Software Project Management Practices Research Articles

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

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.

A Comprehensive Software Project Management Framework

Project management is vital for software project success. Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV), and other software project management models and practices established to assist software organizations, each of these models offers diverse focal points. Combined effective software project management practices remain a challenge to software organizations. In striving to raise the likelihood of software project success, this paper introduces a framework for software project management effectiveness which integrated a set of software project management practices based on the PMBOK guide processes, CMMI-DEV processes, and management areas that influence a software project. The proposed framework called 4PTRB which includes people, process, product, project, technology, risk, and business management areas. The 4PTRB software project management framework provides a whole comprehensive view to help software project managers to improve their project management effectiveness. The framework is validated by conducting a web-based survey of software professional practitioners around the world. A statistical analysis of twenty software projects has been conducted as a case study thereafter, spanning small to large development projects. The consistency of the case study and survey results shows the power of the 4PTRB framework as an inclusive software project management framework.

A Risk-Based, Practice-Centered Approach to Project Management for HPCMP CREATE

The Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program is developing and deploying multiphysics high-performance computing software applications for engineers to design and make accurate performance predictions for military aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, and radio frequency antennas. When CREATE started (2007), no commonly recognized set of successful software project management practices existed for developing multiphysics, HPC engineering software. Based on lessons learned from the HPC and computational engineering communities, CREATE leadership developed and implemented a risk-based, practice-centered strategy to organize and manage the highly distributed program. This approach led to a good balance between ensuring a sufficiently structured workflow and accountability and providing the flexibility and agility necessary to create new sets of engineering tools with the capabilities needed to design next-generation weapon systems.

Results of agile project management implementation in software engineering companies

Agile project management methodologies, tools and techniques have been becoming more and more popular among Russian and foreign software companies. Though the agile software project management methodologies appear to be more flexible and sound alternative to traditional project management approaches, the practice of agile project management implementation needs more research. The article presents the research on the practical results of agile project management implementation in Russian software engineering companies. The survey-based study covers 8 companies and 35 their projects managed with the help of agile methodologies. In contrast to some optimistic researchers of agile practices, the research findings show that in the investigated projects agile project management led to the deterioration of cost and schedule performance. However, the quality, both perceived by clients and assessed by internal technical analysts, improved after the implementation of agile software project management practices.

English

Recently, relevant changes have made organizational boundaries more fluid and dynamic in response to the rapid pace of knowledge diffusion and innovation and international competition. This helps to reconsider how to succeed with informaiton technology (IT). The IT has moved beyond the implementation of IT applications to an age of IT-enabled change. The trend towards increasing use of IT continues and the challenge remains how to better manage IT projects in order to maximise their economic benefits. This paper presents a diagnostic use in traditional and agile software project management practices in Brazil. To be able to assess the use of such methodologies in the light of experience, multiple case studies were conducted in three Brazilian organizations, who claimed to manage their software projects adopting practices of both approaches. At the end of the survey, it was found that the project management software in Brazil is done by combining traditional and agile practices. The results were satisfactory, validating the present proposal.

Application of Data Mining Techniques for Software Reuse Process

Nowadays’ most of the software products are developed by using existing versions or features in order to reduce the delivery time of software product, to improve the productivity and quality and to reduce the development effort. Software reuse has been a solution factor to acquire the existing knowledge from software repository. To extract existing knowledge from software repository data mining can be used. Data mining is the process of extracting useful patterns and analyzing enormous data sets from large data. This paper gives the description of software reuse process, knowledge discovery process and software metrics for object oriented programming language are identified. Software metrics are used as quantitative measure to determine, assess, evaluating the software components. Mapping is done, for different data mining techniques which can be used for software reusability process using different software metrics. We have prepared 167 instances data sets from open source projects. Data mining techniques is used for evaluating the software components. There is gap between the need of useful data from software repository to software project management practices. To bridge this gap we are applying data mining techniques efficiently and effectively to extract useful knowledge from software repository using different software metrics. Finally, this knowledge can be used by project managers for better management of the software projects.

Expanding the concept of requirements traceability

PurposeDespite its tremendous success and achievements, the information science (IS) industry has been plagued by shadows of failure and inefficiency since its early days. This paper takes the stance that poor communication with target organizations and users is one of the major causes of these problems. If this communication is not properly recorded and managed, many of the agreed decisions may never be assumed by target organizations, therefore leaving project managers entirely responsible for failures or deviation from initial requirements. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Software (SW) development companies have very weak provision for Electronic Records Management (ERM). This is evident from the persistent use of ISO 9001 and ISO 90003 in their Quality Assurance (QA) and the consistent neglecting of the ISO 15489 standard for records management. This paper aims to examine this issueDesign/methodology/approachSince there are no studies in this area, this research employed an inductive qualitative research approach that consisted of a combination of critical literature review, an exploratory case study and thematic analysis.FindingsThis paper reports on the study of an SW company that implemented ERM policies and an in‐house system that not only supports the recording of documentation and evidence for every phase of the development, but also the very difficult processes of organizational learning.Practical implicationsThis paper is of interest to both IS academics and practitioners, namely those interested in QA and ERM.Originality/valueThere is very little research in this area that can inform both academics and practitioners on how to use ERM within SW project management practices. This paper aims at providing early insights into ways of addressing this gap and at generating discussion in this area.

Capability Maturity Model and SAP

AcceleratedSAP is a methodology developed for cost-effective SAP R/3 installation. Numerous project managers have adopted AcceleratedSAP for SAP implementation in a range of industries around the world. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is, similarly, a software model that improves software processes in software organizations so that software projects run successfully and deliver quality products. AcceleratedSAP and CMM were developed independently with completely different objectives but share two important characteristics: good engineering and good management practices. Given the high failure rates in software projects, organizations have adopted well-established software models, such as AcceleratedSAP and CMM. This paper describes how AcceleratedSAP and CMM can be aligned in terms of software project management practices. By combining their unique features, ERP managers can easily adopt CMM for ERP installations so that the advantages that can be realized through CMM KPAs (Key Process Areas), and can be exploited for business process re-engineering.

Software Project Management: The Manager's View

As businesses become more dependent on information technology for their operations, IS managers are under increasing pressure to deliver quality applications software on time and within budget. Thus, in addition to their technical skills, they must master the necessary management skills to lead and control software development projects. The purpose of this tutorial is to present the fundamental concepts of modern project management and show how these concepts can be applied to software development projects. The tutorial presents a broad overview of current software project management practices that evolved over the years from a variety of complex projects. The subject is presented from the manager's rather than from the developer's perspective. The focus is on large and complex projects because these projects are the most challenging and in need of an effective project management discipline.