Software project management is the process of determining the scope according to the requirements, formulating the project plan according to the target, and executing the management according to the plan. The fundamental purpose of strengthening project management at each stage of software development is to enhance the ability to control software development and improve the quality of software development. According to the life cycle method of software engineering, the construction of software projects can be divided into 9 stages: project establishment, start-up, demand analysis, system design, system development, system testing, system online, project acceptance and post-launch evaluation.
Strengthening software project management is to take all aspects of software engineering as the main line of management, and to integrate dynamic project management throughout it. Integrated management to maximize the efficiency of software development management, thereby greatly improving the quality of software development.
2. Definition and implementation method of
software project schedule management Software project schedule management means that the project manager prepares a plan around the project requirements, puts it into practice, and often checks the actual implementation of the plan during this process, analyzes the reasons for the schedule deviation, and builds on this basis. Continuously adjust and revise the plan until the project is put into use; through the control of the factors affecting the progress and the coordination of various relationships, and the comprehensive use of various feasible methods and measures, the project plan is controlled within the pre-determined target range, while taking into account Cost, quality control targets while striving to shorten time.
Project schedule management can be accomplished by: formulating a project milestone management run table; holding regular project status meetings, where the software developer reports progress and problems, and the user provides comments; comparing the actual start date of each task with the planned start date ; Determine whether formal project milestones are completed as expected.
3. How to Prepare a Project Schedule
Identifying the Schedule Owner
Identifying the owner or the individual responsible for developing all or part of the project schedule is necessary to ensure that a good schedule is developed. A WBS (job breakdown structure) or organizational breakdown structure is recommended as the basis for schedule development, as the WBS specifies the scope and the organizational breakdown structure (OBS) specifies the functional areas of delivery.
Decide on tasks and milestones
For each lowest-level WBS element, identify tasks and milestones that correspond to deliverables. Deliverables are usually set as milestones, and the activities that produce deliverables are called tasks. A milestone is a point in time that is used to manage checkpoints to measure achievement.
Sequence work activities
After the tasks and milestones to deliver the product have been identified, they should be logically sequenced to reflect the way the work will be performed. Sequencing establishes dependencies between tasks and milestones and is used to calculate the progress of delivering the product.
Task duration evaluation
Task duration evaluation is the most challenging part of project planning, and it is also the key to subsequent cost estimates. This is an ongoing process of refinement throughout the planning process as it is directly affected by staffing and cost estimating activities.
Integrated Task Planning
Once tasks and milestones have been identified, sequenced, and the plan has been evaluated over time, there is a schedule for each delivered product. Without integration, the schedule of each part is independent and therefore cannot describe the timing issues associated with the entire project.
Review and approve the schedule
A large and complex schedule requires input from multiple people. No one has all the knowledge of every aspect of the project and all the factors that affect the schedule. Therefore, the team should perform schedule reviews to identify problems. , or refine the schedule.
Fourth, how to effectively control the progress
of software projects In the process of current software project development, both developers and managers are increasingly paying attention to the importance of project progress. So how to control the progress of the project.
1. The project leader or project manager must have a clear understanding of the development cycle of the entire project. The division of tasks must be a unit of a day, not a module. Every day, whether it is a developer or a tester, it must be Have a rough estimate of your work. That is, every afternoon, the project team leader organizes the developers to understand the system and make corresponding records. Be sure to keep a detailed record of the issues that have been resolved. And we must pay attention to the unresolved problems. Don't step back. Find the root cause.
2. Communication and exchange, as the project leader, you must communicate with the developers a lot, mobilize their enthusiasm, let them learn how to solve the problem, and don't let him wait for the problem to be solved. Understanding its actual progress and proficiency with development tools has important implications for future task rearrangements.
3. Put forward some difficulties for everyone to overcome together, or have some technically proficient people to solve them. After solving it, let everyone be familiar with its programming ideas. For frequently used knowledge points, there must be a detailed description. This realizes the sharing of resources.
4. Do a good job of summarizing the project, whether it is difficult or not, as long as there is a problem, it must be raised, and after the solution is completed, everyone must be familiar with it, which will help improve everyone's technical level.
5. The key to ensuring the progress of the project is to achieve daily settlement.
V. Soft skills in software project schedule management
1. Establish the concept of comprehensive coordination
In essence, project management starts from the overall situation, aims at maximizing the overall benefits of the project, and manages various special projects such as project scope, cost, and quality. A comprehensive management process carried out with coordination and unification as the content. Therefore, to carry out project management, it is necessary to have the concept of comprehensive coordination of various elements and special management of the project.
First, the scope of an IT project affects the schedule of an IT project. Generally speaking, the larger the scope of the project, the more tasks the project has to complete, and the longer the project takes; conversely, the smaller the scope of the project, the fewer tasks the project has to complete, and the shorter the project takes. Therefore, if the project schedule is very tight, or the schedule delay is very serious, you can consider discussing with the customer whether the scope can be narrowed. If the client agrees to narrow the scope, the schedule can be effectively shortened.
Similarly, the cost and quality of IT projects will also affect the schedule. In general, additional costs 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. This is one of the coordination contents between project procurement management and schedule management.
Obviously, when reducing the schedule, the coordination between the above-mentioned special management can be considered, that is, cutting off some tasks, reducing the quality of some tasks, subcontracting some tasks, adding the cost of some tasks, etc.
2. Master the correct demand research method
When many project teams mention demand research, they immediately think of interviewing users. At the beginning of the project, face-to-face interviews with users are not a good method for demand research.
The correct method should first ask users to provide relevant materials and books that can reflect the user's business, and start literature research. In the process of reading the literature, you can figure out some basic business terms of the other party, and have a preliminary understanding of the user's business process.
Secondly, if necessary, ask the user to lead the project team to visit the business process of the user's site, so as to establish a perceptual understanding of some terms and business links that are not easy to understand literally.
Third, on this basis, according to the problems found in the literature survey and field investigation, the interview outline is listed in a targeted manner to conduct interviews with users. At this time, the efficiency of the interview and the quality of the interview will be improved, and the users will also have a strong sense of trust because the problems mentioned by the project team are very professional and targeted.
After the interview, some project teams believe that they have obtained the real and complete needs of users, and thus start project design. In fact, some IT projects are more sensitive because the results of the interviews need to be recorded. In order to avoid their own "risks", users will speak according to the "official" caliber, so that the demand may be distorted.
The correct method should be to proceed to the fourth task after the interview, that is, to issue an anonymous demand questionnaire. Because it is anonymous, generally more real demand information can be collected.
The project team that has mastered the correct demand research method can quickly obtain high-quality demand information, shorten the research time, and make the design and implementation time more abundant, thereby shortening the progress.
3. Shorten the time for team formation and running
-in Any project team will generally go through five stages from the acceptance of the task to the completion of the task and the dissolution of the team: the establishment stage, the running-in stage, the formal stage, the performance stage, and the dissolution stage.
Among the five stages, the dissolution stage has little impact on the project because the project tasks have been completed. For a project manager, it must be clear that the real work stage is the formal and performance stage. Therefore, the important responsibility of the project manager is to make the formation and running-in phase of the project team as short as possible. In this way, the formality and performance phase of the project team will last longer, and the task arrangement and execution will be more calm. .
6. How to avoid project schedule out
of control 1. Serious consequences
of out-of-control schedule (1) Out-of-control schedule will disrupt planning. The direct consequence of out-of-control schedule is to delay the normal completion time of the system. This consequence will increase the burden on the owner, including the continued investment of time, manpower, material and financial resources, and in severe cases will cause the project to be stagnant and stranded.
(2) Out-of-control progress and out-of-control quality interact with each other. Generally speaking, quality control and progress control are twin brothers, which have a chain reaction to each other. Out-of-control progress may lead to out-of-control quality; similarly, out-of-control quality will also lead to out-of-control progress.
(3) Out of control schedule will break through the planned cost of the project. After the project execution schedule is delayed, it is necessary to invest more resources to solve the existing problems and re-form the plan. Even if the workload does not increase, an increase in time is an increase in expenses, which is an increase in investment.
2. Several measures to avoid schedule lag
(1) Lock requirements and avoid endless changes.
Every project needs to lock down requirements before proceeding, failure to do so will inevitably lead to project failure. In the process of project development, some scope changes will occur more or less. These changes must be strictly controlled, there is a response plan for these changes, and the scope of changes should be controlled within a controllable range, otherwise there will be many complications, resulting in Schedule lags and cost increases.
(2) A very important premise for re-checking the schedule of the project is project estimation. The biggest basis for project estimation is based on experience values, and the experience values of software engineering only reflect the normal practice of the industry, not every one. team. Therefore, when estimating the project, it should be based on the historical experience of its own team, and every member of the project team should participate in the estimation, so as to ensure the feasibility of the project plan, so as to avoid the occurrence of system design and coding implementation exceeding the schedule. Plan estimates.
(3) Poor execution of effective schedule checking tools can lead to project failure in both cost and time, which can ultimately lead to the failure of the entire project. The lessons of many failed project development reveal the importance of inspection tools that adequately describe project progress. The most valuable experience I have gained is to grasp the key links in the project development process, pay close attention to the progress, and take practical measures immediately once a problem occurs. When there is a lag that may seriously affect the schedule, it is necessary to re-evaluate the requirements analysis results, labor estimates, and design results according to the current situation. Don't rush to take measures that will make the schedule lag even worse.
(4) The goal of balancing schedule control, cost control and quality control among various project goals is a relationship of unity of opposites. Project schedule, quality and cost constitute a mutually restrictive triangular relationship that needs to be balanced. If it is determined after evaluation that the project schedule is indeed out of control, you should make up your mind to keep the most important goal of the project at the expense of any one of the software functional scope, work product scope, cost budget, schedule plan or software quality. , and finally determine a most suitable solution. It is unrealistic to expect that uncontrolled progress will go away on its own without corrective and intervention measures. Therefore, if these project parameters are outside the limits of the project goals, corrective action must be taken immediately; if these project parameters are found to be trending outside the limits of the project goals, preventive measures must be taken immediately.
(5) The implementation of the schedule for the formulation of the reward and punishment system must also be guaranteed by corresponding control measures. For example, some reward and punishment systems can be formulated, with rewards as the main and punishment as auxiliary means to mobilize the enthusiasm of all personnel. By setting corresponding evaluation indicators, the project execution is regarded as an important performance of the project personnel for evaluation and supervision, so as to avoid the overall delay of the project due to a small number of people not cooperating with the work, and systematically ensure the smooth completion of the task.
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