Assessment of Project Management Practices in Pakistan Software Industry Basharat Jehan1, Kamran Ghani2, Muhammad Shafi1 1
Department of Computer Software Engineering, University of Engineering & Technology Peshawar, Pakistan
[email protected] ,
[email protected] 2 Department of CS & IT, University of Engineering & Technology Peshawar, Pakistan
[email protected]
Abstract— Software project management is the utilization of resources in efficient manner to complete a project within time and budget. It is like a corner stone in every successful project. Sound software project management techniques are very important for the development of software projects both for organizations that develop outsourced projects and in-house projects. The data was collected through interviews and questionnaire. Most of the respondents were project managers having postgraduate degrees. From analysis it is concluded that project management practices play important role in the successful completion of projects. Sixteen percent of projects had no project plan. Many standard software practices are not being applied constantly in the projects. The risk assessment and mitigation are not carried out until the risk occurs. The role of software project management tools and techniques and their practices are also analyzed in detail in this paper. Many believed that decision making is the most important ability of project managers. In this paper we have described different factors that cause the success or failure of projects. Our results present general guidance for project managers to make sure that their projects be successful. This study shows the importance of project management tools and techniques in the industry. It also shows how project management is important for a successful and quality software product. If a project is managed properly, we get a quality product within allocated time and budget. Keywords— Project Management, Software Industries, Project Management Practices, Success, Failure
I. INTRODUCTION Software project management tools and techniques are playing key role in developing software applications. Effective Project management is planning and controlling of resources and quality of product [1]. There are many project management factors and best practices which are necessary for producing quality product with in allocated time and budget [2]. Project management disciplines are growing fast in software industries. Project success is the success of project management and quality of project [3]. It is clear from literature that project management is very important for software development [4]. It is commonly known that software projects often overrun cost and budget [5]. Software projects are unpredictable having 33% of satisfaction rate [6]. It is found that 50 to 80% software failures occur due to improper
project management [7]. Findings of the surveys conducted since 1997 by many companies including KPMG [8] revealed that more than 75% of software projects were below their schedules by 30% and more than 50% exceeded their budget. To achieve high software success rate and achieve high user satisfaction proper project management practices are crucial. In this paper, we have assessed the effect of these factors and practices on Pakistan software industry. We conducted surveys using questionnaires. The questionnaire proposed by Verner and Evanco [9] with some modification was used for this purpose. We calculated the relationship between these practices empirically and observed their effect on projects success. The Project managers and developers were surveyed about current project management activities they are employing to manage and develop software and the effect of these activities on the success and failure of these projects was investigated. We analyzed 45 successful and 45 failed software projects. These findings will help project managers to better manage software project activities and to know about the software project management practices that are important for effective project management and for the success of project. The rest of the paper is organized as follow: we have discussed related work in from literature, research methodologies in section III, section IV presents results and analysis and section V concludes the paper with future directions of the research. II. RELATED WORK Many researchers proposed project success and failure factors by conducting surveys from software developers, project managers and users. Procaccino et al. [10] concludes that involvement of users and stakeholders during project development is important success factor. The survey is based on 31 responses. Agarwal and Rathod [11] proposed that meeting scope document of software project is important for project success. Authority of project manager, support from sponsors, requirement elicitation techniques, skilled team and proper methodology are important factors for project success
[12]. Verner et al. [9] analyzed 102 software projects. They concluded that project manager relation with staff; risk assessment and complete requirements have positive impact on project success while adding staff to a late project has negative impact on project success. Survey like [13] analyzed that understanding change, user expectations and requirements, support of top management, project manager communication skills, minimization of bureaucracy are important for project success. Faisal et al. [14] proposed project success factors related to requirement engineering in Pakistan. Survey based on 21 sample size conducted in December, 2005 described project management practices used in software industry of Pakistan [15]. This work presents project management practices that are used currently in Pakistan. We have shown the relation of these practices with project success empirically III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A detailed questionnaire was prepared for data collection. This questionnaire was hosted on a website, and was also distributed through emails and letters. This work is presented in two sections A and B. Section A that includes questions PM01 to PM20 shown in Table III which describes individual and organizational information as well as software project management practices they use in software development while section B consists of questions from PM21 to PM35 that describes effect of these practices on project success.
1) Respondents and Organization Information Sixty percent of the respondents belonged to software organizations that have number of employees between 20 and 50. Most of these employs have 2 to 4 years of experience. 44.44% of respondents belong to the organizations having CMMI level 1 i.e. 35.55% organizations had level 2, 17.77% had level 3 and 4.33% had level 5 as shown in Table II. Table II: CMMI levels of software industries
CMMI Level Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Number of Software Industries 20 16 8 1
% 44.44 35.55 17.77 4.33
2) Individual Information When we asked about the skills of a good of a good project manager, 41% of the respondents believed that project manager must have power of making decision, 32% of them suggested believe that project manager must have good communication skills and 20% believed that he must have in the ability to complete project within allocated time and budget. The responses have been shown in fig 1.
Table 1: Questionnaire Responses
Current position
Response
%
Project manager
28
62
Programmers
15
33
Others
2
5
IV. RESULT AND ANALYSIS This work is presented in three sections A, B and C. Section A includes questions from PM1 to PM6 shown in the Table III. It describes individual and organizational information. Section B consists of questions from PM7 to PM20 that presents software project management practices that are currently used in Pakistan software industries. Section C consists of questions from PM21 to PM35 shown in Table. IV. It describes the effect of these practices on project success. A. Individual and Organizational information In this section we have described individual and organizational information local software development industries. This section contains the following two sub section
Fig. 1 Effective project management skills
B. General Project Management Practices Project management contains different activities and practices. In this section we have described implementation of these practices. 1) Software Requirement management Vision and scope document preparation plays a vital role in software project management. The responses have been shown in figure 2. It is a good sign that 74% software industries prepare vision and scope document. Almost all of the software industries believed that changing scope document affect project schedule and cost. Project planning plays key role in
delivering quality product within allocated time and budget. However, based on survey, only 22% of the organization develops a formal project plan, whereas 62% incorporate project planning activities but do not develop a formal project plan. 16% have no project planning.
3) Software Risk Control and Assessment Risk assessment and control is very important for software development. Risk management plays key role in project success. We found that that 64% of our respondent assess and control risks in organizations as shown in fig 4. Seventy four (74%) handle risks when they occur, 14% address risks before they occur while 12% use both methodologies.
Fig.2 Project Plan Preparation
2) Software Planning and Estimation In this section adaptation of planning and estimation of software were considered. Most of our respondent uses Expert Based estimation i.e. 71% which validates that expert judgment estimation is still the widely used technique for effort estimation [16]. Eighteen percent (18%) uses Function Point Analysis, 5% use line of code estimation method and only 2% use Wideband Delphi Estimation while 4% use random estimation techniques as shown in Fig.3. Power outages, staffing problems and requirement changes are the main causes that respondents believed affect the project plan. Earned value analysis which we use to keep track of actual and budgeted cost for projects is only used in 16% of organizations.
Fig.4 Use of Risk Management
4) Software Quality Management Usage of Software Quality management in industry is discussed in this section. Software quality management leads project to success. As depicted in Fig.5 quality is managed in 96%of industry which is necessary to identify uncover errors and defects as well as to satisfy the end users. However, only 36% industry has separate quality assurance team.
Fig.5 Use of Software Quality Management
5) Software management automated Tools
Fig. 3 Methods use for software Estimation
The use of automated management tools is not common in the software industry of Pakistan. As evident from fig.6 only 27% of the industry use automated management tools. They think that automated tools are useful but are costly and difficult to use.
Fig.6 Use of Software management automated Tools Table III: Questions for collecting data about general practices of project management and other information
Organization Information PM1 What is the size of your organization? (Number of Employees) PM2 What is CMMI level of organization? Individual Information PM3 What is Yours Position in organization? PM4 How many years of work experience do you have in IT and software development industries? PM5 What is yours highest academic degree? PM6 Project manager is good in (Check all that applies). Software Requirement management PM7 Is scope document is prepared in organization? PM8 Is there an opportunity for users to change the scope of project after sometime? PM9 Is changing the Scope document affect project schedule and project budget? PM10 The project plan is approved by the stakeholders? Software Planning and Estimation PM11 Methods used software effort and cost estimation? PM12 What are the main causes for software that effect the project plan? (Check all that apply). PM13 Earned value analysis (keep track of actual and budgeted cost for projects) is used in your organization? PM14 Critical Path Analysis (minimum time to complete a project) used in your organization? Software Risk Control and Assessment PM15 Project risks are assessed and control in organization? Software Quality Management PM16 Quality is managed in yours organization? PM17 Is your organization has a separate quality management team? Software management automated Tools PM18 Automated project management tools are used? PM19 The organization knows about automated project management tools? PM20 If you are willing please tell us the name of yours organization?
C. Effectiveness and Importance of Project management practices The questions that were asked about effectiveness and importance of project management practices have been shown in table IV. The Project managers and developers were asked to describe project management practices that they have used in recent successful and unsuccessful IT projects. Table IV shows the questions and number of ‗Yes‘ response in case of successful and failed project. We presents the relationship of project success and project management activities, calculated by using Chi- square test with P
