Workshop: Software Project Management

Duration: Four Days

Description: Software project managers are expected to develop increasingly complex software in less time and with fewer resources than ever before. This workshop introduces project management techniques tailored to software projects and discusses modern approaches, methodologies, and standards guiding successful efforts. Participants practice using proven techniques for evaluating initial development costs and schedules, defining testing and prototype activities, determining risk management approaches and managing the full software life cycle from proposal through retirement.

Audience: Project managers of projects that include computer software development, software functional managers and technical consultants who have project management duties, and project engineers or programmer/analysts working as team members.

Workshop Topics:

1. Software Project Management Framework

1. What is a project?
2. What is project management?
3. What makes software projects unique?
4. Project and product life cycles
5. Organizational styles (functional, matrix, projectized)
6. Software development standards

2. Initiating A Software Project

1. Executive sponsor role
2. Project manager role
3. Software project team roles and responsibilities
4. Defining the business problem
5. Scoping the software solution
6. Establishing the triple constraint trade-off
7. Creating a software project charter

3. Determining Software Requirements

1. Software requirements --- the prerequisite to planning
2. Levels of software requirements
3. Using appropriate requirements gathering tools
4. Requirements traceability matrix
5. Managing requirements

4. Planning a Software Project

1. “Build or Buy” decision
2. Contracting and software acquisition
3. Order of magnitude estimating techniques for software projects
4. Selecting the right software development life cycle (SDLC) model
5. Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
6. Estimating the resource needs
7. Initial cost estimates

5. Scheduling a Software Project

1. Estimating software project tasks
2. Assigning resources
3. Developing an initial schedule using CPM
4. “Murphy’s Law” – risk assessment and mitigation planning
5. Management and risk reserves
6. Setting the baseline schedule
7. Creating a Software Development Plan

6. Managing The Software Project Progress

1. Scope change management and issue resolution
2. Configuration management planning
3. Quality assurance and test planning
4. Peer reviews and software inspections
5. Measuring and monitoring the project progress
6. Advantages and disadvantages of “Agile” methods

7. Completing The Software Project

1. Closing the project
2. Closing out contracts
3. Ensuring smooth hand-off to support/maintenance
4. Collecting the lessons learned
5. Software project portfolio and prioritizing projects