Status Tracking

1
Status Tracking

• An important aspect of project management is
  tracking or monitoring the project progress.
• The essence of project monitoring is
• a) measuring the status and
• b) understanding/deciding whether any adjustment
  needs to be made.

The fundamental concept/technique involves
comparing the actual vs. planned
2
Project Status Monitoring of Cost Schedule
with Earned Value

• One measurement of software project progress is
  via using the metrics from Earned Value
  Management
• Fundamentally, this is based on comparing the
  efforts between
• planned effort (cost) and
• actual effort (cost)
• It also assumes that the pieces of work
  required to complete a project is well defined
  and the effort needed to complete each task is
  estimated and tracked.
• (e.g. a master schedule, based on WBS, is in
  place)

3
Some Definitions

• Some Basic Definitions
• Budgeted cost of Work (BCW) the estimated
  effort for each work item / task
• Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) the sum
  of the estimated effort for all the tasks that
  were scheduled to be completed by the specified
  time (sum of BCWs that were scheduled to be
  completed by that date).
• Budget at Completion (BAC) the estimate of the
  total project effort or the total of all the BCWs
  
• Planned Value (PV) the percentage of the total
  estimated effort that is assigned to the
  particular task, j, or (BCW of j)/ BAC
• Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP) the sum
  of the estimated effort of the tasks that have
  been completed by the specified time.
• Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) the sum of
  the actual efforts expended for the tasks that
  have been completed

4
Details of an Example
note
Date 4/5/2004
Actual Effort spent so far in Pers-days
Estimated Completion date
Actual Completion date
Estimated Effort in Pers-days
Work Tasks
1
10
2/5/04
10
2/5/04
2
3/25/04
15
25
3/15/04
3
1
9
30
4/25/04
4
25
20
5/5/04
4/1/04
5

15
5/25/04
6
20
5
6
6/10/04
Each estimated effort is the BCW (e.g. for work
task 3 it is 30 person days). BAC
101530251520 115 person-days BCWS (on
4/5/04 tasks 1 and 2 were scheduled to be
completed) 1015 25 person days BCWP (on
4/5/04 tasks 1, 2, and 4 are completed) 10
1525 50 person-days ACWP (on 4/5/04 actual
cost of tasks completed) 10 25 20 55
person-days
5
Earned Value

• Earned Value, EV, is an indicator that will tell
  us how much of the total estimated/budgeted work
  is completed at the specified time.
• EV BCWP / BAC
• In our example, on 4/5/2004
• EV 50 / 115 .434 or approximately
  43 complete

6
Two important Variance Metrics

• Schedule Variance (SV) the difference between
  the estimated efforts of the tasks that have been
  completed by the specified time and the estimated
  efforts of the tasks that were scheduled to be
  completed by the specified time or
• SV BCWP - BCWS
• in our example on 4/5/2004 SV 50 25
  25 person days
• ( we are 25 person-days ahead in schedule _
• Cost Variance (CV) the difference between the
  estimated efforts of the tasks that have been
  completed by the specified time and the actual
  efforts expended for the tasks that have been
  completed at the specified time or
• CV BCWP - ACWP
• in our example on 4/5/04 CV 50 55 -5
  person days
• ( we have a 5 person-days of over-run in cost)

7
Graphical Representation
Beating schedule
ACWP
BCWP
? Cost Variance BCWP-ACWP
BAC (? of BCWs)
Effort
? Schedule Variance BCWP - BCWS
BCWS
4/5/2004
Time
8
Two important Index Metrics

• Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
• SPI BCWP / BCWS
• If SPI is 1 then I am on schedule target
• If SPI lt 1 then behind SPI gt1 then ahead of
  schedule
• In our example on 4/5/02 SPI 50/25 2
• Cost Performance Index (CPI)
• CPI BCWP / ACWP
• If CPI is 1 then I am on cost target
• If CPI lt 1 then cost over-run CPI gt 1 then cost
  under-run
• In our example on 4/5/02 CPI 50/55 .90

Would CPI index be more intuitive if it were
flipped ? (e.g. CPI ACWP/BCWP)
9
Non-EVM Now lets look at tracking quality

• Tracking status is comparing actual versus
  planned
• But for tracking quality, we rarely have the
  estimated or planned number of bugs to be
  discovered !
• So what do we do?

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Quality Status (Test) Tracking

• One way to track quality is to track testing
  results through the whole test period.
• Track the number of errors discovered from
  day-to-day or week-to-week.
• Track the mean-time between discovering a defect
  from day-to-day or week-to-week
• In the first case, we would like to see the
  number decrease from day-to-day or week-to-week.
• In the second case we alike to see the mean-time
  increase from day-to-day or week-to-week.

11
Defect Discovery Rate Tracking
Desirable Curves
Number of defect
of bugs discovered
OR
Mean-time to failure
Mean-time between bug discovery
week
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Possible Project post -mortem

• Parameters to be considered planned vs real
  
• Project Size
• Project Cost
• Project Schedule
• Project Quality
• Project Process Methodology Impact
• Project Tools impact
• Other attributes