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Software Project Planning Practices
Software Project Planning Practices
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When the project begins, the project manager has a unique role to play.
The start of the project is the time when the scope of the project is
defined; only the project manager is equipped to make sure that it’s
defined properly. Everyone else has a role to play later on: users and
stakeholders will provide expertise, requirements analysts will write
specifications, programmers will build the code, etc. Everyone involved
in the project has some input into the scope, but only the project
manager is solely dedicated to it. Defining the scope is the most
productive thing a project manager can do to get the project underway.
The Vision and Scope document is the project manager's tool for doing
that.
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The project plan is used by many people in the organization. The
project manager uses it to communicate the project’s status to the
stakeholders and senior managers, and to plan the team’s activities.
The team members use it to understand the context for the work they are
doing. The senior managers use it to verify that the project’s cost and
schedule are reasonable and under control, and that the project is
being done in an efficient and costeffective manner. The stakeholders
use it to make sure that the project is on track, and that their needs
are being addressed.
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To someone who has never estimated a project in a structured way,
estimation seems little more than attempting to predict the future.
This view is reinforced when off-the-cuff estimates are inaccurate and
projects come in late. But a good formal estimation process, one that
allows the project team to reach a consensus on the estimates, can
improve the accuracy of those estimates, making it much more likely
that projects will come in on time. Wideband Delphi is an estimation
process process that is straightforward to implement. Using it, a
project manager can help the team to create successful estimates for
any software project by using sound techniques and understanding what
makes estimates more accurate.
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The project schedule is the core of the project plan. It is used by the
project manager to commit people to the project and show the
organization how the work will be performed. Schedules are used to
communicate final deadlines and, in some cases, to determine resource
needs. They are also used as a kind of checklist to make sure that
every task necessary is performed. If a task is on the schedule, the
team is committed to doing it. In other words, the project schedule is
the means by which the project manager brings the team and the project
under control.
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Risk assessment is an important part of planning a software project
because it allows the project manager to predict potential problems
that will threaten the project and take steps to mitigate those
problems. Adding a risk plan to a software project plan is an effective
way to keep the project from being derailed by surprises or emergencies.
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Change control is method
for implementing only changes that are worth pursuing, and for
preventing unnecessary or overly costly changes from derailing the
project. Change control is essentially an agreement between the project
team and the managers that are responsible for decision-making on the
project to evaluate the impact of a change before implementing it. Many
changes that initially sound like good ideas will get thrown out once
the true cost of the change is known. The potential benefit of the
change is written down, and the project manager works with the team to
estimate the potential impact that the change will have on the project.
This gives the organization all of the information necessary to do a
real cost-benefit analysis. If the benefit of the change is worth the
cost, the project manager updates the plan to reflect the new
estimates. Otherwise, the change is thrown out and the team continues
with the original plan.
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