S/W Project Planning

Introductions

• For a successful project, both good projectmanagement and good engineering are essential.Lack of either one can cause a project to fail.

• We have seen that project management activitiescan be viewed as having three major phases:

• project planning,• project monitoring and control, and• project termination.

• Planning may be the most important management activity.

• Without a proper plan, no real monitoring or controlling of the project is possible.

Objectives

• The basic goal of planning is to look into the future, identify the activities that need to be done to complete the project successfully, and plan the scheduling and resources.

• The major issues in project planning are:• Process planning• Effort estimation• Schedule and Resource Estimation• Quality plans• Configuration management plans• Risk management• Project monitoring plans

Decomposition techniques

• Software project estimation is a form of problem solving technique and in most cases, the problem to be solved is too complex to be considered in one piece.

• So we decompose the problem into set of smaller problem.

• Decomposition approach is of two types• Decomposition of problem

• Decomposition of process

Software sizing

• The accuracy of a software project estimate is predicted on a number of things:

1. The degree to which the planner has properly estimated the size of the product to be built.

2. The ability to translate the size estimate into human effort, calendar time, and cost

3. The degree to which the project plan reflects the abilities of the software team.

4. The stability of the product requirements and the environment that support s/w engineering efforts

Continued..

• A project estimate is only as good as the estimate of the size of the work to be accomplished,

• Sizing represents the project planner’s first major task.

• Size refer to a quantifiable outcome of the software project.

• Direct approach represents – Line Of Code(LOC)

• Indirect approach represens - Function points(FP)

Continued..

• Putnam and Myers suggested four different approaches to the sizing problem:

1. FUZZY LOGIC sizing

2. FUNCTION POINT sizing

3. Standard Component Sizing

4. Change Sizing

• In this approach, the planner must identify the type of application, establish its magnitude on a qualitative scale and then refine the magnitude with the original range.

FUNCTION POINT sizing

• This approach can be used for measuring the functionality delivered by the system.

• Using the historical data the FP can used to1. The cost or effort required to design, code and

test software

2. Predict the number of errors that will be encountered during testing

3. Forecast the number of components and/ or the number of projected source line in the implemented system.

Standard Component

Sizing

• Software is composed of a number of different standard components

• For example the standard component of Information system are:- subsystems, modules, reports etc

• The project planner estimates the number of occurrences of each standard component and then uses the historic project data to determine the delivered size per standard component.

Change sizing

• This approach is used when a project includes the use of existing software that modified in some way as a part of project.

• The planner estimates the number and type of modification that must be accomplished.

s/w sizing continued..

• Putnam and Myers suggested that result of each of these sizing approaches be combined statistically to create a expected value estimate.

Problem-Based Estimation

• LOC and FP data are used in two ways during software project estimation:

(1) as an estimation variable to "size“ each element of the software and

(2) as baseline metrics collected from past projects and used in conjunction with estimation variables to develop cost and effort projections.

Continued..

• The project planner begins with a bounded statement of software scope and from this statement attempts to decompose software into problem functions that can each be estimated individually.

• Alternatively, the planner may choose another component for sizing such as classes or objects, changes, or business processes affected.

Continued..

• Baseline productivity metrics (e.g., LOC or FP) are then applied to the appropriate estimation variable, and cost or effort for the function is derived. Function estimates are combined to produce an overall estimate for the entire project.

Continued..

• A three-point or expected value can then be computed.

• The expected value for the estimation variable (size), S, can be computed as a weighted average of the optimistic (sopt), most likely (sm), and pessimistic (spess) estimates. For example,

S = (sopt + 4sm + spess)/6

• Once the expected value for the estimation variable has been determined, historical LOC or FP productivity data are applied.