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Before we discuss the characteristics of projects in a software development environment in contrast to other projects, I would like to define project as a planned activity to achieve a specific goal.

According to (Hughes & Cotterell, 2009), the following characteristics distinguish projects: non-routine tasks are involved; planning is needed; specific objectives are to be achieved or a particular product is to be built; the project has a predetermined time span; work is carried out for someone other than yourself; work involves several skills; people are formed into a team to carry out the task; work is executed in several phases; the resources that are available for use on the project are constrained; the project is large or complicated.

Rolf A. Lundin and Anders Söderholm (1995) referred to projects or temporary organisations as important part of economic and social life today. The four basic concepts in a theory of the temporary organisation or project in their framework was further identified as time, task, team, transition. These concepts are understood as the foundation of their understanding of temporary organisation or project.

Time: can be envisaged as a linear section of a continuous time-flow that is cut out and thus, made plannable.
Task: is the main objective to be attained and that why the temporary is created.
Team: This consists of people that are focused on completing the task.
Transition: This concept is concerned with the progression or accomplishment of task.
Although, there are some arguments that projects are mostly problematic as they are temporary organisations. It is a group of people brought together to accomplish tasks. The existence of temporary organisation cuts across the authority within the organisation. This could lead to disruption within an organisation and also expertise brought together may be lost when the project is completed.

A lot of techniques in a general project management also apply to software project management. Some characteristics of software projects as opposed to other project are discussed below:

Complexity: Software are more complex due to their sizes. In respect of this, software systems differ hugely from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where components can be reused. Software have very large number of states. Thus, making them difficult to understand, describe, and testing them. Also, scaling-up software systems is not merely producing larger sizes of the same elements. In most cases, components of a software interact with each other in a non-linear way which makes it complex than elements that interacts linearly.
Invisibility: Software is invisible. The progress of a software development is not immediately visible compared to the progress of building a house, where parts of the partially completed building can be seen. Software project management can be seen as the process of making the invisible characteristic of a software visible.
Flexibility: Software can be easily modified. This is one of its strength and software is subject to change. When a need arises in an organisation, it is expected that the software will change to meet this need. Other projects like cars and computers are infrequently changed after being manufactured; they are superseded by later models that reflects the changes. The level of modifications of software is higher compared to other projects because it is embedded in a cultural matrix of applications, users, laws and machine vehicles. These all continually changes and their changes enforce changes in software product.
Conformity: Due to the inconsistency of individuals conforming to the requirements of human clients, this often lead to complexity in software product. Software product must conform according to the need of the client and is highly dependent on software developers to ensure its conformity.
2. Assume that you are Head of Project Management Office in your organisation and you have been tasked with presenting comprehensive guidelines for evaluating individual projects for selection. Write an outline of what you would present with justification supported by references.

It is of utmost importance to identify some documents and processes that are needed before we can discuss the evaluation of individual projects. As a head of project management, I will firstly come up with a business case for each of the projects. Business case which is also referred to as feasibility study or project justification. The aim is to provide way to proof that the benefits of a proposed project outcomes will exceed the costs of development, implementation and operation. Business case document might contain:

Introduction and background to the proposal
The proposed project
The market
Organisational and operational infrastructure
The benefits
Outline implementation plan
Costs
The financial case
Risks
Management plan
The next thing to consider is the project portfolio management, which provides an overview of all the projects that my organisation is undertaking or is considering. It helps prioritize the allocation of resources to projects and also assist to decide what new projects to be accepted and the existing ones to be dropped. The focus of project portfolio management include: identifying which project proposals that can be implemented; assessing the amount of risk of failure that a potential project possess; determining how to allocate limited resources, which includes staff time, finance between projects; awareness of the dependencies between projects; ensuring that duplication amongst projects is prevented; ensuring that necessary developments have not been missed.

Project Evaluation

We will now discuss in details how the feasibility of an individual project will be evaluated.

Technical Assessment: This consists of evaluating whether the required functionality can be achieved with current affordable technologies. The costs of the technologies to be used must be taken into account in the cost-benefit analysis.

Cash flow forecasting: It is important to produce a cash flow forecast which shows when expenditure and income will occur in the timeline of the project. Money has to be spent on paying staff wages during the project’s development and such expenditure cannot wait for income to be received. We can either fund this kind of expenditure either from the company’s own resources or by borrowing. Accurate cash flow forecasting is difficult due to its implementation at the early stages of a project’s life cycle.

Cost-Benefit analysis: This analysis shows all of the costs and benefits of carrying out the project and operating the completed application. These include the development costs, the operating costs and benefits expected from the new system. It also, expresses these costs and benefits in common units.

There are cost-benefit evaluation techniques used in comparing projects on the basis of their cash flow forecasts.

Net profit: The net profit of a project is the difference between the total costs and the total income throughout the timeline of a project. The projects that yield the highest income will be considered.
Payback period: This is the time taken to break-even or pay back the initial investment. The project with the shortest payback period will be chosen since it minimizes the time a project is in debt
Return on investment: This is also known as the accounting rate of return (ARR) provide a way of comparing the net profitability to the investment needed. ROI is calculated average annual profit divided total investment multiplied by 100.
Net present value: The calculation of net present value is a project evaluation technique that takes into account the profitability of a project and the time of cash flows that are generated.
Risk Evaluation: It is essential to identify the risks and quantify their effects in other to avoid project failure. Where a project is relatively risky it is common practice to adopt a higher discount rate to calculate net present value. Project may be identified as high, medium or low risk using a scoring method and risk premiums designated for each category.

Challenges faced and solutions

Some issues with project portfolio management are inaccurate allocation of resources between projects. For example, a full-time staff is allocated to project where he or she may be effectively part-time due to the routine work involved.

Developing countries for example, Mauritius was faced with problems such as: lack of human skills; high labour mobility; lack of training; ageing population; economic instability; lack management commitment; lack of soft skills in management of projects and so on.

To address some of these issues, evolutionary software project management maturity model (ESPM3) was adopted. This methodology is streamlined and it is aimed at simplifying software project management. According to the research conducted by Muriithi and Crawford (2003), the methodology can be used by other developing countries facing similar identified problems.

Another country that had challenges with IT project management was South Africa. A survey combined the nine knowledge areas of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) with a Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM), was adopted to answer the questions below:

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  How mature is IT Project Management in South Africa?

  
  


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  What is the success rate of IT projects in South Africa?

  
  


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  What is the relationship between IT Project Management Maturity and project success?

  
  

These answers derived from the survey helped to identify key problems with the IT project management of South Africa. Communication was responsible for most failures and challenges of South African projects. Also, project risk management was an aspect where most project managers struggled and as well as quality management.

Although, South Africa has improved since 2003 and made some progress in improving its IT project management with many project managers acquiring formal training and achieving professional certificates. Also, South Africa has a higher success rate compared to USA, and we have a smaller percentage of challenged projects (Sonnekus, R. and Labuschagne, L. 2004).

South Africa can improve more in the IT project management by managing projects better, working on its communication skills, and managing risks properly. By accomplishing these things, can transform failures and challenges into successes, delivering projects that are on time, within budget and to the satisfaction of the users.