COMP3710 Software Project Management

Project Estimation and Scheduling

Goals

  • To provide an experience in the estimation of the time and effort required to deliver work products and to manage that delivery.
  • To provide an experience in setting feasible quality objectives for the project.

Context

  1. The students must estimate their mini-project that will deliver the design of a web-based project management tool. This estimate will then be used to establish the schedule for delivery of their design products.
  2. The students must set quality targets for their work products. These targets will then form the basis for the quality plan.

Assumptions

1. System Size

The web-based project management system being developed is a typical information system consisting of a database, data input transactions and information retrieval transactions. It is therefore appropriate to size the system in terms of the amount of functionality being delivered to the client. Functionality is measured in function points. The amount of functionality may be estimated from the system specification. A rule of thumb is that each entity identified on the ER model provides 30 function points of functionality to the client.

2. Proportion of the Design Work Products to be completed

There are many design work products to be produced during the Design Phase of the System Development Life-Cycle. The students will be delivering only 5 of these design work products at a detailed level. They are the design work products for the following system functions that have been described in the Use Cases in the requirements document:

Planning Module

  1. Submit New Risk
  2. Risk Evaluation

Tracking Module

  1. Check Project Status
  2. Account for Resource Usage
  3. Evaluate Work Product against Quality Model

It is therefore assumed that completing these five work products will take 10% of the total effort for the design phase. The remaining design work products are to be completed by other members of the design team. One or more tasks should be included in the project plan for the completion of these remaining design work products.

Constraints

  1. Students must complete their design work products for the Planning Module of the web-based project management system by the end of Week 5.
  2. Students must complete their design work products for the Monitoring Module of the web-based project management system by the end of Week 7.

Previous Project Experience

The Excel spreadsheet, CS3710ExperienceBase.xls, contains data on eight projects completed in the last two years that are similar to the project that is being undertaken. The table will provide guidance for the estimation of duration and effort for the student’s mini-project.

Project Estimation Method

The project is concerned with completing the Design phase of the System Development Life-Cycle. Estimate the effort and duration of the Design Phase based on what you know about the system to be developed and previous project experience.

  1. Estimate the size of the web-based project management system in terms of function points.
  2. Review the previous project experience and select the productivity rate (in hours per function point) that you think can be achieved on this project.
  3. Using system size and productivity rate, estimate the total effort that is required to deliver the web-based project management system.
  4. Based on the previous project experience, estimate the proportion of the total effort that will be expended during the Design phase of the System Development Life-Cycle. Use this proportion to calculate the effort for the Design phase. This effort will consist of effort for management tasks and effort for design tasks.
  5. Based on the previous project experience, estimate the proportion of the total effort that will be expended on management tasks and design tasks during the Design phase of the System Development Life-Cycle.

Project Scheduling Method

Your design team consists of yourself, your partner and a number of other (fictitious) people. Your partner will be working with you to deliver some of the design work products referred to in Assumption 2, above. In your project plan, you must allocate the total effort for the design phase to yourself for management tasks and to the members of your design team for design tasks.

  1. Based on Assumption 2 above, allocate a proportion of the effort to be expended on all design tasks to yourself (and your partner). This effort allowance will be use to develop the design work products you must deliver in weeks 3 and 7. Allocate the remainder of the effort for design tasks to the other members of your design team.
  2. Allocate all the effort for management tasks during the design phase to yourself.
  3. Determine how much effort you will be able to devote to this project considering your other commitments (sleeping, eating, travelling, entertainment, family responsibilities, outside work, other university subjects, etc.).
  4. Determine your total load for both project management and design tasks and verify that you will be able to devote sufficient effort to complete these tasks. If your total load is greater than the effort that you are available to devote to this project, consult your tutor.
  5. Consider the effort that you are available to devote to this project and the times at which you can devote that effort and determine whether you will be able to deliver your design work products on schedule. If you believe you cannot meet the schedule, consult your tutor.

Quality Targets

The design work products that you deliver should meet or exceed predefined quality targets. The quality targets for your mini-project should be determined from previous project experience. There is usually a positive correlation between the effort expended and quality achieved. It is your job as project manager to establish what the balance should be between quality achieved and effort expended for your project. This balance is set through negotiation with your client (in this case, your tutor).

The table in the next section presents a set of quality measures for the eight recent projects that are in the Excel spreadsheet, CS3710ExperienceBase.xls. These quality measures are for design work products and are a subset of the measures discussed in the international standard, ISO/IEC 9126. You should first set your quality targets for your project and then consider how realistic they are by comparing the quality scores achieved for the design phase for the past projects and the design phase productivity rates for these projects.

Project Experience Base – Design Work Products Quality Measures

Project ID / Functional Adequacy / Completeness of Description / Adaptability of Data Structures
Proj01
Proj02
Proj03
Proj04
Proj05
Proj06
Proj07
Proj08

This table is yet to be completed.

COMP3710EstimationAndSchedulingMBerry2 August 2003