Software Project Management

CSS CS Optional — Paper-I, Section-B, Topic V.

🔥 Frequency: 4 of last 7 papers (2021, 2024, 2025).

🔑 5 Project Management Phases

Conception & Initiation — define purpose, confirm feasibility
Planning — scope, schedule, resources, budget
Execution — team does the development work
Monitoring/Performance Tracking — compare actual vs planned
Closure — handover, lessons learned

📌 Scheduling & Estimation Tools

Gantt chart — bar chart, task timeline/overlap.
PERT chart — network diagram, task dependencies + critical path (longest dependency chain).
COCOMO — estimates effort (person-months) from code size + complexity multipliers.

📌 Risk Management Cycle

Identify → Analyse (probability/impact) → Plan response (avoid/mitigate/transfer/accept) → Monitor continuously.

📌 Team Organization

Hierarchical/chief-programmer — one lead directs. Central control.
Democratic/egoless — shared decisions, peer review. Better morale.

🔥 Past Papers

2021 Q7(a) — PERT chart in detail
2024 Q7(a) — phases of project management
2025 Q7(a) — planning phases + tasks at each stage

⚠️ MCQ Trap

PERT = dependencies + critical path.
Gantt = calendar timeline.

📜 Past-Paper Questions & MCQs (CSS 2016–2026)

2024 · Paper-I · Q7(a) and 2025 · Paper-I · Q7(a) · 6 marks each

Q. Discuss the phases of project management (conception and initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, closure) and the types of planning stages with their tasks.

Ans.

Conception and initiation: define the idea, objectives, feasibility, stakeholders and a business case. Task: approval of the project charter.
Planning:
- scope and work breakdown structure
- schedule (Gantt chart, PERT or critical path)
- effort and cost estimation, resources and staffing
- risk, quality and communication plans
Execution: carry out the plan: design, coding, testing and team coordination.
Performance and monitoring: track progress against the plan (earned value, milestones), control scope changes, manage risks and report status.
Project close: deliver and hand over, get customer acceptance, release resources, document lessons learned, and archive.

2021 · Paper-I · Q7(a) · part of 8 marks

Q. Write a note on the PERT chart.

Ans.

PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) is a network diagram of project activities (nodes or arrows) showing dependencies and durations.
Three time estimates per activity: optimistic (O), most likely (M) and pessimistic (P). Expected time = (O + 4M + P) / 6.
Critical path: the longest path through the network. It decides the shortest project duration, and any delay on it delays the whole project.
Uses: scheduling, finding slack and identifying critical tasks.

MCQs

2026 P-I · Q20. A project is using open-source components with security vulnerabilities. What is the risk?

(A) Security breaches or compliance issues ✅
(B) Non-technical issues
(C) Open-source issues
(D) None of these
Answer: (A) Security breaches or compliance issues.
Why: a known vulnerability in a third-party component can be exploited by attackers to breach the system, and many licences and regulations require vulnerable or unmaintained components to be patched or disclosed, which creates compliance risk. This is a classic risk identification case: identify the risk, analyse its probability and impact, then mitigate it (update or replace the component, scan dependencies, check licences).
Why not the others: (B) is vague and the problem is clearly technical. (C) just restates the question without naming any actual risk.