• Harvard University

• IME 671A 

IME671A: SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Chapter 3
Questions 1 to 18
1. Write five major
responsibilities of a
software project manager
• Involves with the senior managers in 'the process of appointing team
members
• Builds the project team and assigns tasks to various team members
• Responsible for effective project planning and scheduling, project
monitoring and control activities in order to achieve the project
objectives
• Acts as a communicator between the senior management and the
other persons involved in the project like the development team and
internal and external stakeholders
• Effectively resolves issues (if any) that arise between the team
members by changing their roles and responsibilities
• Modifies the project plan (if required) to deal with the situation.
make software projects
much more difficult to
manage, compared to many
other types of projects such
as a project to
lay out a 100 km concrete
road on an existing nonconcrete road.
• Invisibility: Software remains invisible, until its development is complete and it is
operational.
• Changeability: Because the software part of any system is easier to change as
compared to the hardware part, the software part is the one that gets most
frequently changed.
• Complexity: Even a moderate sized software has millions of parts (functions) that
interact with each other in many ways—data coupling, serial and concurrent
runs, state transitions, control dependency, file sharing, etc.
• Uniqueness: Every software project is usually associated with many unique
features or situations
• Exactness of the solution: Mechanical components such as nuts and bolts
typically work satisfactorily as long as they are within a tolerance of 1 percent or
so of their specified sizes.
• Team-oriented and intellect-intensive work: Software development projects are
akin to research projects in the sense that they both involve team-oriented,
intellect-intensive work.
At which point in the
software development life cycle
(SDLC), does the
project management activities
start? When do these end?
Identify the
important project management
activities.
• Planning: The most important parts of software development, requirement gathering
or requirement analysis are usually done by the most skilled and experienced
software engineers in the organization. After the requirements are gathered from
the client, a scope document is created in which the scope of the project is
determined and documented.
• Implementation: The software engineers start writing the code according to the
client's requirements.
• Testing: This is the process of finding defects or bugs in the created software.
• Documentation: Every step in the project is documented for future reference and for
the improvement of the software in the development process. The design
documentation may include writing the application programming interface (API).
• Deployment and maintenance: The software is deployed after it has been approved
for release.
• Maintaining: Software maintenance is done for future reference. Software
improvement and new requirements (change requests) can take longer than the
time needed to create the initial development of the software.
4. What is meant by the
‘size’ of a software project?
Why does a project
manager need to estimate
the size of the project? How
is the size
estimated?
• The size of a project is obviously not the number of bytes that the
source code occupies, neither is it the size of the executable code.The
project size is a measure of the problem.
• Estimation of the size of software is an essential part of Software
Project Management. It helps the project manager to further predict
the effort and time which will be needed to build the project. Various
measures are used in project size estimation. Some of these are:
1. Lines of Code -LOC count the total number of lines of source code in
a project.
2. Function points-In this method, the number and type of functions
supported by the software are utilized to find FPC(function point
count).
projects for which this form of
planning is
especially suitable. Is sliding
window planning appropriate
for small
projects? What are its
advantages over conventional
planning?
• It is usually very difficult to make accurate plans for large projects at project
initiation.
• A part of the difficulty arises from the fact that large projects may take
several years to complete.
• As a result, during the span of the project, the project parameters, scope of
the project, project staff, etc., often change drastically resulting in the initial
plans going haywire.
• In order to overcome this problem, sometimes project managers undertake
project planning over several stages.
• That is, after the initial project plans have been made, these are revised at
frequent intervals.
• Planning a project over a number of stages protects managers from making
big commitments at the start of the project.
• This technique of staggered planning is known as sliding window planning.
• In the sliding window planning technique, starting with an initial plan,
the project is planned more accurately over a number of stages.
• At the start of a project, the project manager has incomplete
knowledge about the nitty-gritty of the project.
• His information base gradually improves as the project progresses
through different development phases.
• The complexities of different project activities become clear, some of
the anticipated risks get resolved, and new risks appear.
• The project parameters are re-estimated periodically as understanding
grows and also a periodically as project parameters change.
• By taking these developments into account, the project manager can
plan the subsequent activities more accurately and with increasing
levels of confidence.
context of software
development?
Why is it important to
improve product visibility
during software
development? How can
product visibility be
improved.
• Product visibility refers to a clear picture of how a project is performing,
including resource allocation and potential risks.
• Increased visibility ensures everyone involved in the project understands what
the objective of the project is and their role in meeting this goal.
Common Causes of Project Visibility
• No Project Management Tool
• No Document Management
• No Communication Plan
Ways to Improve Project Visibility
1. Introduce Project Management Software
2. Create a Project Communication Plan
3. Kick-off Meeting
• 4. Hold Weekly Team Meetings
development projects
according to the COCOMO
estimation model? Give an
example of
software product development
projects belonging to each of
these
categories.
• Short for Constructive Cost Model, a method for evaluating and/or estimating the cost of software
development. There are three levels in the COCOMO hierarchy:
• Basic COCOMO: computes software development effort and cost as a function of program size
expressed in estimated DSIs. There are three modes within Basic COCOMO:
• Organic Mode: Development projects typically are uncomplicated and involve small
experienced teams. The planned software is not considered innovative and requires a
relatively small amount of DSIs (typically under 50,000).
• Semidetached Mode: Development projects typically are more complicated than in Organic
Mode and involve teams of people with mixed levels of experience. The software requires no
more than 300,000 DSIs. The project has characteristics of both projects for Organic Mode
and projects for Embedded Mode.
• Embedded Mode: Development projects must fit into a rigid set of requirements because the
software is to be embedded in a strongly joined complex of hardware, software, regulations
and operating procedures.
• Intermediate COCOMO: an extension of the Basic model that computes software development
effort by adding a set of "cost drivers," that will determine the effort and duration of the project,
such as assessments of personnel and hardware.
• Detailed COCOMO: an extension of the Intermediate model that adds effort multipliers for each
phase of the project to determine the cost drivers impact on each step
8. Briefly explain the
main differences between
the original COCOMO
estimation model and the
COCOMO 2 estimation
model.