BE (CS)

Fall 2022 Semester

CS-435: Software Project Management

Lectures 7 & 8
Project Scheduling
Bar charts and Activity networks

Dr Syed Zaffar Qasim

Assistant Professor (CIS)
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Software Project Scheduling

An activity that allocates the time and effort to specific

software engineering tasks
 Why is it important?
1. Many tasks in a software engineering project occur
in parallel, and the work performed during one task
may have a profound effect on the work in another
task.
o These interdependencies are very difficult to
understand without a schedule.
2.Different projects may use different design
methods and implementation languages.

SPM (CS-435) 1
 Software Project Scheduling
 What are the steps?
a)Effort and duration are allocated to each task and
b)interdependencies between the different tasks are
identified.
c)a task (or activity) network and barchart is created
that enables the software team to meet the delivery
deadline.
 The schedule evolves over time.

Principles guidelines for Software Project Scheduling

1. Compartmentalization into a number of manageable

tasks.
o Both the product and the process are decomposed.
2. Interdependency: Some tasks must occur in sequence
while others can occur in parallel.
3. Time allocation
o Each task must be assigned a start date and a
completion date.
o Each task to be scheduled must be allocated some
number of work units (e.g., person-days of effort).
o Set a maximum amount of time for an activity from
1 to 8 weeks.
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 Principles guidelines for Software Project Scheduling
4. Effort validation
o Every project has a defined number of staff
members.
o As time allocation occurs, the project manager must
ensure that no more than the allocated number of
people have been scheduled at any given time.
o e.g., consider a project that has three assigned staff
members (e.g., 3 person-days are available per day
of assigned effort).
o On a given day, seven concurrent tasks must be
accomplished.
o Each task requires 0.50 person days of effort.
o More effort has been allocated than there are
people to do the work. 5

Principles guidelines for Software Project Scheduling

5. Defined responsibilities: Every task should be

assigned to a specific team member.
6. Defined outcomes: Every task should have a
defined outcome or work product.
o Work products are often combined in
deliverables.
7. Defined milestones: A milestone is accomplished
when work products have been reviewed and
approved for quality.

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 The project scheduling process
 During early stages of project planning, a macroscopic
schedule is developed.
o It identifies all major software engineering
activities.
 As the project gets under way, each entry on the
macroscopic schedule is refined into a detailed
schedule.
o It involves identifying specific activities and judging
the time required to complete these activities.

Fig 1: The project scheduling process 7

Project Scheduling
 Estimation of the resources required
o Human effort required.
o Hardware and software requirement,
o Time required on specialized hardware such as a simulator,
o the travel budget required for project staff.
 A good rule of thumb
1. Estimate as if nothing will go wrong.
2. Then increase your estimate to cover anticipated
problems.
3. A further contingency factor to cover unanticipated
problems may also be added to estimate. It depends on
o project type,
o the process parameters (deadline, standards, etc.) and
o the quality and experience of software engineers
working on the project. 8

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 Bar charts and Activity networks

 Graphical notations used to illustrate the project

schedule.
 Activity networks show the dependencies between the
different activities making up a project.
 Bar charts show
o who is responsible for each activity and
o when the activity is scheduled to begin and end.
 Bar charts and activity charts can be generated
automatically from a database of project information
using a project management tool (Microsoft Project).

Bar charts and activity networks

 To illustrate how these charts are used, consider a
hypothetical set of activities as shown in table below.
 This table shows activities, their duration, and activity
interdependencies.

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 Bar charts and activity networks
 We can see that Activity T3 is dependent on Activity T1.
 This means that T1 must be completed before T3 starts.
 For example, T1 might be the preparation of a component design
and T3, the implementation of that design.
 Before implementation starts, the design should be complete.

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Bar charts and activity networks

 Given the dependencies and estimated duration of activities, an
activity chart that shows activity sequences may be generated
(Fig below).

 This shows which activities can be carried out in parallel and

which must be executed in sequence because of a dependency on
an earlier activity. 12

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 Bar charts and activity networks
 Activities are represented as rectangles; milestones and project
deliverables are shown with rounded corners.
 Dates in this diagram show the start date of the activity and are
written in British style, where the day precedes the month.

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