Software Project Plan Template

CS 325, Software Engineering Concepts, Spring 2000

This template for this software project plan (SPP) is adopted from the software project management plan used by the European Space Agency (ITL(Software Engineering Guides), C. Mazza ITL(et. al.), Prentice Hall) which, in turn, was adopted from IEEE Std 1058.1-1987, IEEE Standard for Software Project Management Plans.

You need not use this template for your software project plan, but, whatever format you use, you should make sure your plan covers all the categories listed here, or given in Chapter 4 of your text.

Sections followed by an asterisk are optional; they are not required to be part of your SPP.

1. Introduction

   1. Project overview - a summary of the project: objectives, deliverables, life-cycle approach, major activities, milestones, resource requirements, schedule, budget

   2. Project deliverables - Any deliverable items such as documents, software releases, and tools

   3. Evolution of the SPP* - summarize the history of the SPP and describe the plan for updating the SPP in this and subsequent phases of the project

   4. Reference Materials* - a complete list of all reference documents

   5. Definitions and Acronyms*

2. Project Organization

   1. Process model - define the software process, its phases and their inputs and outputs, including major project functions (that is, activities that span the entire duration of the project)

   2. Organizational structure* - describe the project's internal management structure; roles often appearing in the internal management structure are project manager, team leader, programmers, software librarian, software quality assurance manager

   3. Organizational boundaries and interfaces* - describe the relation between the project and external entities; such entities include parent organization, client organization, end users, subcontractors, suppliers, independent V&V organizations, and independent QA organizations

   4. Project responsibilities* - define the roles identified in the organizational structure and boundaries

3. Managerial Processes

   1. Management objectives and priorities - describe the management objectives and their relative priorities, including trade-offs among the objectives

   2. Assumptions, dependencies, and constraints - state the assumptions on which the plan is based, the external events on which the project depends, and the constraints on the project

   3. Risk management - identify and assess the risks to the project, and describe the risk-management plans to handle them

   4. Monitoring and controlling mechanisms* - define the monitoring and controlling mechanisms for managing the work; possibilities include work packages, progress reports, reviews, and audits

   5. Staffing plan* - specify the names, roles, and grades of staff that are involved in the project

4. Technical Process

   1. Methods, tools, and techniques - describe the methods, tools, and techniques used to produce the project deliverables

   2. Software documentation - define the documents produced by the project; the definition includes document name, review requirements, and approval requirements

   3. Project support functions - an overview of project support functions, including software configuration management, software V & V, and software QA

5. Work Packages, Schedule, and Budget

   1. Work packages - describe the project-activity breakdown; each work package includes major constituent activity, start event, end event, inputs, activities, output

   2. Dependencies - define the ordering relation among the work packages

   3. Resource requirements - describe, for each work package, total resource requirements and a resource use time-line

   4. Budget and resource allocation* - show how the project's available financial resource will be deployed

   5. Schedule - define when each work package starts and ends and the milestones expected

This page last modified on 3 May 2000.