Planning and management of software development project
Software development means not only writing of the program code but also big
organizational work. The key figure here is the product manager. Such a specialist
who manages one or several projects at the same time always has trouble with
defining of the time left for completion of a certain project phase or the project
on the whole. There are also problems with preparation of the reporting
documents on the project work.
As now time for the product release are defined quite strictly, the product
manager must constantly remain updated on the project course and control the
development process in order to take the necessary measures for acceleration
of the work in case of lagging behind the schedule. Every lost sales day is
lost money. A competent planning of the development process will spare you these
losses.
To make a project manager's task easier, various software is used for planning
and control. For work with a software development project, I use ConceptDraw Project
and I would like to share my experience of work with it.
For defining of the time needed for work with the project and its budget we
need to define:
1. The list of the tasks being completed in the project and the sequence of
their completion.
2. The list of resources necessary for completion of the project, their work
schedule and their cost.
Having this data, we can design a big project in ConceptDraw Project
in just a couple of hours, even with no professional knowledge.
Let us start with point two.
We enter the list of necessary resources to the resource catalog, we then define
the resource type (a worker or a material) and the cost of his work for the
chosen time period (hour, day, week, month), or, in case the resource is material
we just enter its cost.

Having the resource list, we can shift to the list of tasks.
For defining the list of tasks and their sequence, a Gantt chart is used. In
its table part various data on the tasks is entered such as the start and the
end date of a task, its duration and the percent complete. All the changes made
are immediately displayed in the graphic part on the left in the form of so-called
timelines. It is better to split your project into phases, which stand out by
their colour and form in the right part of the chart. The task that finishes
a project phase, the so-called , also stands out graphically (yellow
diamond). For creating the sequence of completion, we interconnect the tasks.
We can even define the link type. I, as a rule, use the link type ,
which means that the following task will start not earlier than the previous
one has ended. Now that the project has been designed, the process of its completion
can be controlled by filling out the field Complete of the tasks. The
progress of completion is shown in green.
You can assign resources to each task, which are also displayed in the graphic
part of the Gantt chart.

Besides, there is a possibility to specify that the resource has not been fully
loaded or is involved in some other project. Moreover, this project can be described
right here, in this very document! Generally, all projects in which certain
people are involved can be compiled into one document. You can work with the
document having before your eyes the list of all the tasks where one or another
project is involved. This is very convenient if the staff is limited and the
work on several projects is being held at the same time.
All this is quite simple. Having a ready project you can at any time create
a report with very different parameters. For instance, you can create a report
on who and in which task is involved at the moment, or on which tasks have been
completed for the moment.

I am constantly using this program and am very satisfied. It saves me loads
of time and energy; it is very easy to learn and allows me to professionally
use the obtained documents that report on the project completion course.
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