Software Project Management Lecture # 7

Outline Project Scheduling

Relationship of People and Effort Putnam-Norden-Rayleigh (PNR) Curve indicates the relationship between effort applied and delivery time for a software project. Mathematical representation of the PNR curve:

PNR curve was used to derive the software equation

t o = delivery time that will result in least effort expended As we move left to t o, i.e. as we try to accelerate delivery, curve rises nonlinearly As we try to reduce accelerate delivery, curve rises sharply to left of td indicating, project delivery time can not be compressed much beyond 0.75td As we try further, the project moves into impossible region and failure risk becomes high T min =0.75T d t d t o Development Time Effort Cost E d E o Impossible Region

PNR Curve & Software Eqn. The software equation is derived from the PNR curve It demonstrates a highly nonlinear relationship between time to complete project and human effort applied to the project Lines of Code (L) is related to effort (E) and development time (t) as: L = P x E 1/3 t 4/3 Rearranging the equation E = L 3 / P 3 t 4

Effort Distribution A recommended distribution of effort across software process is often referred to as rule  40% allocated to analysis & design  20% allocated to coding  40% allocated to testing Use the above as a guideline only as each project dictates its own distribution effort

Defining Task Set Task set is a collection of software engineering work tasks, milestones and deliverables that must be accomplished to complete a particular software project. Task sets are different for different types of projects Most organizations encounter following types of projects  Concept development projects Explore some new business concept or application of new technology

Project Types  New application development projects Undertaken as a consequence of specific customer request  Application Enhancement projects Involve modification to functions, performance or interfaces (observable by end-user) in existing software  Application maintenance projects That correct, adapt or extend existing software in ways that may not be obvious to end user  Reengineering projects Undertaken for rebuilding an existing system in whole or part

Factors affecting task set selection Size of project Number of potential users Mission criticality Application longevity Stability of requirements Ease of customer/develop communication Maturity of applicable technology Performance constraints Embedded, non embedded characteristics Project staff Reengineering factors These factors also provide an indication of the degree of rigor with which the software process should be applied

Reading Assignment

Defining a Task Network Also known as activity network It is a graphic representation of the task flow for a project Displays interdependencies and parallelism Project manager should be aware of those tasks that lie on the critical path

A task set network for ‘concept development’ Enables the team to see the essentially serial nature of the project, but take advantage of parallelism where possible. 1.1 Concept Definition 1.2 Project Planning 1.4a Module A Des/Dev 1.4b Module B Des/Dev 1.5 Integrate & Test 1.6 Concept Demo

Scheduling Two Project Scheduling methods that can be applied to software development:  Program evaluation and review technique (PERT)  Critical Path Method (CPM) Both are driven by Info already developed:  Estimates of effort  A decomposition of product function  The selection of appropriate process model and task set  Decomposition of tasks

Timeline Charts When creating software project schedule, the planner begins with a set of tasks (work breakdown structure) If automated tools are used, the work breakdown is input as a task network Effort, duration and start date are then input for each task As a result of this input, a timeline chart or Gantt chart is generated

Tracking Schedule Accomplished in a no. of ways  Conducting periodic project status meetings in which each team member reports progress & problems  Evaluating results of all reviews conducted throughout the s/w engg process  Determining whether formal project milestones have been accomplished by scheduled date  Comparing actual start date to planned date for each project task  Meeting practitioners to get their assessment of progress to date and problems encountered  Use earned value analysis to assess progress quantitatively