6 Part 6: V-Modell Reference Activities
6.3 Activities
6.3.2 Planning and Control
6.3.2.7 Planning Project
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Purpose
Planning is the preparation of future actions. Planning means to decide in advance how an objective is to be reached - i. e. what is to be done when and by whom. The aim of this activity is to plan the products, the necessary activities, the resources and the target dates for the project.
In this activity the approach initially will require planning the project execution. This will be followed by planning the decision gates and, in the next step, the product and activity structure. On the basis of this finally the work packages will have to be defined and also integrated into the plan. Parallel to this sequence process testing shall be planned, and finally the project plan shall be coordinated with the stakeholders (see Figure 7).
Since the future course of the project can be predicted only with some uncertainty, and since the actual sequence can adjust itself only to a limited degree to the planned sequence, a repeated revision of the project planning will be rather the norm than the exception. The activity »Planning Project is an ongoing activity that extends from project initialization to the end of the project. Project planning will have to be initialized at the start of the project and updated iteratively in the further course of the project. Each revision of the »Project Plan shall be completed at least when the project-specific decision gates are reached. The revisions shall also be included in the »Project Plan.
Product structure, project structure, target dates, expenditures and resources will all be included in the topic Integrated Planning of the »Project Plan.
Activity Flow
Figure 7: Improvement Measures "Planning a Project"
6.3.2.7.1 Planning Project Execution
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Project Plan: Project Execution Plan |
The already prepared contents of the topic »Project Execution Plan from the »Project Manual shall be adopted and specified. While the »Project Manual will still not provide target dates for all »Decision Gates, at this point target dates for the further course of the project will have to be determined as far as possible. Also the respective »Product Instances to be submitted for the individual decision gates will have to be provided in full.
The schedule for the decision gates shall oriented according to the order of the decision gates in accordance with the selected »Project Execution Strategy. Plans shall be made at least for the next cycle of the project execution strategy. In case of the project execution strategy »Project (Acquirer) Including Development, Enhancement or Migration for example at least one cycle from the decision gate »System Specified to the decision gate »Acceptance Completed shall be planned. In case of incremental development also the overall horizon of the planning must be determined, i. e. a schedule must be established also for the additional decision gates »Acceptance Completed (there may be several of these points) and finally for the decision gate »Project Completed.
The »Project Execution Plan will be used as a management-oriented point of view of the Integrated Planning. When using a computer-aided planning tool, an obvious solution will be to maintain the Integrated Planning inside the tool and to generate the »Project Execution Plan as the quantity of all decision gates from integrated planning.
6.3.2.7.2 Planning Products and Activities of the Decision Gates
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Project Plan: Project Execution Plan |
In the context of a V-Modell project the »Product Instances to be planned will be derived from the »Product Types described in the V-Modell. In order to plan a »Decision Gate, all product specimens to be submitted at the respective decision gates shall be scheduled in the »Project Execution Plan depending on the project:
Certain products, such as the »Final Project Report, shall to be scheduled in the project so that they are prepared once, other products, such as quality assurance products, shall to be scheduled several times depending on the project. Rules for the project-specific elaboration of the products will be provided by the product dependencies of the category »Generative Product Dependency of the V-Modell.
Some Products, such as the »Project Plan itself, will be included in several decision gates. Their revision and submission within the framework of the decision gates shall be scheduled several times.
Once the product specimens are determined, the activities that shall be executed and that lead to their creation are derived from them on the basis of the V-Modell. They will be scheduled in the »Project Execution Plan and in the topic Integrated Planning in a way that they will be completed with the target date of the respective decision gate.
6.3.2.7.3 Planning Work Breakdown Structure
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Within the scope of this activity also those activities will be planned in detail that are not used for the creation of the »Product Instances that will have to be submitted in the project-specific »Decision Gates. In the planning process all activities will be taken into account that will be included in the »Process Modules to be used in the project. The V-Modell therefore lives up to its character as a checklist for the completeness of the planning process.
The detailed planning of the activities shall be made each time at least to the next decision gate. Within the scope of the project not all product models that have to be created can be scheduled from the beginning, since the existence of certain product models can be derived only from other product specimens.
In development projects the structure of the system to be developed will have a decisive influence on the »Project Plan . Certain activities, such as the realization of a software unit shall be scheduled specially for each planned »Software Unit. The hierarchical arrangement of all components of a system in a product work breakdown structure plan can be a methodical tool for the preparation of the »Project Plan. In the product work breakdown structure plan the structure of the whole system to be developed shall be included. The V-Modell, however, does not require a special topic for the product work breakdown structure plan.
In the topic Integrated Planning not only the component of the system to be developed, but also management products shall be considered. For example, »Project Status Reports can be identified only after the contents of the topic »Reporting and Communication Channels were determined for the specific project in the »Project Manual. The »Project Manual itself may be scheduled and prepared already at the start of the project and will be therefore listed from the beginning. In the V-Modell these relations - when the existence of a product is specified by another product - will be described explicitly by a product dependency of the category of Generative Product Dependencies.
When the product models were determined, they shall be allocated to the decision gates. If required, product models may be allocated to several decision gates, and thus also several models may have to be completed.
The V-Modell may be used to derive from the product models directly the activities to be scheduled, because for each V-Modell product there is exactly one activity that completes it. In the topic Integrated Planing the activities shall be scheduled in a way that they will be completed at the latest with the target date of the decision gate. The following shall apply to the target date for the start of each activity: An activity that will process a created product model must not start earlier than the activity that will create the product model for the first time. In network planning terminology this is thus a start-start action sequence.
If required, sub-activities also shall be included in the Integrated Planning process.
6.3.2.7.4 Planning Work Packages
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The established product and »Activity Structure of the topic Integrated Planning will be used as a basis for the »Estimation of Effort, sequencing and time scheduling, the assignment of tasks and responsibilities, cost planning and the tracking of costs parallel to the project.
This planning will be performed on the basis of »Work Packages. Since the individual activities of the V-Modell, although they are important to the checklist, are too small for planning tasks, work packages may be formed that combine several activities. Target dates or resources will then be allocated in the topic »Integrated Planning on the basis of work packages. The work packages defined in the topic »Integrated Planning will furthermore be an important basis for the communication in the project.
To define the project-specific work packages, different structure types are conceivable, for example based on
- the organizational units performing the work,
- the time sequence, i. e. based on »Project Section, or
- the logic according to which the activities match, i. e. for example corresponding to the disciplines of the V-Modell, such as system design, system realization and testing.
The following points will have to be considered when formulating the work packages:
- There must be only one responsible person for each work package.
- An unambiguous task description must be formulated for each work package, and it must also be possible to check whether it was executed.
- Work packages should be self-contained work units with clear interfaces to other work packages.
- The scheduled time required for the work should not be too long relative to the duration of the project, because otherwise it is very difficult to control.
- How work packages are put together depends on the risks incurred. High-risk tasks have to be broken down into smaller work packages than routine tasks.
6.3.2.7.5 Coordinating Project Plan with Stakeholders
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Planning activities shall be coordinated with all external and internal participants, the so-called stakeholders. In addition to the involvement of the acquirer, it will be essential to coordinate target dates and resources with the fields quality assurance, configuration management, system development, and other projects concerned. In case of particularly critical target dates the approval of as many stakeholders as possible will have to be explicitly obtained and documented.
6.3.2.7.6 Planning Process Evaluations
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Project Plan: Evaluation Plan Processes |
All process testing shall planned. The planning should include both determining the tasks and the responsibilities and identifying and determining the resources for the processes that will be formally tested. In this context the specifications provided in the »QA Manual shall be considered. Planning of the test shallbe coordinated with the project management and scheduled so that it is harmonized with project progress. The approach to planning process testing should be as follows:
- Subsequently to the preparation of the QA manual, the resources for the processes to be tested should be listed and the tasks and responsibilities for the test should be defined.
- All process tests planned for formal testing in the QA manual shall tbe considered in the planning from the beginning of the project. If further process tests are required in the course of the project, planning should be extended accordingly.