Overview
This activity covers overseeing and tracking the project’s progress. This effort includes formal and informal progress reviews, measuring planned versus actual status, risk mitigation and tracking, and evaluating software project metrics.
Roles and Responsibilities
The project software manager is responsible for monitoring the software project’s performance, and updating the software project plans accordingly.
Controls
The Project Plan which contains the project’s schedule and imposes constraints (e.g., budgetary, schedule, organizational) upon the software project.
Inputs
Software project plans (i.e., Software Development Plan (SDP), Software Test Plan (STP), Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP), Software Project Training Plan) (see Appendix E for Data Item Descriptions (DID)) to be updated.
Software metric reports which indicate the status of the software project to date.
Procedures
The following activities are performed throughout the project’s life. No order is implied for 1.2.1.1 Perform Risk Management, 1.2.1.2 Conduct Progress Reviews, and 1.2.1.3 Analyze Software Project Metrics. Activity 1.2.1.4 Maintain Software Project Plans is done based upon the results of the activities 1.2.1.1, 1.2.1.2, and 1.2.1.3.
1) 1.2.1.1 Perform Risk Management. In this activity, identified risks are documented, analyzed, mitigated, tracked, and closed. For a detailed discussion of risk management see [SEI, 1996] .
2) 1.2.1.2 Conduct Progress Reviews. In this activity, software project reviews are held. These reviews may be formal or informal depending on the project’s size. Formal reviews are necessary for large projects or projects having one or more contractors. These progress reviews provide the project software manager with insight into the software project’s current state.
3) 1.2.1.3 Analyze Software Project Metrics. In this activity, cost data and software metric reports are reviewed and analyzed. Actual performance results are evaluated against planned progress as documented in the project software schedule in the SDP.
4) 1.2.1.4 Maintain Software Project Plans. In this activity, the software project plans are updated based upon actual software project results, changes to the Project Plan, and risk mitigation activities. The plans are modified in accordance with the project’s SCMP.
Outputs
Updated software project plans which are placed under configuration control.