An integrated process and project management tool for multi-site software development

Abstract

Since information technologies are advancing rapidly in facilitating workgroup communication, a growing share of many businesses requires the working together of geographically distributed individuals, software development projects are no exception. There are a number of characteristics in multi-site software development projects that make it difficult to be managed. Firstly, a software project involves various talents with different technology expertise which makes it difficult to find all IT professionals in a single location. Since software technologies are advancing rapidly, time-to-market is critical for the success of a software project. Moreover, software projects are ever changing due to internal and external factors. For example, software project manager may opt the most effective development method at the moment of time depending on the current situation. In such dynamic software development environment, it is difficult to control the project to produce quality outcome. One study found that only 1% of all projects end on time as scheduled [Ward 94]. Project management is inherently difficult even if it is in a single site. The situation would be more complex when it comes to a multi-site software development project. As a result, it is dificult to complete a software project on time and within budget in a multi-site development environment. Project management tools (PMTs) are originally designed for management of a single project in a single site environment by one project manager. They typically do not provide the features necessary to support cooperative multi-site software project work. A good PMT that is capable of enforcing tasks to be petformed in standardized and synchronized manner in multi-site software developinera environment is needed. To provide such tool, features come from PMTs and process management environments (PMEs) are employed to develop an integrated process and project management tool (IPPM) that streamlines software project management in a multi-site environment. However, the differences between PMTs and PMEs make them difficult to be integrated. Therefore, a simple but applicable, easy to use but able to deal with complex situation is investigated and implemented. IPPM is an integration of process and project management tool plus automatic features, quality management features, dynamic handling features and multi-site support facilities. IPPM has been tested in simulated and application cases which are then evaluated by experienced managers of large-scale IT projects. Most of them found the features of the IPPM are very useful as these are not available in the tools they are familiar with.