4PCDT: A Quantifiable Parameter-based Framework for Academic Software Project Management

Abstract

Many authorities like Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-Dev) lend a hand to software development organizations in management of their crucial projects. Though this area needs focused research, such models are not dedicatedly available for the academic projects developed by students of computer science and engineering where software project development is considered as one of the criteria for the award of degree to the future professionals of the IT industry. With this motivation, we explored 4PTRB, 3PR and software project management practices, approaches as well processes framed and provided by PMBOK and CMMI-Dev. The main aim of this research is to introduce and propose a software project management framework for the academic domain. The proposed framework contains identification and description of 7 and 26 quantifiable parameters and sub-parameters respectively. The framework is called 4PCDT for People, Process, Product, Project, Complexity, Duration and Technology for the academic software projects. To validate the proposed framework, an online survey of 113 faculties was conducted to rank and weigh the quantifiable parameters. The results show that People, Process and Technology management parameters are top 3 ranked parameters. The robustness of the approach is further evident from the results of experimentation on 18 actual academic software projects of final year post graduate students of the IT domain. Not only the proposed work is first of its kind, but also it is bound to generate an excellent ripple effect in the research community.