Software Project Planning & Management

Unit 1

Metrics: Introduction, The Metrics Roadmap, A Typical Metrics Strategy, What Should you Measure?, Set Targets and track Them, Understanding and Trying to minimize variability, Act on data, People and Organizational issues in Metrics Programs, Common Pitfalls to watch out for in Metrics Programs, Matrices implementation checklists and tools, Software configuration management: Introduction, Some Basic Definitions and terminology, the processes and activities of software configuration management, configuration status accounting, configuration audit, software configuration management in geographically distributed teams, Metrics in software configuration management, software configuration management tools and automation.

Unit 2

Risk Management: Introduction, What is risk management and why is it important?, Risk management cycle, Risk identification: common tools and techniques, Risk Quantifications, Risk Monitoring, Risk Mitigation, Risks and Mitigation in the context of global project teams, some practical techniques risk management, Metrics in risk management. Project Planning and Tracking: Components of Project Planning and Tracking, The “What “ Part of a Project Plan, The “What Cost “ Part of a Project Plan, The “When “ Part of Project Planning, The “How “ Part of a Project Planning: Tailoring of Organizational Processes For the Project, The “ By Whom “ Part of the Project Management Plan : Assigning Resources, Putting it all together : The Software Management Plan, Activities Specific to Project Tracking, Interfaces to the Process Database. Project Closure: When Does Project Closure Happen?. Why Should We Explicitly do a Closure?, An Effective Closure Process, Issues that Get Discussed During Closure, Metrics for Project Closure, Interfaces to the Process Database.

Unit 3

Software Requirements gathering: Inputs and start criteria for requirements gathering, Dimensions of requirements gathering, Steps to be followed during requirements gathering, outputs and quality records from the requirements phase, skill sets required during requirements phase, differences for a shrink-wrapped software, challenges during the requirements management phase, Metrics for requirements phase. Estimation: What is Estimation? when and why is Estimation done?, the three phases of Estimation, Estimation methodology, formal models for size Estimation, Translating size Estimate into effort Estimate, Translating effort Estimates into schedule Estimate, common challenges during Estimation , Metrics for the Estimation processes. Design and Development Phases: Some differences in our chosen approach, salient features of design, evolving an architecture/ blueprint, design for reusability, technology choices/ constraints, design to standards, design for portability, user interface issues, design for testability, design for diagnose ability, design for maintainability, design for install ability, inter-operability design, challenges during design and development phases, skill sets for design and development, metrics for design and development phases.