Re-Planning for a Successful Project Schedule

Time to market or project duration has increasing significance for commercial software development. We report on a longitudinal study of a project at a leading international software organisation. The focus of this study was schedule behaviour, however, we explored a range of factors including planned versus actual progress, resource allocation and functionality delivered. In the course of the twelve-month study, evidence was collected from 8 interviews, 49 project meetings, a number of other project documents and a feedback workshop. The project leader considered the project to be a success not only in terms of satisfying resource and schedule objectives but also in the marketplace. While many of the originally planned external commitments were met, it is clear that the project did not adhere to its original (detailed) plan and indeed there were no less than seven replans. These re-plans were mainly in response to inaccuracies in the original plan, rather than in response to the introduction of additional requirements (of which there were several) or problems with external dependencies. Furthermore, these re-plans suggest a distinction between the nature of the initial planning process and the nature of the re-planning process during the project. Attention is also directed at the implications these re-plans have for metrics and estimation research.