The fundamental objective of monitoring and controlling software development projects is to monitor all the development activities of the system being built.
It is one of the most important tasks in all product development, since an adequate control makes it possible to avoid deviations in costs and deadlines, or at least detect them as soon as possible.
how-to-achieve-more-efficiency-in-software-development-projectsIn order to properly monitor and control the project, it is necessary for the Project Manager to dedicate as much time as necessary to monitoring the status of each of the tasks being carried out, paying special interest to those that are experiencing some delay. When any deviation is detected, the causes must be analyzed in order to make the appropriate corrections and make up for lost time.
The Monitoring and Control Activities of a project are carried out from the assignment of the tasks until their internal acceptance by the project team, prior to the Client's acceptance.
This work deals with the control and monitoring of various software development projects and proposes a procedure of how to execute the activities achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in the results obtained.
Key words: control and monitoring, software development projects, deviations.
Introduction
One of the main objectives of the control and monitoring of software development projects is precisely to follow up on what is planned, taking appropriate measures when delays occur, costs above what is planned, or some agreed conditions that were based on in the decision to carry out this project.
This process can be divided into two main objectives, one is, the monitoring would be in charge of determining whether or not the project is under control; How do you determine if the project is under control? Verifying if the project milestones are being reached: on time, with the estimated resources, with a quality level and continues to be economically acceptable, as soon as deviations are observed, the project plan must be re-planned and renegotiated with the clients.
The other refers to project control, which is defined as any activity that ensures that the actual work is in accordance with the plan: compares what has been done with the goals and plans, reveals when and where deviations exist, and implements corrective actions; helping to carry out the plans.
In order to properly monitor and control the project, it is necessary for the Project Manager to dedicate as much time as necessary to monitoring the status of each of the tasks being carried out, paying special interest to those that are experiencing some delay. When any deviation is detected, the causes must be analyzed in order to make the appropriate corrections and make up for lost time.
Control stage functions:
Monitor deviations from the plan.
Take corrective action.
Receive and evaluate changes in the requested projects.
Change the project calendars.
Adapt resource levels.
Change the scope of the project.
Return to the planning stage to make adjustments.
goals
- Establish a minimum level of discipline in all development activities. Enrich communication between members of the development team and the rest of the organization. Properly feed back all implementation activities. Determine the current status of overall project progress.
Methodology and Case Study
The monitoring and control activities are present throughout the life cycle of a software project, since its main objective is the actions aimed at collecting and comparing information on the progress of the project, with the objective:
- Provide adequate visibility to all the people involved in the project about the rest of the activities that are being developed. Feed back the original planning.
There are several representations of project life cycles, in this case the one represented by “A guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge” (PMI, 2000) that raises the life cycle of a project in 5 phases will be used (Lynn Crawford 2004):
Initiation, identification or conception, Planning, Execution, Control and Closing
These phases overlap each other throughout the life cycle, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Graphic representation of each of the phases during the life cycle of the project.
The control will be present in all the aforementioned phases, that is, from the beginning of the project to the closure, and even after the project is completed, a series of activities continue that must be monitored and controlled to achieve successful compliance.
Project following
Project monitoring can be defined with the set of activities included in the process of measuring, collecting, recording, processing and analyzing data to generate and communicate the information required by the project administration and facilitate the adoption of decisions that contribute to maintaining or reorienting the driving it towards objectives considered in its design.
The monitoring process is characterized by:
- Being continuous, it is not interrupted, the entire process lasts and is carried out during the execution of a project. It is aimed at multiple aspects of the project such as: objectives, inputs, activities, stakeholder participation, beneficiaries, products, results, etc.
It must be accurate and effective.
You must specify the method used to collect the corresponding data and information.
It is carried out by all those who have an interest in the execution of the projects or their results, the project management team or offices, by the clients, the management of the organization, etc.
In the monitoring process it is very important to constantly update the actual values, which are only the details of the project. Actual values are an important element in project monitoring, as they allow us to compare the differences between what is planned and the reality of the indicators, supporting decision-making and corrective actions when necessary.
Among the fundamental aspects detected through monitoring are:
Progress of projects according to planned dates.
Significant identification of time, costs and quality.
Comparative results once the corrective measures or actions have been applied. Follow-up procedure
Figure 2 Procedure for executing the monitoring of software development projects.
P1 Define the objectives of the monitoring: in this first step, it is determined which aspects are specifically interested in registering.
Figure 3 Activity Define monitoring objectives
P2 Identify monitoring agents: in this activity those responsible for monitoring are identified, described and prioritized, inside and outside the project.
Figure 4 Identify Tracking Agents Activity
P3 Follow-up of tasks: Follow-up is carried out by reviewing the status of each task with the team member assigned to carry it out and verifying its status with those responsible for said work units.
Figure 5 Task Tracking Activity
P4 Manage Incidents: This activity consists of recording the incident, assessing its impact and proposing a solution.
Figure 6 Activity Manage Incidents
P5 Plan the budget for monitoring: the budget is planned and distributed among the different levels of monitoring, in some cases this budget is high due to the critical characteristics of some projects.
Figure 7 Activity Planning the budget for monitoring
P6 Prepare the follow-up products: the process exit documents are prepared, read follow-up reports with the progress of the project, work plans, recommendations, corrective actions, etc.
Figure 8 Making the monitoring products activity
Project control
The need to make a permanent review of the execution of the programmed activities of the project leads to define a control system that makes it possible to measure the physical progress and the use of human, material and financial resources, as well as the relationship between time and cost..
Control is defined as the process of comparing the actual realization of the project with the planned one, analyzing the variations existing between the two, evaluating the possible alternatives, and taking the appropriate corrective actions or measures as needed.
The control covers:
Changes to scope
Changes to the budget
Compliance with quality standards
Changes to the program
Resources consumed Job performance
Procedure to carry out control
Figure 9 Procedure to perform control
P1 Define the control points: these are the moments when it is decided to carry out the control (at the end of a relevant phase of the project, at the end of a key activity, etc.)
Figure 10 Define control points activity
P2 Control tasks: in this activity the comparison is made between the results obtained from the follow-up and those foreseen with the plan, the differences are calculated and the analysis of the possible causes of these differences is carried out, especially if they are significant.
Figure 11 Activity Control tasks
P3 Propose corrective actions: corrective actions are proposed to correct or compensate the detected problems, the original plans are revised if necessary.
Figure 12 Activity Propose corrective actions
P4 Control changes: requests and registration of changes will be made, evaluated by the project team and information will be given to all of the changes made.
Figure 13 Control changes activity
Results
The project that is being used as a sample in this work is a national computerization project, it is a management web application, developed in PHP. The project is in the business modeling phase and requirements gathering, since it is necessary to determine how the behavior of the time indicators is carried out in each development phase.
For this project, three levels of checks have been defined, a low or internal level for the project where the leader follows and controls the defined schedules, a mid-level check where the status of progress of program projects is reported to the IT Department. of the client and a high or external check-up, where the status of the projects is reported to the Heads of First Level of the interested entities.
Tracing
Define the monitoring objectives:
1.Inform the progress of the processes, definition of the scope, business modeling and requirements gathering with respect to the defined schedule.
Identify monitoring agents:
| Internal low level | Medium level | High level |
| Subsystem heads | Program Management
Nationals |
Client |
| Software Leader | Vice-Rectory for Production | Rector |
| Management heads | General Directorate of
Production |
Vice-Rectory for Production |
| Center Heads | Center Heads | Program Management
Nationals |
| Program Management
Nationals |
Customer IT Manager | General Directorate of
Production |
| Customer Computing | Other interested | Center Heads |
| Planning Group and
Control of the Productive Infrastructure |
Customer IT Manager | |
| Deans | ||
| Other interested | Software leaders | |
| Other interested |
Table 1 Definition of monitoring agents Monitoring of tasks:
The system contains a whole in this version of 15 subsystems.
| Deliverable | Plan | Real |
| Definition of the scope of subsystems | 3 months | 3 months 20 days |
| Business Modeling | 5 months | 3 months 20 days |
| Requirements Survey | 5 months | 3 months 20 days |
Table 2 Deliverable status Manage Incidents:
The main incidents detected in these processes are the non-attendance of functional specialists at the scope definition meetings, misunderstanding between functional and computer scientists, indefiniteness of the functional review times for the approval of the scopes, also happens with the modeling of the business and requirements gathering.
Plan the budget for monitoring:
This activity is not carried out since national developments are carried out free of charge.
Make the follow-up products:
In this activity for each level different status reports are developed.
| Levels | Status reports | Description |
| Low level | Project progress status report | This report is prepared by a joint development team and subsystem leaders, which reflects the current status of each subsystem, times and incidents. |
| Medium level | Program progress status report | This report is prepared by the National Programs Directorate in conjunction with software leaders and center managers, where the status of each of the client's projects is reflected in a single document, in addition to other general issues. |
| High level | High level program progress status report | It is the same mid-level report, a little more refined where all internal project issues are eliminated and only the progress of the project is reported in the face of the client and the measures taken in case of deviations. |
Table 3 Status reports for each level of control check
Define control points:
| Levels | Recurrence |
| Low level | weekly |
| Medium level | biweekly |
| High level | monthly |
Table 4 Control points according to the checking levels
| Phases | Observation |
| Startup phase | At the end of the start-up phase and finished the business modeling and requirements gathering. |
| Elaboration Phase | At the end of the elaboration phase and finished the analysis and design and description of the architecture baseline. |
| Construction phase | Upon completion of the Construction phase and completion of implementation and testing. |
| Transition phase | At the end of the Transition phase and finished the approval of the product and acceptance of the release of |
| the computer application. |
Table 5 Control points according to project phases Control the tasks:
| Deliverable | Plan | Real | Differences | |
| Defining the Scope of Subsystems | ces | 3 months | 3 months 20 days | 20 days overdue |
| Business Modeling | of the | 5 months | 3 months 20 days | 1 month 4 days without
run |
| Survey Requirements | of | 5 months | 3 months 20 days | 1 month 4 days without
run |
Table 6 Comparison between planned and actual time.
In the definition of the scope, there was a delay of 20 days due to loss of encounters for their definitions, in addition to the indefiniteness of the review times by the functional ones.
The rest of the activities under analysis are still in progress, with 1 month and 4 days to complete.
Propose corrective actions:
| Causes | Corrective actions |
| Non-attendance at scoping meetings. | Re-planning of meetings |
| Indefinitions of the scope revision times by the functional ones. | Appointment of client IT staff by departments to monitor activity and check status weekly. |
| Misunderstanding between functional and developers. | Defining a well detailed and described analysis process, conducting integration and understanding workshops, establishing spreadsheets for each document, signing the business and requirements. |
Table 7 Detected causes and corrective actions
Some of the actions defined in the previous table require re-planning since they are activities that cannot be recovered, so it is imperative to update the development plans and schedules already defined and report the changes to those interested.
Control changes:
Control is a very important process in project management, as it supports decisions regarding changes that arise and are requested by customers, to maintain control over versions. Due to the complexity of this process, it will not be discussed in this article, but it is valid to take it into account due to its importance.
Conclusions
- The main objective of the monitoring process is to track the activities that have been planned and to record the behavior of costs, time and quality. The control process is based on records of the behavior of the indicators defined in the Monitoring and comparing the results, detecting deviations and taking corrective actions. There are activities and time that can be recovered, but not others. In many cases, incidents impact against the original plans and must be updated. Monitoring of indicators must be an efficient process and effective and continuous.
References
- Life cycle of a project - Monografias.com. Available at: http://www.monografias.com/trabajos4/cicdevida/cicdevida.shtml. Cecilia GProyectos brochure.pdf. Available at: file: /// D: /Maestr%C3%ADa/Folleto%20de%20GProyectos%20de%20Cecilia.pdf. Lynn Crawford, 2004. Global Body of Project Management knowledge and standards. http://www.projectperformance.com.au/downloads/crawford_l_2004a.pdf. Available at:
