Software Quality

Appendix C: Project Progress Control

C.1 Introduction

Months of project delay and budget overruns exceeding 10 and sometimes up to 30 and more percent over project estimations, typical of too many software development projects, are “red flags” for software project management. Unfortunately, these events are usually coupled with the low quality of software projects – a natural reaction of the developers to schedule and budget issues. This chapter is dedicated to methods and procedures that ensure timely performance in a software project, verifying schedule and budget keeping.

These events, which are mainly failures of management itself, are caused by situations such as:

• Overly or even blindly optimistic scheduling and budgeting
• Unprofessional software risk management presented in tardy or inappropriate reactions to software risks.
• Belated identification of schedule and budget difficulties and/or underestimation of their extent.

Situations of the first type can be prevented by performing contract reviews and preparing quality and project planning tools. Project progress control is expected to prevent situations of the second and third types.

While design reviews, inspections, and software tests focus on a project's quality and technical functional aspects, project progress control deals mainly with the managerial aspects, namely, scheduling, human and other resource management, and budget and risk management.

The aim of software project progress control is defined in Frame ...