Adding value to earned value analysis

The non-repetitive nature of projects leads to uncertainty that is present to some degree in every project. Our limited ability to accurately forecast future values of parameters that are used as input to plan projects affect every project. Due to uncertainty and the resulting risk, project planning is in fact a starting point in the project management process that consists of planning, monitoring and control. Risk management techniques are also used in project management for the very same reason. Understanding the dynamic, stochastic nature of projects and the tools and techniques that can help us cope with this environment is the focus of this paper. In this paper we discuss some ideas, tools and techniques that may help project managers cope with uncertainty. We focus our discussion on two new ways to teach students and practitioners the Earned Value concept, which is discussed in the PMBOK and is supported by many of the commercial project management software packages: the Project Team Builder (PTB) and ProTrack’s Assistant. PTB is a training tool that won the PMI product of the year award for 2008. ProTrack’s Assistant is an automatic tool added on the ProTrack software tool that integrates lessons learned from an Earned Value research study awarded by the IPMA research 2008 award

Improving project management planning and control in service operations environment.

Projects have evidently become the core activity in most companies and organisations where they are investing significant amount of resources in different types of projects as building new services, process improvement, etc. This research has focused on service sector in attempt to improve project management planning and control activities. The research is concerned with improving the planning and control of software development projects. Existing software development models are analysed and their best practices identified and these have been used to build the proposed model in this research. The research extended the existing planning and control approaches by considering uncertainty in customer requirements, resource flexibility and risks level variability. In considering these issues, the research has adopted lean principles for planning and control software development projects. A novel approach introduced within this research through the integration of simulation modelling techniques with Taguchi analysis to investigate ‗what if‘ project scenarios. Such scenarios reflect the different combinations of the factors affecting project completion time and deliverables. In addition, the research has adopted the concept of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to develop an automated Operations Project Management Deployment (OPMD) model. The model acts as an iterative manner uses ‗what if‘ scenario performance outputs to identify constraints that may affect the completion of a certain task or phase. Any changes made during the project phases will then automatically update the performance metrics for each software development phases. In addition, optimisation routines have been developed that can be used to provide management response and to react to the different levels of uncertainty. Therefore, this research has looked at providing a comprehensive and visual overview of important project tasks i.e. progress, scheduled work, different resources, deliverables and completion that will make it easier for project members to communicate with each other to reach consensus on goals, status and required changes. Risk is important aspect that has been included in the model as well to avoid failure. The research emphasised on customer involvement, top management involvement as well as team members to be among the operational factors that escalate variability levels 3 and effect project completion time and deliverables. Therefore, commitment from everyone can improve chances of success. Although the role of different project management techniques to implement projects successfully has been widely established in areas such as the planning and control of time, cost and quality; still, the distinction between the project and project management is less than precise and a little was done in investigating different levels of uncertainty and risk levels that may occur during different project phase.United Arab Emirates Governmen

Crystal Method For Accurate Software Duration Estimation

All projects share one common characteristic that is the projection of ideas and activities into new endeavours. The ever-present element of risk and uncertainty to the events and tasks leading to completion can never be foretold with absolute accuracy. The software projects are different from other projects. Underestimation is the root course of many software projects not being able to meet the deadline, or failure. Some of the reasons for inaccurate estimation are as follows: the traditional model not being able to capture the project in detail, quick and reliable strategic analysis. The influence of human factor is not able to incorporate explicitly. Failure to consider rework phenomenon. Failure to capture dynamic interaction between technical development and management policies

Uncertainty in software development: a threat and a possibility

Uncertainty is a pervasive and inevitable phenomenon in software development. It affects most if not all stakeholders in software projects in different ways. Mostly uncertainty is seen as a risk or threat that is one of the causes behind the failures of software projects. But there are also possibilities or opportunities that can be found from uncertainty. Uncertainty has been researched in academia, but not often from the viewpoint of software development. Understanding the causes and effects of uncertainty is needed to be able to mitigate the negative and to increase the positive aspects. Understanding the subject may also help in coping with the effects of inevitable uncertainties. This thesis explores the subject by conducting a literature review. The aim of this work is to increase understanding of causes and effects of uncertainty and how uncertainty can be managed in software development projects. This thesis discusses different types and sources of uncertainty that affect software development projects. The type represents what the uncertainty is about, and the source represents what causes the uncertainty. The presented types include for example requirements, stakeholders, and situation. The examined sources contain ambiguity, complexity, and lack of trust among other things. The effects of uncertainty on development projects and individual developers are dis-cussed as well. The effects on projects include for example delays in schedule, decreased product quality, and poor estimates, while the effects on developers include stress, feelings of inadequacy, or increased motivation among other things. Discussion of uncertainty management is divided into reducing uncertainty and coping with uncertainty. The former can be achieved for example by maintaining continuous and direct communication with stakeholders and by doing the development of the project in short, repeated iterations that builds the project in small steps. Coping with uncertainty can be facilitated by high autonomy of the team and trust between project members among other things. Also, the suitability of different software development processes in relation to uncertainty are discussed with the conclusion being that project type is a major factor in what software development process should be used

An empirical investigation of knowledge management support for software projects.

Projects are unique by definition. Due to this novelty software development projects, in common with all other projects, require knowledge for effective implementation. Most knowledge management frameworks reported in the literature address the organisational need to manage knowledge. The existing frameworks typically discuss the dichotomy between tacit and explicit knowledge, and lay an emphasis on managing the latter. However, software development projects rely upon the experience, creativity and intuition of individual team members to address unstructured situations typified by inherent uncertainty, ambiguity and change. Therefore software projects require the facilitation and interaction of tacit knowledge along with managing and leveraging explicit knowledge.This research examines how tacit and explicit knowledge generated while implementing a software development project can be leveraged and effectively reused in future software projects. In order to address the need to provide knowledge management support to software projects an extended case study was conducted at one of the world's largest software project-based organisations. The aim of the research was to identify and analyse the flow of knowledge, and the capabilities required to support this flow. The research design utilised a combination of open-ended interviews, survey questionnaires, observations of team functioning, work methods and development practices, and a detailed examination of the knowledge management infrastructure and process capabilities. The extensive and exceptional access negotiated for this project enabled the research to focus on a single organisation and resulted in 100 hours of interviews and 340 hours of observations from 98 ongoing projects. Established case study protocols were used for data collection. The data analysis focused on determining categories from the different streams of activities and assigning attributes using Nudist software for data reduction and displaying group-nodes, and conclusion drawing. This enabled the research to establish the 'processual' nature of knowledge, and identify the capabilities required to mobilise and utilise knowledge assets. The research critically analysed the three parallel themes of knowledge management, project management and software engineering, and the outcome of the conceptual synthesis and validation is a dynamic model which represents the knowledge processes that facilitate the flow of tacit and explicit knowledge between software projects. The model depicts the relationships and interactions between the functional areas of the development effort, and presents a continuous and long-term view of supporting the implementation of software projects and developing knowledge practices. For software project-based organisations this research has implications for their ability to manage context, provide feedback and facilitate interaction, and thus build upon their existing knowledge resources and capabilities. The research provides such organisations with a perspective to achieve excellence not only through optimisation of software process improvement, but also through learning, and, the creation and sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge as facilitated by the proposed model

A Human Factors Study of Risk Management of Complex Agile Scrum Projects in Large Enterprises

Agile Project Management methods have gained phenomenal success in the IT software world in managing projects of high complexity and uncertainty. However, Agile projects come with their unique set of risks. This paper seeks to explore the risks posed by human factors to complex Agile Scrum projects in large enterprises. Project Risk Management is crucial in determining the future performance of a complex project. Increasing project complexity makes it more and more difficult to anticipate potential events that could affect the project and to make effective decisions to reduce project risk exposure. This is even more true for Agile projects that promote immediate and frequent visibility of risk factors and distributed decision making in projects. A dominant reason for failure of complex Agile projects are the risks caused by human and organization factors. This paper will analyze the delivery risks posed by human factors and the traditionally hierarchical decision making in large enterprise systems

ESRA, an educational software for introducing stochastic scheduling to civil engineering students

[EN] Classical scheduling techniques are commonly employed tools in civil engineering schools worldwide for teaching project planning and management. Techniques such as the Critical Path Method (CPM), Precedence diagram method (PDM), Gantt chart or the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) present the advantage of their simplicity, ease of understanding and that they are implemented in the most accepted project management software such as Ms Project or Primavera P6. These scheduling techniques, however, present important limitations in dealing with the uncertainty inherent to construction project management. On the one hand, the deterministic approach of CPM to project planning learning reduces sensitivity and understanding of the factors that significantly alter and challenge the success of a project, while on the other hand PERT shows too limited capabilities in uncertainty modelling and underestimates the project duration standard deviation. Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA) is a stochastic method that has been pointed out to promote that students start managing projects more effectively and more efficiently. In this study, we employ an educational SRA software (ESRA) to help students understand the underlying assumption of stochastic scheduling, as well as to make explicit the advantages of stochastic scheduling compared to classical methods such as CPM or PERT. ESRA affords modelling both the uncertainty in the duration of activities, and the relationship between these uncertainties, expanding the range of planning problems, which students can now assess. This research was implemented in four stages through a workshop. First, we introduced the theoretical foundations of Monte Carlo Simulation, the method underlying most uncertainty assessment methods. Second students employed ESRA to see how this method works. Third, students worked around a case-study of the construction projects management and analysed the results, comparing those from the stochastic assessment with those of the deterministic assessment. Finally, they were asked to respond a questionnaire in which they had to address real-world decision-making regarding project scheduling that required having project uncertainties into account.Salas, J.; Sierra, L.; Yepes, V. (2021). ESRA, an educational software for introducing stochastic scheduling to civil engineering students. IATED Academy. 5788-5798. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2021.1169S5788579

Managing The Characteristics Of Software Product Development Programs

Multiple related software development projects are often managed concurrently and systematically to deliver a complex software system. This approach of managing multiple interdependent projects together to achieve a common goal is called program management (Pellegrinelli, 1997). A software development program can generate the benefits that cannot be achieved by managing projects individually. The software product development program has the special characteristics such as complexity, uncertainty and interdependence (1995). A software product development program can play an active role in managing the uncertainty and interdependence in the software development process. This dissertation is designed to examine the external communication effectiveness of the program team on the interdependence between the program and the larger organizational context. In addition, this dissertation studies the inter-project coordination effectiveness on uncertainty within a program. Based upon organizational Information Processing Theory (IPT) and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), theoretical frameworks are developed. The proposed research models are tested by surveying software product development programs across a range of industries. The results will contribute to the understanding of multiple-project communication in a program\u27s context. The specific interactions between coordination/communication and the product development characteristics will provide a guideline for the industrial practices