Software project plans allow software development teams to deliver timely and high-quality software to their clients. By defining time frames, budgets and delegation, software teams can develop effective software project plans. If you are a project manager or software developer, you may want to learn more about how an effectual project plan can influence your work. In this article, we cover what a software project plan is, why they are important and how to create one yourself.
What is a software project plan?
A software project plan is a collection of documents that outline the tasks and timeline of your software development. Software project plans typically include projected start and end dates, launch plans, requirements, configurations, installation procedures, databases and training standards. Project managers are usually the members of the team that develop and implement these plans, collaborating with clients and team members to ensure the success of the project.
Software project plans usually follow flexible progressions that allow project managers to make adjustments for project success. Because a large part of software development is testing and troubleshooting, a flexible project plan allows software developers to move forward and back in the process of creating error-free programs. Software project plans also include risk assessment and contingency plans to prepare for potential setbacks.
Importance of software project plans
Creating an organized software project plan before beginning your work can increase efficiency and reduce errors. These are some important aspects of software project plans:
Defining role and responsibilities: When planning your software project, you include information about which members of your team can address each aspect of the software development. By assigning roles early and documenting those assignments, you can ensure accountability for each task.
Determining client requirements: By creating a software project plan, you determine the exact parameters of the client requirements. When creating your plan, be sure to ask for constant feedback from clients and stakeholders to ensure the software meets their needs.
Meeting project deadlines: Planning for software projects can help you meet project deadlines by providing a clear time frame for the completion of each aspect of the project. Including time-based objectives in your plan allows every member of the team to understand project milestones.
Staying under project budget: Detailed project plans include budgetary information, including the allocation of funds for each facet of the project. Because of that, creating a software project plan can help your team stay under the project budget.
Ensuring high-quality work: Software project plans are important because they allow you to implement quality assurance and find viruses or defects in the code before delivering to the client. By defining quality and delegating quality assurance duties, you can ensure you deliver high-quality software to your client.
How to create a software project plan
You can follow these steps to create an effective project plan for your software project:
1. Define the scope of your software project
The first step in creating your software project plan is defining the scope of your project. The project’s scope describes the goals you must meet to complete your project successfully. When defining your scope, consider project aspects like outcomes, tasks, budget, time frame and deliverables.
2. Isolate tasks within the project
While creating a software project plan, it’s helpful to isolate the smaller tasks that make up the project. This can help when determining the project budget and creating a team to manage aspects of the project. For example, you may want to create a team that performs quality assurance on the beta code for the software.
3. Design time-based objectives
Deciding on your time-based objectives, or milestones, is an important step in software project planning. To do this, determine how long each task within the project should take. For example, if you have six months to develop software for your client, you might want to finish the program prototype by the second month of the project.
5. Delegate tasks to teams or individuals
The next step in the process is delegating tasks to teams or individuals. If there is a task within your project that is complex or may require specific expertise, consider putting together a team of skilled individuals to work together. For example, you may have one team working on design while another performs software sprints, quality assurance and testing.
4. Establish schedules for your team
Once you know when each task within the project needs to be completed, establish schedules for everyone working on the software. Detailing exactly how much labor you’ll need and communicating with your team about the project needs can help you reach your milestones on time and ensure timely deliverables.
6. Perform appropriate risk assessments
There is some amount of risk for every project, and by performing risk assessments, you can identify obstacles that could affect your project. For example, if you rely on a stable internet connection to complete your work, a system failure in the fiber optics network might be one example of a risk. By performing risk assessments, you can foresee potential risk factors and prepare plans for adapting to them.
7. Gather and analyze project data
Gathering and analyzing data is an important part of the software planning process because it helps you ensure your current plan is successful. By gathering project data, you can determine if your budget and time estimates are correct. Understanding how each aspect of the project plan and actual work compare is important for creating a realistic plan.
8. Make adjustments to ensure success
Using your project data, make necessary adjustments to the scope of the project, how you implement your plan or delegation of tasks. For software projects, it’s important to maintain a flexible plan so that you can adapt as needed. Collect feedback from your team, client and stakeholders so that you can make the best possible modifications.
