Software Project Management

Fifth Edition

Chapter 9

Monitoring
and
control

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 1

 Monitoring

Once work schedules have been published & project is

started ,attention must be focused on progress.
Requires monitoring of what is happening.
Comparison of actual achievement against the schedule.
Where necessary , revision of plans & schedules is made
to bring the project back on target.

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 2

 Creating the Framework
Monitoring requires comparison between planned
outcomes & actual ones.
If mismatch occurs then re-planning is required.
Shortfalls:
Delay in meeting target dates
Shortfalls in quality
Inadequate functionality
Costs going over target

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 3

The Project control cycle

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 4

1.Responsibilities

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 5

 2.Assessing progress
3.Checkpoints – predetermined times
when progress is checked
Event driven: check takes place when a
particular event has been achieved
Time driven: date of the check is pre-
determined

4.Frequency of reporting
The higher the management level then generally the longer the gaps
between checkpoints

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 6

 Reporting

Oral formal regular– meetings

Oral formal ad-hoc
Written formal regular – job sheet, DPR
Written formal ad-hoc- change reports
Oral formal ad-hoc: general discussion

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 7

 Collecting progress details

Need to collect data about:

Achievements
Costs
A big problem: how to deal with partial completions
99% completion syndrome
Possible solutions:
Control of products, not activities
Subdivide into lots of sub-activities

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 8

 Red/Amber/Green reporting

Identify key tasks (first-level)

Break down into sub-tasks(second-level)
Assess subtasks as:
Green – ‘on target’
Amber – ‘not on target but recoverable’
Red – ‘not on target and recoverable only with
difficulty’
Review all sec-level assessments to arrive at first-
level assessments
Review both to produce overall assessments.
“Status of ‘critical’ tasks is particularly important”
SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 9
 Visualizing Progress

The Gantt Charts

The Slip Chart
The Timeline

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 10

 Gantt charts

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 11

 Slip charts

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 12

 The
timeline

SPM (5e) monitoring and control© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009 13