Management Spectrum in Software Project
Management is an
essential activity for the computer based systems and product. The term Project Management involves various
activities such as planning, monitoring, control of people, process and various
events that occur during the development of software.
Management Spectrum
Effective
software project management focuses four P’s i.e. People, Product, Process and
Project. The successful project
management is done with the help of these four factors where the order of these
elements is not arbitrary. Project
Manager has to motivate the communication between stakeholders. He should also prepare a project plan for the
success of the product.
The People
People factor is
an important issue in software industry.
There is a strong need for motivated and highly skilled people for
developing the software product. The
Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has developed the People Management
Capability Maturity Model (PM-CMM)
By using PM-CMM
model software organization become capable for undertaking complex applications
which ultimately attracts or motivates the talented people.
Following are
some key practice areas for software People.
- Recruitment,
- Selection,
- Performance
Management, - Training
Compensation, - Career
Development, - Organization
and Work Design, - Culture
Development,
The Product
Before Planning
the Project three important tasks need to be done.
- Product objectives and scope must be established.
- Alternative solutions should be considered.
- Technical and management constraints must be
identified.
The software
developer and customer must communicate with each other in order to define the
objectives and scope of the product.
This is done as the first step in requirement gathering and
analysis. The scope of the project identifies
primary data, functions and behaviour of the product.
After
establishing the objectives and scope of the product the alternative solutions
are considered.
Finally, the
constraints imposed by-delivery deadline or budgetary restrictions, personal
availability can be identified.
The Process
The software
process provides the framework from which the software development plan can be
established.
There are
various framework activities that needs to be carried out during the software
development process. These activities
can be of varying size and complexities.
Different task
sets-tasks, milestones, work products and quality assurance points enable
framework activities to adapt the software requirements and certain
characteristics of software project.
Finally,
umbrella activities such as Software Quality Assurance (SQA) and Software
Configuration Management (SCM) are conducted.
These umbrella activities depend upon the framework activities.
