Software Project Management -1 : Introduction

Project Management and Software Project Management

The project is a project of a team to find a solution to a problem or to seize an emerging opportunity, using a set of resources, within a limited time and limited financing, on the condition of managing possible risks while considering customer satisfaction and quality, with goals and objectives in accordance with a defined scope. It is the process of initiating, executing, controlling and concluding an original plan. Project management, on the other hand, is the discipline of planning, organizing, procuring and managing resources so that a particular project can achieve its goals and objectives and be completed.

Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK), prepared by IEEE, defines software engineering management as “Management of activities such as planning, coordination, measurement, monitoring, control and reporting in order to ensure that software products and software engineering services are presented effectively, efficiently and in a way that will benefit the stakeholders. defines as ”. Project Management Institute PMI, on the other hand, has gathered the software project management activities under the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) and its software appendix (SWX to PMBOK®) under seven main headings, regardless of the methodology applied:

• Initialization and Scope Definition,
• Software Project Planning,
• Software Project Implementation,
• Review and Evaluation,
• Closing,
• Software Engineering Measurement,
• Software Engineering Management Tools

Software projects are specialized projects and while they carry the basic features of project management, they require special management techniques due to their content. There are important differences that distinguish software projects from other projects. While the final product created in other engineering fields has a physical existence, the product that emerges in software projects is intangible as it is a manifestation of intellectual processes. Since this intangibility both hinders the traceability of the project management processes and makes it difficult for the customer to explain exactly what he wants, it negatively affects the correct definition of the requirements that should be defined at the beginning of the project and increases the uncertainty of the project. Since there are more uncertainties than general project management, it is more difficult to calculate the labor and cost to be spent in software projects and the probability of failure is higher. Since the projects carried out in other engineering fields do not differ much according to time and space, experience in project management is gained and these experiences are used in new projects. In software projects, the rapid development of information technologies and changes in customer needs can cause changes even within the current project and almost invalidate the experience gained in previous projects. For these reasons, the success rates in software projects are low. The criteria that determine whether projects are successful are the time-resource-scope elements, also known as the project management triangle. According to the CHAOS reports published by Standish Group International on the success rates of software projects every year since 1994, the success rates in software projects are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. 1995-2020 CHAOS Reports Success Rates

Successful projects specified in CHAOS reports are projects that reach the target within the planned time, without exceeding the planned budget, and create a satisfactory result. Problematic projects are projects that have been completed but have gone beyond the planned in terms of time and budget, or have not reached their goals in terms of requirements and functions. Unsuccessful projects are those that have been canceled or not completed. Another issue that should be emphasized in CHAOS reports is the factors affecting the success of the project. The factors determined for 2015 and their impact scores on project success are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. CHAOS Success Factors

Almost all of the factors mentioned in Table 2 are directly related to project management and applied methodology. The low success rates encountered in software projects and the correlation of success factors with the methodology emphasize the importance to be given to the methodology applied.

In this article, we touched on what project management is and the place of project management in software. Software projects are specialized projects. Although there are basic features related to project management when managing projects in the software field, special management techniques are also required due to their content. In addition, we took a look at the factors affecting success in software project management and the change in success rates over the years according to the reports prepared.