What is Project?

A project is a group of tasks that need to complete to reach a clear result. A project also defines
as a set of inputs and outputs which are required to achieve a goal. Projects can vary from simple
to difficult and can be operated by one person or a hundred.
Projects usually described and approved by a project manager or team executive. They go
beyond their expectations and objects, and it's up to the team to handle logistics and complete the
project on time. For good project development, some teams split the project into specific tasks so
they can manage responsibility and utilize team strengths.
What is software project management?
Software project management is an art and discipline of planning and supervising software
projects. It is a sub-discipline of software project management in which software projects
planned, implemented, monitored and controlled.
It is a procedure of managing, allocating and timing resources to develop computer software that
fulfills requirements.
In software Project Management, the client and the developers need to know the length, period
and cost of the project.
Prerequisite of software project management?
There are three needs for software project management. These are:
1. Time
2. Cost
3. Quality
It is an essential part of the software organization to deliver a quality product, keeping the cost
within the client?s budget and deliver the project as per schedule. There are various factors, both
external and internal, which may impact this triple factor. Any of three-factor can severely affect
the other two.
Project Manager
A project manager is a character who has the overall responsibility for the planning, design,
execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project. A project manager represents an
essential role in the achievement of the projects.
A project manager is a character who is responsible for giving decisions, both large and small
projects. The project manager is used to manage the risk and minimize uncertainty. Every
decision the project manager makes must directly profit their project.
Role of a Project Manager:
1. Leader
A project manager must lead his team and should provide them direction to make them
understand what is expected from all of them.
2. Medium:
The Project manager is a medium between his clients and his team. He must coordinate and
transfer all the appropriate information from the clients to his team and report to the senior
management.
3. Mentor:
He should be there to guide his team at each step and make sure that the team has an attachment.
He provides a recommendation to his team and points them in the right direction.
Responsibilities of a Project Manager:
1. Managing risks and issues.
2. Create the project team and assigns tasks to several team members.
3. Activity planning and sequencing.
4. Monitoring and reporting progress.
5. Modifies the project plan to deal with the situation.
Activities
Software Project Management consists of many activities, that includes planning of the project,
deciding the scope of product, estimation of cost in different terms, scheduling of tasks, etc.
The list of activities are as follows:
1. Project planning and Tracking
2. Project Resource Management
3. Scope Management
4. Estimation Management
5. Project Risk Management
6. Scheduling Management
7. Project Communication Management
8. Configuration Management
Now we will discuss all these activities -
1. Project Planning: It is a set of multiple processes, or we can say that it a task that performed
before the construction of the product starts.
2. Scope Management: It describes the scope of the project. Scope management is important
because it clearly defines what would do and what would not. Scope Management create the
project to contain restricted and quantitative tasks, which may merely be documented and
successively avoids price and time overrun.
3. Estimation management: This is not only about cost estimation because whenever we start to
develop software, but we also figure out their size(line of code), efforts, time as well as cost.
If we talk about the size, then Line of code depends upon user or software requirement.
If we talk about effort, we should know about the size of the software, because based on the size
we can quickly estimate how big team required to produce the software.
If we talk about time, when size and efforts are estimated, the time required to develop the
software can easily determine.
And if we talk about cost, it includes all the elements such as:
o Size of software
o Quality
o Hardware
o Communication
o Training
 o Additional Software and tools
o Skilled manpower
4. Scheduling Management: Scheduling Management in software refers to all the activities to
complete in the specified order and within time slotted to each activity. Project managers define
multiple tasks and arrange them keeping various factors in mind.
For scheduling, it is compulsory -
o Find out multiple tasks and correlate them.
o Divide time into units.
o Assign the respective number of work-units for every job.
o Calculate the total time from start to finish.
o Break down the project into modules.
5. Project Resource Management: In software Development, all the elements are referred to as
resources for the project. It can be a human resource, productive tools, and libraries.
Resource management includes:
o Create a project team and assign responsibilities to every team member
o Developing a resource plan is derived from the project plan.
o Adjustment of resources.
6. Project Risk Management: Risk management consists of all the activities like identification,
analyzing and preparing the plan for predictable and unpredictable risk in the project.
Several points show the risks in the project:
o The Experienced team leaves the project, and the new team joins it.
o Changes in requirement.
o Change in technologies and the environment.
o Market competition.
7. Project Communication Management: Communication is an essential factor in the success
of the project. It is a bridge between client, organization, team members and as well as other
stakeholders of the project such as hardware suppliers.
From the planning to closure, communication plays a vital role. In all the phases, communication
must be clear and understood. Miscommunication can create a big blunder in the project.
8. Project Configuration Management: Configuration management is about to control the
changes in software like requirements, design, and development of the product.
The Primary goal is to increase productivity with fewer errors.
Some reasons show the need for configuration management:
o Several people work on software that is continually update.
o Help to build coordination among suppliers.
o Changes in requirement, budget, schedule need to accommodate.
o Software should run on multiple systems.
Tasks perform in Configuration management:
o Identification
 o Baseline
o Change Control
o Configuration Status Accounting
o Configuration Audits and Reviews
People involved in Configuration Management:

oftware Metrics
A software metric is a measure of software characteristics which are measurable or countable.
Software metrics are valuable for many reasons, including measuring software performance,
planning work items, measuring productivity, and many other uses.
Within the software development process, many metrics are that are all connected. Software
metrics are similar to the four functions of management: Planning, Organization, Control, or
Improvement.
Classification of Software Metrics
Software metrics can be classified into two types as follows:
1. Product Metrics: These are the measures of various characteristics of the software product.
The two important software characteristics are:
1. Size and complexity of software.
2. Quality and reliability of software.
These metrics can be computed for different stages of SDLC.
2. Process Metrics: These are the measures of various characteristics of the software
development process. For example, the efficiency of fault detection. They are used to measure
the characteristics of methods, techniques, and tools that are used for developing software.
Types of Metrics
Internal metrics: Internal metrics are the metrics used for measuring properties that are viewed
to be of greater importance to a software developer. For example, Lines of Code (LOC) measure.
External metrics: External metrics are the metrics used for measuring properties that are viewed
to be of greater importance to the user, e.g., portability, reliability, functionality, usability, etc.
Hybrid metrics: Hybrid metrics are the metrics that combine product, process, and resource
metrics. For example, cost per FP where FP stands for Function Point Metric.
Project metrics: Project metrics are the metrics used by the project manager to check the
project's progress. Data from the past projects are used to collect various metrics, like time and
cost; these estimates are used as a base of new software. Note that as the project proceeds, the
project manager will check its progress from time-to-time and will compare the effort, cost, and
time with the original effort, cost and time. Also understand that these metrics are used to
decrease the development costs, time efforts and risks. The project quality can also be improved.
As quality improves, the number of errors and time, as well as cost required, is also reduced.
Advantage of Software Metrics
Comparative study of various design methodology of software systems.
For analysis, comparison, and critical study of different programming language concerning their
characteristics.
In comparing and evaluating the capabilities and productivity of people involved in software
development.
In the preparation of software quality specifications.
In the verification of compliance of software systems requirements and specifications.
In making inference about the effort to be put in the design and development of the software
systems.
In getting an idea about the complexity of the code.
In taking decisions regarding further division of a complex module is to be done or not.
In guiding resource manager for their proper utilization.
In comparison and making design tradeoffs between software development and maintenance
cost.
In providing feedback to software managers about the progress and quality during various phases
of the software development life cycle.
In the allocation of testing resources for testing the code.
Disadvantage of Software Metrics
The application of software metrics is not always easy, and in some cases, it is difficult and
costly.
The verification and justification of software metrics are based on historical/empirical data
whose validity is difficult to verify.
These are useful for managing software products but not for evaluating the performance of the
technical staff.
The definition and derivation of Software metrics are usually based on assuming which are not
standardized and may depend upon tools available and working environment.
Most of the predictive models rely on estimates of certain variables which are often not known
precise
What is Risk?
"Tomorrow problems are today's risk." Hence, a clear definition of a "risk" is a problem that
could cause some loss or threaten the progress of the project, but which has not happened yet.
These potential issues might harm cost, schedule or technical success of the project and the
quality of our software device, or project team morale.
Risk Management is the system of identifying addressing and eliminating these problems before
they can damage the project.
We need to differentiate risks, as potential issues, from the current problems of the project.
Different methods are required to address these two kinds of issues.
For example, staff storage, because we have not been able to select people with the right
technical skills is a current problem, but the threat of our technical persons being hired away by
the competition is a risk.
Risk Management
A software project can be concerned with a large variety of risks. In order to be adept to
systematically identify the significant risks which might affect a software project, it is essential
to classify risks into different classes. The project manager can then check which risks from each
class are relevant to the project.
There are three main classifications of risks which can affect a software project:
1. Project risks
2. Technical risks
3. Business risks
1. Project risks: Project risks concern differ forms of budgetary, schedule, personnel, resource,
and customer-related problems. A vital project risk is schedule slippage. Since the software is
intangible, it is very tough to monitor and control a software project. It is very tough to control
something which cannot be identified. For any manufacturing program, such as the
manufacturing of cars, the plan executive can recognize the product taking shape.
2. Technical risks: Technical risks concern potential method, implementation, interfacing,
testing, and maintenance issue. It also consists of an ambiguous specification, incomplete
specification, changing specification, technical uncertainty, and technical obsolescence. Most
technical risks appear due to the development team's insufficient knowledge about the project.
3. Business risks: This type of risks contain risks of building an excellent product that no one
need, losing budgetary or personnel commitments, etc.
Other risk categories
1. 1. Known risks: Those risks that can be uncovered after careful assessment of the project
program, the business and technical environment in which the plan is being developed,
and more reliable data sources (e.g., unrealistic delivery date)
2. 2. Predictable risks: Those risks that are hypothesized from previous project experience
(e.g., past turnover)
3. 3. Unpredictable risks: Those risks that can and do occur, but are extremely tough to
identify in advance.
Principle of Risk Management
1. Global Perspective: In this, we review the bigger system description, design, and
implementation. We look at the chance and the impact the risk is going to have.
2. Take a forward-looking view: Consider the threat which may appear in the future and
create future plans for directing the next events.
3. Open Communication: This is to allow the free flow of communications between the
client and the team members so that they have certainty about the risks.
4. Integrated management: In this method risk management is made an integral part of
project management.
5. Continuous process: In this phase, the risks are tracked continuously throughout the risk
management paradigm.
Risk Management Activities
Risk management consists of three main activities, as shown in fig:
Risk Assessment
The objective of risk assessment is to division the risks in the condition of their loss, causing
potential. For risk assessment, first, every risk should be rated in two methods:
o The possibility of a risk coming true (denoted as r).
o The consequence of the issues relates to that risk (denoted as s).