It is normally thought that if project planning is good, everything will go smoothly from then on. Dr R Srinivasan says that the execution of a project is as important and challenging as the planning part

"Project Mismanagement Antipattern happens if there is inadequate monitoring and control at every stage of the development process"

It has been mentioned in earlier articles that project management encompasses all activities, right from receiving the proposal from the customer to delivering the product and warranty maintenance. These activities are categorised into different stages in the software life cycle development. In the last article we discussed the antipattern on Irrational Management; we will now move on to see another on similar lines, called as Project Mismanagement. Naturally the name itself implies that it happens during the development stages of the project. It is normally mistaken that if the plan is good, everything should go smoothly from then on. Actually it is not so, execution of any project is as important and challenging as the planning.

Project Mismanagement happens if there is inadequate monitoring and control at every stage of development, even though utmost care has been taken to bring out a good project plan at the initial stage. By the word control we mean Quality Control, which is emphasised to be the most important aspect to be taken care of particularly in software development. The reason is that software being the driving force in many areas of technology today, any small slip up might lead to catastrophe in the field. It is therefore essential to follow the rules and regulations in the quality process at every stage. This is done by software monitoring through periodical reviews in which, not only the project team and its manager will be involved but should also include representative from quality control group and also a peer person external to the project.

The reviews will have to cover the project plan, code reviews/ coding standard deployed, test plan and test procedures, checking the validity of deliverables, etc. If we take the case of test plan, it should include the testing of different units or modules, integration of these modules and also the complete system testing. However, unfortunately in some cases, all these do not happen in a controlled manner leading to Project Mismanagement.

There may be many reasons for the occurrence of this type of antipattern. To site a few, the reviews may take place infrequently, defects in the course of the development are not brought forth immediately for corrective action, architectural inadequacies leading to problems in integrating the modules, particularly in the area of interoperability, etc. All these point to the fact that proper care has not been taken by the software architect, the designers and the manager. Even if this has been the reason, it is the responsibility of the Quality Control group to evaluate the defects and bring it to the attention of the project manager.

If corrective action is not taken immediately, the problem should be escalated to the higher ups in the organisation, rather than postponing until the acceptance stage. The best refactored solution for this antipattern on Project Mismanagement is to resort to risk management. Risks are normally identified at many points during the life cycle of the development process. Moynihan, et al, in their paper on 'Riskman1: A prototype tool for risk analysis for computer software', presented in the Third International conference on Computer-Aided Software Engineering in 1989, identified risk management under three categories, viz, managerial, at common failure points of the project and quality.

They mention that at the managerial level risks are caused and resolved by the corporate management where it has to be stressed upon that the correct process should cover the end-to-end definition of the product development and in order to do it the roles and responsibilities should be clearly identified for implementation of the processes. The next category on common failure points of the project may cover over runs in schedule and the associated cost and wrong assumption of the specifications, leading to technical failure. Risks categorised under the quality aspects will include an effective project plan, followed by an efficient monitoring and control process, administering rules to cover coding strategy using coding standards and good maintenance plan and support. An important point is, "a theme of risk management is the absence of a common understanding resulting in an inconsistent view of development, which leads to the risk of the solution not meeting the scope of the problem requirements".

( To be continued)

(The author is Chief Technology Officer, Internet Component Management Group, Bangalore and can be contacted at: r.srinivasan@iCMGworld.com)