Fundamentals of Software Project Planning

Followings are the some fundamentals of software project planning:

Project management activities can be viewed as having there major phases; project planning, project monitoring and control and project termination.
The software project management process begins with a set of activities that are collectively called project planning.
During planning all the activities that management needs to perform are planned while during project control the plan is executed and updated.
Planning may be most important management activity.
Without a proper plan, no real monitory control of project is possible.
Plans may also be perhaps the weakest activity in any software project and many failure cost by mismanagement can be attributed to lack of proper planning.
The lack of proper planning is sure ticket to failure for a large software project.
The basic goal of planning is to look into the future, identify the activities that need to done to complete the project successfully and planned the scheduling and resource allocations for these activities.
A good plan is flexible.
Economic, political and personnel factors should be taken into account for a realistic plan and thus for a success project.
The input to the planning activities is the requirement specifications.
The output of this phase is the project plan which is the document describing the different aspects of the plan.
Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who is to do it.
Planning is thinking before action.
Planning is required as all level management.
The purpose of software project planning is to establish reasonable plans for performing software engineering
and for managing the software project.
Planning must be clear and well-defined.
Planning is never ending process.
Planning is required as all level of management.
Planning is continuous, flexible, time consuming, expensive, but it is necessary for modern business because it
help in coordination and reduces uncertainties.

Components of Project Planning

Different types of projects have the different components according to their working and implementation. Besides these following are the some common and powerful components of project planning for all the projects

Project Scope: In the project planning, every project has the wide project scope.
Project schedule: Every project has the particular time interval within which the project must be completed.
Project team organization: Every project has an organized way under a project leader having a team to complete the project.
Technical description of the proposed system: Every proposed project has a strong technical description so that project can be easily implemented.
Project standards, procedures, and proposed technical tools: Project must have all the standards, procedures and some technical tools in the proposed form, so that project can be completed successfully.
Quality assurance plan: Every project in the implementation form has the assured plan for the successful completion of project.
Special development tools and techniques: Some of the projects have the special development tools and techniques in the detailed form to implement the projects.
Configuration management plan: Every project has the configuration management plan for the long range planned projects.
Data management plan: Data management plan must be the part every working project in the short range planning.
Resource management plan: Resource management must be done in the project planning to implement the project successfully.
Test plan: Every project has the detailed and ordered test plan for the successful testing of the projects.
Training plan: Training plan must be set for the users for the successfully completion and working of the projects.
Security plan: Every project must has the security procedures and security plans to avoid from any type of unauthorized success. For this purpose passwords must be established.
Risk management plan: All the constraints and possibilities must be considered to avoid any type of risk management.
Maintenance plan: Maintenance procedures and plans must be set in the planning to avoid any type of threat during working hours.

Planning is the managerial process of deciding in advance what is to be done and how it is to be done. Planning is not an end in itself; its primary purpose is to provide the guidelines necessary for decision making and resulting, action, throughout the organization. Planning is done on both a formal and informal basis and the planning.

Process uses information from internal and external sources. The process gathers, translates, understands and communicates information that will help to improve the quality of current decisions that are based on future expectations.

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