Project Manager

Who must Plan, Motivate, Organize, & Control the practitioners who do software work.

Characteristics of Project Manager:

(1) Flexible – Flexibility is required for a PM especially when dealing with new team members who may need specific , firm direction to get started. PM should be able to adopt various styles of leadership (Authorative, Collaborative etc) with various people.

(2) Problem Solving – He should be able to diagnose the technical and organizational issues that are most relevant.

(3) Managerial identity – A good project manager must take charge of project. He/she must have the confidence to assume control when necessary.

(4) Achievement – He must reward initiatives (like bonus, gift etc) as this will optimize the productivity of a project team.

(5) Influence and team building – He must be able to “read” people i.e. he must be able to understand verbal & non verbal signals and react to needs of people. The manager must remain under control in high stress situation.

Skills of Successful Project Manager: There are eight skills a project manager require to ensure success they are :

(1) Technological Skills – Effective project manager should be familiar with degree of technological knowledge to complete the project. This will help identifying Alternative solutions and communicating risks associated to technology to various stake holders and to route the problems to the right SMEs for solution.

(2) Organizational Skills – Although you may not need  intense technological skills but it is important that  PM has  a deep Organization skills  ( Organizational policies, procedures & Planning)  This would help in analyzing the Scope, Time, cost, quality and risk.

(3) Communication Skills – This is the most important skill that a PM should have.  This deals with keeping the stakeholders well informed by Timely distribution of project data and updates to stakeholders.

(4) Team Building - PM should be proficient in Facilitating team meetings, conflict resolution and handling diverse team. Should ensure motivation and empowerment of team members by encouraging the Suggestion and recommendations of the team and allowing the team share their opinions.

(5) Coping – This implies Project Managers should be creative with solutions and flexible with results and they need to Patient and persistent with stakeholders. Coping with stakeholders is necessary for successful solution.

(6) Negotiation – Since there are varied stakeholders with varied objectives, it is important for a Project Manager to persuade and negotiate the terms of Project, Resources and results.

(7) Content - Project Managers should be knowledgeable in the subject matter. Knowing the subject matter without having to consult with SME would reduce project duration time. Uninformed project managers have to prolong tasks by days to wait for responses from experts.

(8) Leadership - Project Managers should be positive, decisive, motivating, empowering and energetic.


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Project Management Office (PMO)

PMO is a corporate department responsible for the practice & discipline of project management within the organization. They are usually departments with management control over project managers & responsibility for project success. The function of a PMO fall into three categories:

(1) Development Functions: Development functions are those that build a cadre of effective project managers. They include activities such as:

• Recruiting Staff

• Defining project management career and training paths

• Providing support & assistance to project managers

• Evaluating project managers at the end of a project

(2) Support Function: Support functions are those that help project managers become more effective in managing their projects. They include activities such as:

• Time gathering & reporting

• Defining standards for project documents

• Establishing priorities among projects.

• Establishing procedures for issues such as:

        (a) Scope control or review & approval

        (b) Creating standards for initiating and closing projects

        (c)  Implementing project management methodologies & software

        (d) Providing a forum for resolving disputes

(3) Control Functions: They include

• Taking care of employee promotion

• Providing discipline & direction

• Defining mandatory standards such as the frequency of status report or team meeting

• Reviewing projects in progress


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Essential Elements of Software Project Management

Choose the Project Methodology: A key decision is the methodology that will be used for your project. A traditional waterfall methodology is highly structured to deliver good results, but can result in longer projects based on its sequential set of tasks. Agile methodologies deliver quicker results, but require managing cross-functional teams and allowing them more freedom to create prototypes in several iterations as requirements are refined.

Identify Requirements: A solid understanding of user requirements forms the foundation for your software, yet there's often a rush to skip this and move to the coding phase. This may cause you to miss necessary requirements or try to meet an ever-changing target as new requirements are uncovered.


Understand the Technology: It's crucial that the project manager understands the maturity level of the technology used for the project, since technology changes at a rapid pace. If it's a well-understood technology, the chance of meeting the project schedule is high.

Communicate with Business Stakeholders: Technical jargon is a foreign language to most business stakeholders, so communication between the project manager, the technical team and other stakeholders can be a challenge. Project managers and technical team members need to talk about the requirements and project risks using business terminology. If users can't understand the explanation, they can't make informed decisions about the level of risk they're willing to accept.

Deliver Phased Results: Many software projects are large, expensive and lengthy efforts. Often the new software isn't delivered until months or years after the requirements were originally documented.

Understand the Culture: Project managers should consider cultural issues in the project planning. This includes adding contingency time in the schedule to work through possible issues and clearly communicating the risks of taking short cuts.

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Project Management Institute

The nine areas of project management outlined by Project Management Institute (PMI) are:

(1) Project Scope Management:

• Controlling the planning, execution, and content of the project.

 • We need to pay special attention to both project & product scope so that the software we end up with its what we intended to make in the first place

(2) Project Time Management:

• Managing everything that affects the projects schedule.

• Building the product at right time for maximum customer acceptance.

(3) Project Cost Management:

• Cost estimating, budgeting, and controlling the costs involved in building and maintaining the project.

(4) Project Quality Management:

• Ensuring that the product we are producing is a quality product and that it meets customer expectations.

(5) Project Human Resources Management:

• Hiring and managing the competent people to work for the project.

(6) Project Communications Management:

• Making sure that the people who information need get it, when they need it.

(7) Project Risk Management:

• Anticipating and handling risks as well as taking advantage of opportunities that can help a project.

(8) Project Procurement Management:

• Creating vendor contracts and purchasing goods and services.

(9) Project integration Management:

• Ensuring perfect coordination between all the knowledge areas.


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Project Dimensions

Project dimensions include People, Product, Process, and Technology

(1) People: People management includes – Recruiting, Selection, Performance management, Training, Compensation, Career development, Work design, Team culture and Development

(2) Product: Before a project can be planned product objectives and scope should be established. Alternative solutions should be considered. Technical and management constraints should be identified. The software developer and customer must meet to define product objectives and scope. Scope identifies the primary data, functions and behaviors that characterize the product. Once the product objectives and scope are understood alternative solutions are considered.

(3) Process: A software process provides the framework from which a comprehensive plan for software development can be established. A number of different activities like tasks, milestones, work products and quality assurance points – enable the framework activities to be adapted to the characteristics of the software project and the requirements of the project team. Finally umbrella activities such as software quality assurance, software configuration management, and measurement are carried out during the process follow up.

(4) Technology: Analysis of presently available technology to implement the project. Assessing the risks associated with the implementation of the technology especially while implementing new technology. Adopting technology that would reduce the cost of the finally built product. Imparting training about using the technology for team members who are new to the technology. Upgrading the implemented technology from time to time.

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Procurement Management

Procurement management processes includes:

(a) Procurement Planning (b) Solicitation Planning (c) Solicitation (d) Source Selection (e) Contract Administration (f) Contract Close-out

(a) Procurement Planning: This involves taking decision on

                                                 • What to procure?

                                                 • What type of contract to use?

                                                 • Financial and organizations issues

(b) Solicitation Planning: Make or buy analysis is used for determining the cost effectiveness of procurement. PMs need to consult experts to assist them with the legal aspects of contracts. Decisions need to be made about appropriateness of the types of contracts e.g. fixed price contracts (more risk to seller), Cost reimbursable contracts (more risk to buyer), Unit price contracts (fixed price to seller and risks passed on to buyer). Solicitation planning includes:

• Writing the statement of work in sufficient details.

• Preparing procurement documents e.g. Request for proposal (RFP), Request for bid (RFB), Request for information (RFI).

• Developing source selection evaluation criteria.

(c) Solicitation: This involves:-

 • Finalizing procurement documents

• Advertising the work

• Providing clarifications

• Holding bidder’s conference

• Receiving proposal

(d) Source Selection: Source selection criteria cover:-

• Technical criteria

• Management criteria should also be given due importance

(e) Contract Administration: This involves:

• Finalizing and awarding the contract

• Monitoring performance

• Making contract modification (when required)

• Project members should be involved in writing and administering the contracts

(f) Contract Close-out: This include product verification and administrative close out e.g. formal acceptance, closure, contract file archiving.


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CE Charts

The main purpose of the CE diagram is to graphically represent the relationship between an effect and its various possible causes. The main steps in drawing a cause-effect diagram are as follows:-

(1) Clearly define the problem (the effect) to be studied. Here we can find the problems of particular types that are occurring in the system.

(2) We draw an arrow from left to right with a box containing the effect drawn at the head. This is the backbone of the diagram.

(3) We determine the major categories of causes. These could be the standard categories or some variation to suit the problem.

(4) We then write these major categories in boxes and connect them with diagonal arrows to the backbone.

(5) Then Brainstorm for the sub-causes of the major causes by asking repeatedly for each major cause “Why does this major cause produce the effect”?

(6) Then we add the sub-causes to the diagram clustered around the major cause. If necessary further we subdivided these causes & stop when no worthwhile answer to the question can be found.

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