Software Development Progress Management

First, what is software project management

Software project management is the process of defining scope according to requirement, making project plan according to target, and executing management according to plan. The fundamental aim of strengthening project management in every stage of software development is to enhance the control ability of software development and improve the quality of software development. Software project construction According to software engineering life cycle method can be divided into project establishment, start, demand analysis, system design, system development, system testing, system launch, project acceptance and on-line evaluation of 9 stages.

To strengthen software project management is to use software engineering as the main line of management, the dynamic project management through which, through the software development of the project scope, project progress, project quality, project communication, human resources, project cost six core elements of the integrated management, to achieve the maximum efficiency of the development management, Thus greatly improves the software development quality.

Second, the software project schedule management definition and the implementation method

Software Project schedule management refers to project managers to plan for the project requirements, put into practice and constantly check the actual implementation of the plan in this process, analysis of the cause of progress deviation and on this basis, constantly adjust, modify the plan until the project delivery, through the control of the progress of factors and coordination of various relations, Comprehensive use of a variety of feasible methods, measures to control the project plan within the predetermined target range, in the balance of cost, quality control objectives, while striving to shorten the time.

Project Progress management can be accomplished by establishing a project milestone management operation table, periodic project status meetings, reporting of progress and issues by software developers, and user-side comments, comparing the actual start date of each task with the planned start date, and determining whether a formal project milestone is expected to be completed.

Iii. How to prepare the project schedule

identify the progress plan owner

Identifying the owner or individual responsible for developing all or part of the project's schedule is necessary to ensure that a good schedule is developed. It is recommended to use a WBS (job breakdown structure) or an organization's breakdown structure as the basis for progress development, because the WBS specifies the scope, and the organizational Breakdown structure (OBS) specifies the delivery ribbon.

deciding on tasks and milestones

For each of the lowest-level WBS elements, identify tasks and milestones that correspond to the elements of delivery. Deliverables are often set as milestones, and activities that produce deliverables are called tasks. A milestone is a point in time that is used to manage checkpoints to measure results.

Sort Work Activities

After determining the deliverables and milestones of the deliverable, they should be logically sequenced to reflect how the work will be performed. Sequencing establishes a dependency between an object and a milestone and is used to calculate the progress of the delivered product.

Task duration Assessment

The mission's diachronic assessment is the most challenging part of the project plan, and he is also the key to subsequent cost estimates. This is a continuous refinement process that runs through the planning process as it is directly affected by staffing and cost estimation activities.

Integrated Mission Planning

Once tasks and milestones are identified, sorted, and have a planned diachronic assessment, there is a schedule for each delivered product. Without consolidation, the progress of each part is independent and therefore does not describe the time issues associated with the project as a whole.

Review and approval of progress plans

A larger and more complex schedule needs to get input from multiple people, and no one has all the knowledge that affects all of the scheduling factors in each aspect of the project, so the team should perform a review of the progress plan to identify the problem or refine the schedule.

Iv. How to effectively control the progress of software projects

In the current development of software projects, both developers and managers are increasingly aware of the importance of project progress. Then how to control the progress of the project.

1, project leader or project manager, must have a clear understanding of the development cycle of the whole project, the division of the task must be a day unit, not a module for the unit, and every day, whether developers or testers, have a rough estimate of their own work. That is, every afternoon, the project leader organizes the development personnel to carry on the systematic understanding, and makes the corresponding record. Be sure to have a detailed record of the issues that have been resolved. However, we must pay attention to the unresolved problems. Don't go backwards. Find the root cause of the problem.

2, communication and communication, as the project leader must be a lot of communication with developers, to mobilize their enthusiasm, so that they learn how to solve the problem, do not let him wait for the solution of the problem. Understanding the actual progress and the proficiency of the development tools will have important implications for the rescheduling of future tasks.

3, put forward some difficult points, so that we can overcome together, or some of the technical more proficient people to solve. After the settlement must be, let everyone familiar with its programming ideas. But to the commonly used knowledge point, must have the detailed explanation. This enables the sharing of resources.

4, a good project summary, whether it is difficult or not difficult, as long as there are problems, must be put forward, and after the solution will certainly let everyone familiar with, this will help you improve the technical level.

5, it is the key to ensure the progress of the project.

Soft skills in software project schedule management

1, establish the concept of integrated coordination

In essence, project management is a comprehensive management process, which takes the overall benefit of the project as the goal and the coordination and unification of the project scope, cost, quality and other special management. Therefore, the project management must have the elements of the project and the specific management, the concept of comprehensive coordination.

First, the scope of the IT project affects the progress of the IT project. In general, the greater the scope of the project, the more tasks the project will take, the longer the project takes, and in turn, the less project scope, the fewer tasks the project needs to accomplish, and the shorter the project time. Therefore, if the project is on a tight schedule, or if the schedule is very slow, consider discussing with the customer whether the scope can be shrunk. If the customer agrees to narrow the scope, the progress can be effectively shortened.

Similarly, the cost and quality of IT projects can affect progress. In general, additional costs can add more resources, such as equipment and manpower, so that some work can be done in parallel or overtime.

If the project cannot be completed on schedule, consider whether some of the original tasks can be outsourced, which is one of the coordination contents of project procurement management and schedule management.

Obviously, in the process of reducing progress, we can consider the coordination between the above-mentioned special management, that is, to cut off some tasks, reduce the quality of some tasks, sub-part tasks, the cost of additional tasks.

2, grasp the correct demand research methods

Many project groups immediately think of interviews with users when they mention demand research. At the beginning of the project, it is not a good method of demand investigation to interview with the users.

The right method should first ask the user to provide the relevant information and books to reflect the user's business, and begin the literature research. In the process of reading the literature, it is possible to understand some of the other's basic business terminology, and the user's business process has a preliminary understanding.

Secondly, if necessary, the user should lead the project team to visit the user's business process, so as to establish a perceptual understanding of some terms and business links which are not easily understood.

Thirdly, according to the problems found in literature investigation and field investigation, the article lists the interview outline and interviews with users. At this point, the efficiency of the interview and the quality of the interview will be improved, the user will also be due to the project team mentioned problems are professional, targeted, resulting in a strong sense of trust.
Some project groups after the interview, it is believed to have the user's real, complete needs, so as to start the project design. In fact, some IT projects are more sensitive because the results of the interviews are to be recorded, so that users can avoid their "risks" by speaking in the "official" caliber, so that demand can be distorted.

The right approach should be to continue with the fourth task after the interview, namely the issue of a questionnaire on bearer requirements. Because it is anonymous, it is generally possible to collect more realistic information about demand.

The project team, which has mastered the right demand research method, can quickly get high-quality demand information, shorten the research time, and make the design and implementation time richer, thus shortening the progress.

3. Shorten team formation and running -in time

Any project team from accepting tasks to task completion, team dissolution, general will go through five stages: the formation stage, the running-in phase, the formal stage, the performance stage, the dissolution stage.

In the five phases, the dissolution phase was not very significant for the project because the project task had been completed. For a project manager, it must be clear that the real work stage is the formal and performance stage. Therefore, the project manager's important responsibility is to make the project team's formation and run-in phase of the time as short as possible, so that the formal and performance phase of the project team will be longer, in the layout of tasks and perform tasks, it is more leisurely.

Vi. How to avoid losing control of project schedule

1. Serious consequences of runaway schedule

(1) The immediate consequence of a runaway schedule that disrupts planning progress is the need to postpone normal system completion time. This result will increase the burden on the owners, including the continuous investment of time, manpower, material resources and financial resources, which will cause the project to stagnate and run aground seriously.

(2) Progress out of control and the quality of uncontrolled interaction in general, quality control and progress control is a pair of twin brothers, is a chain reaction, progress out of control may lead to quality control, similarly, the quality of runaway will lead to progress out of control.

(3) Progress out of control will break through the project's planned cost after the project execution is delayed, more resources need to be invested to solve the existing problems and re-establish the plan. Even if the workload does not increase, the increase in time is the increase in costs, that is, the increase in investment.

2. Some measures to avoid the lag of schedule table

(1) lock in requirements and avoid endless changes.

Each project needs to be locked before it is launched, and failure to do so will inevitably lead to project failures. In the process of project development, there will be some changes in the scope, it is necessary to strictly control these changes, there is a response to these changes, the scope of change control within a controllable range, otherwise there will be many complications, resulting in schedule lag and cost increases.

(2) A review of the schedule project schedule is a very important premise is the project estimates, project estimates are based on empirical values, and the experience of software engineering reflects only the industry's conventional practice, not to reflect each team. Therefore, the project estimate should be based on the historical experience of their team, the project team to participate in the evaluation of each member, so as to ensure the viability of the project plan, so as to avoid the emergence of system design and coding implementation is beyond the schedule estimate.

(3) Effective schedule Check tool poor execution results in both cost and time failures for the project, which ultimately leads to the failure of the entire project. Many of the lessons learned from the failure of project development reveal that the inspection tools that adequately describe the progress of a project are simply too important. My most valuable experience is to seize the key aspects of the project development process, to pay close attention to the progress of the situation, in the event of problems, should immediately be able to come up with practical measures. When it is possible to seriously affect the lag of the schedule, it is necessary to re-evaluate the results of demand analysis, estimation of work count and design results according to the current situation. Do not rush to take piecemeal measures, resulting in a more serious schedule lag.

(4) The goal of balancing progress control in various project goals is opposites relationship with the goal of cost control and the goal of quality control. The progress, quality and cost of the project constitute a triangular relationship that needs to be balanced. If an assessment determines that the project's schedule is indeed out of control, it should be determined to secure the most important goal of the project at the expense of the scope of the software function, the scope of the work, the cost budget, the schedule, or the quality of the software, and ultimately determine the most appropriate solution. The idea of not taking corrective and intervening measures to get out of control and disappearing on their own is unrealistic. Therefore, if these project parameters exceed the limits of the project objectives, corrective action must be taken immediately and precautions must be taken immediately if the project parameters are found to be in a trend beyond the limits of the project's objectives.

(5) The implementation of the schedule for the preparation of the reward and punishment system must also be ensured by corresponding control measures. For example, a number of rewards and punishments can be developed, the reward is the main, the punishment is the auxiliary means, mobilize the enthusiasm of all personnel. Through the establishment of the corresponding assessment indicators, the project implementation as the project personnel's important performance of the examination and supervision, to avoid because a small number of people do not cooperate with the work caused the overall delay of the project, from the system to ensure the smooth completion of the task.

Software Development Progress Management