Recognition and Optimizing Process Lagging Indicators During Software Development

Abstract

Software industry has grown tremendously since the last few years. Customers today have very high expectations from systems delivered to them, in terms of quality, cost and time. In order to satisfy the customer, the project manager needs to monitor and control these three so-called major project management constraints during project execution. It is mostly seen that it is not possible for project managers to control all these three factors together and satisfy the customer needs. The task of measuring and monitoring the project data is considered as an overhead, and so, the project manager becomes selective in his approach. Project managers choose the high priority factor based on the customer requirements or as per the project signed agreement. Thereafter, the relevant data needs to be measured, collected, monitored and controlled using statistical techniques. But focusing and controlling only one of the factors many times is not sufficient for the overall success of the project. The manager needs to enhance and improve project monitoring to encompass the other factors also so that the project does not fail from any loose ends. The paper describes stepwise approach followed to achieve this: Firstly, how the importance of controlling more than one factor was accepted by the project managers; secondly, statistical techniques used in implementing the same; and thirdly, improvement in the final product as a result.