Any major software development starts with the Initiating process group. Once the charter document is approved, the Planning and then to the Executing stages will follow. Monitoring and Controlling is measuring the potential performance deviation of the project in terms of schedule and costs and performs the related Integrated Change Control activities. At the end, during the Closing, the program/project manager will check the entire work is completed and the objectives are met.

Felician ALECU

English

Research Papers in Economics

Page 10  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
Management of Software Development Projects 
 
 
Felician ALECU, PhD, University Lecturer 
Department of Economic Informatics 
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania 
E-mail: alecu[at]ase[dot]ro; Web Page: http://alecu.ase.ro 
 
 
Abstract:  Any major software development starts with the Initiating 
process group. Once the charter document is approved, the 
Planning  and  then  to  the  Executing  stages  will  follow. 
Monitoring  and  Controlling  is  measuring  the  potential 
performance  deviation  of  the  project  in  terms  of  schedule 
and  costs  and  performs  the  related  Integrated  Change 
Control  activities.  At  the  end,  during  the  Closing,  the 
program/project  manager  will  check  the  entire  work  is 
completed and the objectives are met . 
Keywords: Project Management, Program Management, Software  
Development, Project Management Process Groups, Project 
Management Processes, Earned Value Management. 
 
 
Project Management Process Groups 
According to PMBOK, there are five Project Management Process 
Groups (also known as Project  Management  Processes) required for 
any type of project, including the software development ones (Figure 1). 
These five Project Management Process Groups are totally different than 
the  Project  Phases  (or  Project  Life  Cycles)  that  are  industry 
dependent, so projects from various fields will have completely different Page 11  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
phases.   
Figure 1 – Project Management Process Groups 
 
Any project starts with the Initiating  Process  Group where it is 
decided if the project will be selected and accepted based on high-level 
planning efforts performed at this stage. If the project is approved, it will 
move  further  to  the  Planning  Process  Group,  so  detailed  Project 
Management  Plans are prepared. The Executing  Process  Group will 
follow,  so  the  work  will  be  completed  according  to  the  plans  and  the 
results  will  be  supplied  to  the  Monitoring  and  Controlling  Process 
Group that will make sure the project is on the track in terms of scope, 
time, cost, risk and quality. In the case when variations to the plan are 
encountered,  depending  on  the  severity  of  the  identified  issues  the 
project will return back to Initiating  (the issues are critical so a decision 
point is needed in order to find out if the project would continue or not), 
Planning  (major  issues  are  discovered  or  significant  changes  are 
approved) or  Executing (when there are no baselines affected by the 
changes).  
 
Project Start Initiating
Planning
Executing
Closing Project End
Monitoring
and
ControllingPage 12  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
Initiating 
Any major software development starts with the Initiating process 
group  that  usually  means  an  iterative  clarification  of  the  high  level 
customer  needs,  including  but  not  limited  to  the  project  justification, 
objectives, high level requirements, summary budget, milestones, risks 
and so on. All these items become part of the project charter. 
Typically  such  changes  are  actually  affecting  several  components 
that  could  be  managed  as  distinct  projects  since  they  have  separate 
requirements,  budgets  and  cost  reporting  schemes.  According  to  this 
viewpoint,  the  software  development  initiative  becomes  a  program 
made by several interdependent projects. 
Even if the collect  requirements usually belongs to the planning 
phase,  the  requirements  clarification  stage  usually  is  started  here  in 
order  to  make  available  for  the  charter  the  needed  functional 
requirements, packages, delivery dates and so on. 
 
Planning 
Once the charter document is approved, the program will progress 
from Initiating to the Planning stage. At this point the analysis part 
starts by identifying the scope of the individual projects and the actions 
to  be  performed  in  order  to  meet  the  requirements,  so  the  approved 
project  management  plans  will  be  available  including  requirements 
refinement,  scope  definition,  WBS  creation,  schedule,  cost  and  budget 
estimations, quality requirements, risk identifications, response planning 
and so on. The WBS will be detailed at the component level, so a typical 
WBS would look like the one presented below (Figure 2). 
 
 Page 13  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
Figure 2— WBS detailed at component level 
 
Based on the project charter, the analysis part should first generate 
a  unique  Integrated  SRS  document  (at  the  program  level)  that  will 
describe the use cases. This document will be used as a basis for the test 
cases generation. 
The WBS  creation will start right after and it will be first detailed at 
feature  level.  The  analysis  part  will  be  continued  with  a  complete 
clarification  of  requirements.  For  each  delivery,  a  dedicated  SRS Page 14  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
document will be created and it will be used to design the test cases and 
to split the features to be delivered into more manageable components 
by generating HLD  documents so, finally, the latest WBS levels will be 
filled in. 
 
Executing 
  The  executing  activities  will  be  performed  at  the  Project  & 
Delivery level, so, for example, the Project #1 work will begin with the 
Delivery #1, followed by Delivery #2 and so on.  Once a component is 
completely implemented (all the corresponding features are developed 
and individually tested), it will be moved further to the inspection and 
validation activities. The Quality  Control can perform intermediate tests 
in order to validate some features, but these tests cannot replace the full 
delivery package inspection, as described in the next section. 
 
Controlling 
Quality Control will be FIRST performed at Project & Delivery level, 
so a dedicated quality check will take place for each delivery of a project, 
since  these  deliveries  are  managed  at  project  level.  There  will  be  a 
separate  role  at  the  Quality  Control  Department  level  having  the 
responsibility  of  assembling  the  individual  components  into  a  single 
package (installation kit and/or fix/service pack and/or …) corresponding 
to the entire delivery for a project. 
The testing activities will generate Test  Results, Test  Evaluation 
Reports and other documents, too, if needed. 
A second Quality Control step will be performed at the PROGRAM 
level,  in  order  to  confirm  the  validated  packages  of  each  project  are 
actually working together as a whole. Some packages may be rejected, 
so they will return to Executing or Planning stages. Page 15  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
Finally, a dedicated deliverer role (at the project level) will perform 
the  delivery  of  the  packages  that  are  considered  as  passing  BOTH 
STEPS of validations. 
  All  the  related  Integrated  Change  Control  activities  are 
performed here in order to make sure that only the approved changes 
will become part of the program and its corresponding projects. 
 
Monitoring 
In  order  to  measure  the  potential  performance  deviation  of  the 
program (and its corresponding projects) in terms of schedule and costs, 
the EVM (Earned Value Management) method is applied by starting from 
the following values: 
  EV  (Earned  Value  –  estimated  value  of  the  work  already 
accomplished) – measured by collecting the progress percents 
from  the  project  team  and  applying  them  to  the  total 
estimated efforts 
  PV (Planned Value – estimated value of the work planned to 
be done) –generated directly from the project plan by using a 
dedicated tool 
  AC (Actual Cost – the cost of the work accomplished) – taken 
from the WIP (Work In Progress) system, the value is based 
on the daily reporting of the project team 
 
A sample EVM chart is presented below (Figure 3). 
 
 
 Page 16  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 3 — EVM chart 
 
The  Schedule  Variance  (SV),  Schedule  Performance  Index 
(SPI),  Cost  Variance  (CV)  and  Cost  Performance  Index  (CPI)  are 
measuring the project deviations in terms of schedule and costs, so these 
indicators can be used to point out how the project is going. 
EAC (Estimate At Completion), ETC (Estimate To Complete) and VAC 
(Variance At Completion) are additional useful EVM indicators. 
The Monitoring process group could indicate some  plans  should 
be updated. 
 
 Page 17  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
Closing 
Project  closing  is  assisting  the  program  and  project  managers  to 
make sure all the program work is completed and the projects have met 
their objectives stated into the charter and project management plans. 
This means the entire program documentation, including the plans, 
should be updated in order to reflect the currently performed changes. 
Also,  the  lessons  learned  are  supposed  be  documented,  historical 
information  updated  (project  records,  statistics  …)  and  the  files  for 
program and projects archived for future use. 
The customer acceptance should be included here, too, as well as 
the formal documentation indicating the completion of the project. 
Finally, the project/process improvement ideas should be collected 
from the stakeholders, the program teams have to be informed about the 
end of the project and released for future new assignments. 
 
Conclusions   
This  article  tries  to  illustrate  a  methodology  to  be  used  to 
complement  the  PMI’s  standard  of  management  for  software 
development projects and programs. The Project Management Institute 
standard  is  actually  considered  as  being  a  project  management 
reference, a framework that can be applied most of the time to most of 
the projects so that success chances could be greatly increased.  The five 
Project Management Process Groups highlight the integrative nature of 
projects and project management. 
 
 
 Page 18  Oeconomics of Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2Q, Spring 2011 
 
References 
[1]  Frank  F.  Tsui,  Orlando  Karam,  Essentials  of  Software 
Engineering, Second Edition, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2009 
[2]  Project  Management  Institute,  A  Guide  to  the  Project 
Management  Body  of  Knowledge:  PMBOK  Guide,  Project 
Management Institute, 2008 
[3]  Project  Management  Institute,  Practice  Standard  for  Earned 
Value Management, Project Management Institute, 2005 
[4]  Project  Management  Institute,  Practice  Standard  for  Project 
Configuration Management, Project Management Institute, 2007 
[5]  Project  Management  Institute,  Practice  Standard  for  Work 
Breakdown  Structure,  Project  Management  Institute,  2nd 
edition, 2006 
[6]  Project  Management  Institute,  The  Standard  for  Program 
Management, Project Management Institute, 2nd edition, 2008 
 

Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK Guide, Project Management Institute,

Management of Software Development Projects

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