Resource allocation and Monitoring & control in Software Project Management

Effective resource allocation and monitoring/control help ensure that projects are not only completed on time and within budget but also meet the required quality standards. By closely managing resources and monitoring progress, project managers can respond to challenges proactively, leading to better outcomes and increased stakeholder satisfaction.
Resource allocation involves assigning available resources—such as personnel, tools, and budget—to specific tasks and activities within a software project.

Key Elements:

Identification of Resources: Determining what resources are needed, including team members (developers, testers, etc.), hardware, software, and financial resources.

Prioritization: Evaluating which tasks are most critical and aligning resources accordingly to meet project goals.

Assignment: Distributing tasks among team members based on their skills, experience, and availability to maximize efficiency.

Balancing: Ensuring that workloads are evenly distributed to avoid burnout and maintain productivity.

Optimization: Continuously refining resource allocation based on project needs, team performance, and changing circumstances.

1. Resource Allocation To match the activity plan to available resources and when necessary To assess the efficiency of the changing the plan to fit the resources. It leads us to review and modify the ideal activity plan. The schedules includes Activity schedule Resource schedule Cost schedule 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 1

2. Nature of resources Labour Equipment Materials Space Services Time Money 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 2

3. Identifying resource requirements First step in producing a resource allocation is to list the resources that will be required along with the expected level of demand. It can be done by identifying each activity in turn and identifying the resources required. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 3

4. Scheduling the resources 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 4

5. Creating critical paths Scheduling resources can create new critical paths Delaying the start of an activity due to lack of resource will lead critical issues. Counting the cost Be specific Availability Criticality Risk Training Team building 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 5

6. Publishing the resource schedule To allocate and schedule we use Activity plan Activity Bar chart Resource histogram 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/ MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060 . 6

7. Cost schedule Types of costs we must concentrate on Staff costs Overheads Usage charges 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 7

8. Monitoring and control Once schedule published then attention must be required on progress This is requires monitoring and comparison of achievement against the schedule It is necessary to revise the plan and schedules for the possible target 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 8

9. Creating the framework 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 9

10. Responsibility Ensuring the project satisfactory progress on a project is often the role of the following project steering committee Project management board in PRINCE2 . Assessing progress Setting checkpoints Taking snapshots 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 10

11. Responsibility(..) 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 11

12. Collecting data Breakdown the long activities into more controllable tasks within one or two weeks duration Gather information about partially completed activities and forecasting the work that to be completed. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 12

13. Partial completing report 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 13

14. Red/amber/green (RAG)reporting One way of doing this is traffic light method. The steps are Identify the key elements for the assessment Break these elements into constituent element(second level) Assess them based on Green - on target Amber - not on target but recoverable Red - not on target but recoverable only with difficulty Review all second level to first level assessment Review the first and second level to produce overall assessment 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 14

15. Review Review of your progress is important for monitoring the progress Because every progress is developed through iterations over a large no. of work products such as Requirements document Design document Project plan document Code and etc. It is necessary to eliminate the defects 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 15

16. Review progress model 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 16

17. Visualizing progress Gantt chart 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 17

18. Slip chart 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 18

19. Timeline 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 19

20. Cost monitoring 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 20

21. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 21

22. Earned value analysis BCWS – Budget Cost of Work Schedule The assigned value or budge cost of the work is called Planned Value (PV) A task not yet assigned has zero PV The total value credited to the project at any point is known as Earned Value(EV) Or known as BCWP - Budget Cost of Work Performed 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 22

23. Common methods in software projects are The 0/100 technique The 50/50 technique The 75/25 technique The milestone technique Percentage technique 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 23

24. Baseline budget The first stage in setting up an earned value analysis is to create baseline budget. The baseline budget is based on the project plan and shows the forecast growth value through time. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 24

25. Monitoring Earned Value After creating the baseline we need to monitor earned value as project progress. This can be done by monitoring completed tasks. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 25

26. Schedule variance it is measured by EV-PV Time variance This is the difference between the time when the achievement of the current earned value was planned to occur and the time now. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 26

27. 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 27

28. Prioritizing monitoring Critical path activities Activities with no free float Activities with less than specified float High risk activities 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 28

29. Getting the project back to the target Shorten the critical path Increase the use of current resources Reallocate staff to critical activities Reduce scope Reduce quality Reconsider the precedence requirements Maintaining the business case Exception planning 9/20/2024 Mr.S.B.Karthikeyan,Assistant Professor/ MCA,Kongu Engineering College,Perundurai,Erode-638 060. 29