Software project planning basics

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We use cookies to ensure you have the best browsing experience on our website. The staffing plan describes the number of individuals required for a project. It includes selecting and assigning tasks to the project management team members.

It provides information about appropriate skills required to perform the tasks to produce the project deliverables and manage the project. In addition, it provides information of resources such as tools, equipment, and processes used by the project management team.

Staff planning is performed by a staff planner, who is responsible for determining the individuals available for the project. Other responsibilities of a staff planner are listed below. The staff planner determines individuals, who can be from existing staff, staff on contract, or newly employed staff.

It is important for the staff planner to know the structure of the organization to determine the availability of staff. The staff planner determines the skills required to execute the tasks mentioned in the project schedule and task plan. In case staff with required skills is not available, staff planner informs the project manager about the requirements. The staff planner ensures that the required staff with required skills is available at the right time. For this purpose, the staff planner plans the availability of staff after the project schedule is fixed.

For example, at the initial stage of a project, staff may consist of a project manager and a few software engineers whereas during software development, staff consists of software designers as well as the software developers. The staff planner defines roles and responsibilities of the project management team members so that they can communicate and coordinate with each other according to the tasks assigned to them.

Note that the project management team can be further broken down into sub-teams depending on the size and complexity of the project. The staffing plan comprises the following sections. General information: Provides information such as name of the project and project manager who is responsible for the project. In addition, it specifies the start and end dates of the project.

Skills assessment: Provides information, which is required for assessment of skills. This information includes the knowledge, skill, and ability of team members who are required to achieve the objectives of the project. In addition, it specifies the number of team members required for the project. Staffing profile: Describes the profile of the staff required for the project. The profile includes calendar time, individuals involved, and level of commitment. Calendar time specifies the period of time such as month or quarter for which individuals are required to complete the project.

Individuals who are involved in the project have specific designations such as project manager and the developer. Level of commitment is the utilization rate of individuals such as work performed on full-time and part-time basis.

Organization chart: Describes the organization of project management team members. In addition, it includes information such as name, designation, and role of each team member.

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What are the three steps for planning and creating Visual Basic project? About Dinesh Thakur. Approves the project, employ personnel, and provides resources required for the project.

Reviews project plan to ensure that it accomplishes the business objectives. Resolves conflicts among the team members.

Considers risks that may affect the project so that appropriate measures can be taken to avoid them. Reviews the project plan and implements procedures for completing the project.

Manages all project activities. Deliverables are the reason why the projects are created. It is one of the most critical steps of the project planning to determine what these deliverables will be and how they will be delivered in time. The project schedule outlines when different tasks of a project are supposed to begin and end. The project schedule helps measure the project progress and set up progress reports. Identifying risks and considering how to deal with them is an essential step in project planning.

Specific steps to prevent risks from happening or limiting their impact should be considered. There must be a communication plan to update the stakeholders regarding the project progress. This can be done monthly, weekly, or daily so that all involved members can monitor the progress. Ishan Gaba is a Research Analyst at Simplilearn. Graduated in Information Technology, Ishan is also passionate about writing and traveling. Previous Next. This makes project to contain limited and quantifiable tasks, which can easily be documented and in turn avoids cost and time overrun.

For an effective management accurate estimation of various measures is a must. With correct estimation managers can manage and control the project more efficiently and effectively. Lines of code depend upon coding practices and Function points vary according to the user or software requirement.

The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-hour required to produce the software. For effort estimation software size should be known. Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the software can be estimated.

Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the requirement specifications and interdependency of various components of software. The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day basis or in calendar months. The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time invested to complete the project. This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on more elements than any of the previous ones.

For estimating project cost, it is required to consider -. We discussed various parameters involving project estimation such as size, effort, time and cost.

This technique uses empirically derived formulae to make estimation. This model is made by Lawrence H. Putnam model maps time and efforts required with software size. It divides the software product into three categories of software: organic, semi-detached and embedded. Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be done with specified order and within time slot allotted to each activity.

Project managers tend to define various tasks, and project milestones and arrange them keeping various factors in mind.

They look for tasks lie in critical path in the schedule, which are necessary to complete in specific manner because of task interdependency and strictly within the time allocated. Arrangement of tasks which lies out of critical path are less likely to impact over all schedule of the project.

For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -. All elements used to develop a software product may be assumed as resource for that project. This may include human resource, productive tools and software libraries.

The resources are available in limited quantity and stay in the organization as a pool of assets. The shortage of resources hampers the development of project and it can lag behind the schedule.