality procedures and standards that
will be used in a project.
Validation plan Describes the approach, resources, and schedule used
for system validation.
Project scheduling
Project scheduling is the process of deciding how the
work in a project will be organized as separate tasks,
and when and how these tasks will be executed
Project scheduling activities
Split project into tasks and estimate time and resources
required to complete each task.
Organize tasks concurrently to make optimal
use of workforce.
Minimize task dependencies to avoid delays
caused by one task waiting for another to complete.
Dependent on project managers intuition and
experience.
Scheduling problems
Estimating the difficulty of problems and hence the cost
of developing a solution is hard.
Productivity is not proportional to the number of people
working on a task.
Adding people to a late project makes it later because of
communication overheads.
The unexpected always happens. Always allow
contingency in planning.
Agile planning
Agile methods of software development are iterative
approaches where the software is developed and
delivered to customers in increments.
Milestones and deliverables
Milestones are points in the schedule against which you
can assess progress, for example, the handover of the
system for testing.
Deliverables are working products /Features that are
delivered to the customer, e.g. a requirements document
for the system.
Agile planning stages
Release planning, which looks ahead for several months
and decides on the features that should be included in a
release of a system.
Iteration planning, which has a shorter term outlook, and
focuses on planning the next increment of a system. This
is typically 2-4 weeks of work for the team
