Software project management comprises of a number of activities, which contains planning of project, deciding scope of software product, estimation of cost in various terms, scheduling of tasks and events, and resource management. Project management activities may include:

●      Project Planning

●      Scope Management

●      Project Estimation

Project Planning

Software project planning is task, which is performed before the production of software actually starts. It is there for the software production but involves no concrete activity that has any direction connection with software production; rather it is a set of multiple processes, which facilitates software production. Project planning may include the following:

Scope Management

It defines the scope of project; this includes all the activities, process need to be done in order to make a deliverable software product. Scope management is essential because it creates boundaries of the project by clearly defining what would be done in the project and what would not be done. This makes project to contain limited and quantifiable tasks, which can easily be documented and in turn avoids cost and time overrun.

During Project Scope management, it is necessary to –

●      Define the scope

●      Decide its verification and control

●      Divide the project into various smaller parts for ease of management.

●      Verify the scope

●      Control the scope by incorporating changes to the scope

Project Estimation

For an effective management accurate estimation of various measures is a must. With correct estimation managers can manage and control the project more efficiently and effectively.

Project estimation may involve the following:

●      Software size estimation

●      Software size may be estimated either in terms of KLOC (Kilo Line of Code) or by calculating number of function points in the software. Lines of code depend upon coding practices and Function points vary according to the user or software requirement.

●      Effort estimation

●      The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-hour required to produce the software. For effort estimation software size should be known. This can either be derived by managers’ experience, organization’s historical data or software size can be converted into efforts by using some standard formulae.

●      Time estimation

●      Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the software can be estimated. Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the requirement specifications and interdependency of various components of software. Software tasks are divided into smaller tasks, activities or events by Work Breakthrough Structure (WBS). The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day basis or in calendar months.

●      The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time invested to complete the project.

●      Cost estimation

●      This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on more elements than any of the previous ones. For estimating project cost, it is required to consider –

○    Size of software

○    Software quality

○    Hardware

○    Additional software or tools, licenses etc.

○    Skilled personnel with task-specific skills

○    Travel involved

○    Communication

○    Training and support