Software Project Management
MANAGEMENT
Unit 4. Modern Approach to
Software Project and Economics
Prepared By:
BIJAY MISHRA
(बिजय मिश्र)
[email protected]
@jijibisha
UNIT 4. Modern Approach to Software Project and
Economics - 4 Hrs.
4.1 Elements of Modern Software Projects and Management
Principles
4.2 Next-Generation Software Economics and Cost Models
4.3 Modern Process Transition – Paradigm Shifts
4.1 Elements of Modern Software Projects and
Management Principles
Modern Project Profiles
Continuous Integration
Differences in workflow cost allocations between a conventional process and a modern process
SOFTWARE CONVENTIONAL MODERN
ENGINEERING PROCESS PROCESS
WORKFLOWS EXPENDITURES EXPENDITURES
Management 10%
5%
Environment 5% 10%
Requirements 5% 10%
Design 10% 15%
Implementation 30% 25%
Assessment 40% 25%
Deployment 5% 5%
Total 100% 100%
Modern Project Profiles
Continuous Integration
The continuous integration inherent in an iterative development
process enables better insight into quality trade-offs.
System characteristics that are largely inherent in the architecture
(performance, fault tolerance, maintainability) are tangible earlier in
the process, when issues are still correctable.
Modern Project Profiles
Early Risk Resolution
Conventional projects usually do the easy stuff first, modern process attacks the
important 20% of the requirements, use cases, components, and risks.
The effect of the overall life-cycle philosophy on the 80/20 lessons provides a useful
risk management perspective.
80% of the engineering is consumed by 20% of the requirements.
80% of the software cost is consumed by 20% of the components.
80% of the errors are caused by 20% of the components.
80% of the progress is made by 20% of the people.
Modern Project Profiles
Evolutionary Requirements
Conventional approaches decomposed system requirements into subsystem
requirements, subsystem requirements into component requirements, and component
requirements into unit requirements.
The organization of requirements was structured so traceability was simple.
Most modern architectures that use commercial components, legacy components,
distributed resources and object-oriented methods are not trivially traced to the
requirements they satisfy.
The artifacts are now intended to evolve along with the process, with more and more
fidelity as the life-cycle progresses and the requirements understanding matures.
Modern Project Profiles
Teamwork among stakeholders
Many aspects of the classic development process cause stakeholder relationships to
degenerate into mutual distrust, making it difficult to balance requirements, product
features, and plans.
The process with more-effective working relationships between stakeholders
requires that customers, users and monitors have both applications and software
expertise, remain focused on the delivery of a usable system
It also requires a development organization that is focused on achieving customer
satisfaction and high product quality in a profitable manner.
The transition from the exchange of mostly paper artifacts to demonstration of
intermediate results is one of the crucial mechanisms for promoting teamwork among
stakeholders.
Modern Project Profiles
Top 10 Software Management Principles
1. Base the process on an architecture-first approach – rework rates remain stable over
the project life cycle.
2. Establish an iterative life-cycle process that confronts risk early
3. Transition design methods to emphasize component-based development
4. Establish a change management environment – the dynamics
of iterative development, including concurrent workflows by
different teams working on shared artifacts, necessitate highly controlled baselines
5. Enhance change freedom through tools that support
round-trip engineering
Modern Project Profiles
Top 10 Software Management Principles
6. Capture design artifacts in rigorous, model-based notation
7. Instrument the process for objective quality control and progress
assessment
8. Use a demonstration-based approach to asses intermediate artifacts
9. Plan intermediate releases in groups of usage scenarios with evolving levels
of detail
10. Establish a configurable process that is economically scalable
Modern Project Profiles
Software Management Best Practices
There is nine best practices:
1. Formal risk management
2. Agreement on interfaces
3. Formal inspections
4. Metric-based scheduling and management
5. Binary quality gates at the inch-pebble level
6. Program-wide visibility of progress versus plan.
7. Defect tracking against quality targets
8. Configuration management
9. People-aware management accountability
4.2 Next-Generation Software Economics and Cost
Models
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Software experts hold widely varying opinions about software economics and its manifestation in
software cost estimation models:
source lines of code function points
productivity quality
measures VERSUS measures
Java C++
object-oriented functionally oriented
It will be difficult to improve empirical estimation models while the project data going into these
models are noisy and highly uncorrelated, and are based on differing process and technology
foundations.
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Some of today’s popular software cost models are not well matched to an iterative software process
focused an architecture-first approach
Many cost estimators are still using a conventional process experience base to estimate a modern
project profile
A next-generation software cost model should explicitly separate architectural engineering from
application production, just as an architecture-first process does.
Two major improvements in next-generation software cost estimation models:
Separation of the engineering stage from the production stage will force estimators to differentiate
between architectural scale and implementation size.
Rigorous design notations such as UML will offer an opportunity to define units of measure for scale that
are more standardized and therefore can be automated and tracked.
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Figure: Next-Generation Cost Models
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Figure: Next-Generation Cost Models
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Figure: Differentiating Potential Solutions through Cost Estimation
Next-Generation Software Economics
Next-Generation Cost Models
Figure: Automation of Construction Process in next-generation environments
Next-Generation Software Economics
Modern Software Economics
Changes that provide a good description of what an organizational manager
should strive for in making the transition to a modern process:
Finding and fixing a software problem after delivery costs 100 times more than fixing the
problem in early design phases
You can compress software development schedules 25% of nominal, but no more.
For every $1 you spend on development, you will spend $2 on maintenance.
Software development and maintenance costs are primarily a function of the number of
source lines of code.
Next-Generation Software Economics
Modern Software Economics
Variations among people account for the biggest differences in software
productivity.
The overall ratio of software to hardware costs is still growing – in 1955 it was
15:85; in 1985 85:15.
Only about 15% of software development effort is devoted to programming.
Software systems and products typically cost 3 times as much per SLOC as
individual software programs.
Walkthroughs catch 60% of the errors.
80% of the contribution comes from 20% of the contributors.
4.3 Modern Process Transition – Paradigm Shifts
Modern Process Transitions
Successful software management is hard work.
Technical breakthroughs, process breakthroughs, and new tools will make
it easier, but management discipline will continue to be the crux of
software project success.
New technological advances will be accompanied by new opportunities
for software applications, new dimensions of complexity, new avenues of
automation, and new customers with different priorities.
Accommodating these changes will perturb many of our ingrained
software management values and priorities.
However, striking a balance among requirements, designs, and plans will
remain the underlying objective of future software management
endeavors, just as it is today.
Modern Process Transitions
Culture Shifts
Several culture shifts must be overcome to transition successfully to a modern
software management process:
Lower level and mid-level managers are performers
Requirements and designs are fluid and tangible
Good and bad project performance is much more obvious earlier in the life cycle
Artifacts are less important early, more important later
Real issues are surfaced and resolved systematically
Quality assurance is everyone’s job, not a separate discipline
Performance issues arise early in the life cycle
Investments in automation is necessary
Good software organization should be more profitable
Modern Process Transitions
Denouement
Figure: Next-Generation Project Performance
Modern Process Transitions
Denouement
Good way to transition to a more mature iterative development process that supports
automation technologies and modern architectures is to take the following shot:
Ready.
Do your homework.
Analyze modern approaches and technologies.
Define your process. Support it with mature environments, tools, and components.
Plan thoroughly.
Aim.
Select a critical project.
Staff it with the right team of complementary resources and demand improved results.
Fire.
Execute the organizational and project-level plans with vigor and follow-through.
Book References:
1. Software Project Management – A Unifies Framework, Walker
Royce, 1998, Addison Wesley
2. Software Project Management – From Concept to Deployment,
Conway, K., 2001.
3. Software Project Management, Bob Hughes and Mike Cotterell,
Latest Publication
4. Software Project Management, Rajeev Chopra, 2009
5. Software Engineering – A Practitioner’s approach, Roger S.
Pressman Latest Plublication
6. Managing Global Software Projects, Ramesh, 2001, TMH
