1. Requirements

2.2.4 The project shall document and maintain a software schedule that satisfies the following conditions:

a.    Coordinates with the overall project schedule.
b.    Documents the interactions of milestones and deliverables between software, hardware, operations, and the rest of the system.
c.    Reflects the critical path for the software development activities.

1.1 Notes

NPR 7150.2, NASA Software Engineering Requirements, does not include any notes for this requirement.

1.2 Applicability Across Classes

Class D and not Safety Critical and Class G are labeled with "P (Center)." This means that an approved Center-defined process which meets a non-empty subset of the full requirement can be used to achieve this requirement.

2. Rationale

The achievement of the goals and objectives of the project requires in-depth planning to develop and document and maintain an integrated set of work activities and tasks. This is normally accomplished through the use of a networked schedule. The schedule needs to include all the major activities for the project, along with its milestones and deliverables, to completely characterize all the work to be done on the project. This characterization in turn will allow the development of a complete listing and scheduling of needed personnel and related resources.

The software development team lead generates a software development schedule to include all activities described in the software development plan in response to the overall project/system schedule. The planned software activities need to include the detailed steps and tasks on a software schedule that meshes with the overall project schedule to assure timely and coordinated availability of the software work products for use in the overall system. Once the initial software schedule is developed and baselined, it needs to be maintained and updated to remain consistent with the overall schedule for the project.  This will eliminate overlapping demands and ensure timely availability of project resources.

3. Guidance

The software development lead develops a preliminary software schedule that integrates with the overall project/system schedule, noting the dates for task completion/delivery, software peer reviews/inspections, deliverables, integration/testing, hardware tests, major project reviews, project milestones, purchases, training, documentation, and other pertinent scheduling data. It typically shows the relationships and dependencies of the software work products on hardware, operations, and training needs. The lead includes activities related to other key processes, such as acquisition, metrics, configuration management, and software assurance. The lead also refines the project's software schedule based on the cost estimate and resources obtained. The software schedule is typically documented as part of the software management plan (see SWE-102). For NASA Space Flight Projects, this Handbook provides a table of software life cycle products and their maturity milestone reviews (e.g., Preliminary Design Review (PDR), Critical Design Review (CDR)) in 7.08 - Maturity of Life Cycle Products at Milestone Reviews to assist in planning the software schedule.

A Gantt chart ¹⁹² is a useful tool for planning and scheduling projects. Program Evaluation and Review Technique charts (PERT) can be used to show dependencies of activities that are contained in the schedule. They can help determine critical paths, key events, and need dates. Tools such as Microsoft Office Project, Omniplan, or Primavera can be used to schedule and track software development activities.

The software schedule can be developed and maintained using the following process steps: 

Develop the schedule:

• Develop Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and overall network schedule.
• Define the software milestone constraints, including start date, project reviews, hardware and operations flows and dependencies, and completion dates to support the top-level project schedule.
• Review work requirements to be performed; enter task durations, resource names, and units.
• Review/adjust work requirements to be performed as necessary (to ensure a reasonable schedule).
• Include a margin or amount of slack time based on project length, team experience, or other relevant factors.
• Review/adjust resource allocations and project durations with project team and customer as required.
• Schedule the duration (including beginning and ending dates) of various software development functions, such as requirements definition, design, coding, verification, and maintenance.
• Schedule software-specific milestones. such as software deliveries and reviews.
• Schedule needs dates and availability dates of critical dependency items.
• Show the development activities associated with components of the Computer Software Configuration Items (CSCI).
• Coordinate with disciplines and organizations that provide products/artifacts to software development, such as computer hardware, digital simulations, and dynamics algorithms.
• Coordinate with disciplines and organizations that require products/artifacts from software development.
• Establish the schedule baseline (project lead) with management approval.

Maintain the schedule:

• Report the status of the development effort to project management through status meetings.
• Report issues that impact the software development team's ability to adhere to the schedule to senior management and to project management as appropriate.
• Monitor the remaining slack or margin in the project to help identify quickly if requirement changes or schedule modifications are required.
• Resolve issues and/or revise the schedule. (Through the duration of the project, the software development team lead evaluates the impact of proposed project requirements changes and produces schedule updates that meet the approval of the project. If schedule changes are not possible, other means, such as changing or reducing requirements, can be investigated.)

The software schedule is an integral part of the overall project/system schedule and as such contributes to the critical path for the project.  It is important that the software lead identify and understand the impact that the software development activities have on the overall integrated project schedule.  It is also important that the software lead understand the relationship between the software development tasks and their interfaces with other project tasks. This will allow the software lead to assess changes to the project schedule that may affect software development as well as software changes that may affect the integrated project schedule. The software development team regularly evaluates the software schedule for apparent and hidden issues and risks. One means to perform these evaluations is to use the "critical path" methodology.  "'Critical path'" is [characterized by determining] the sequence of dependent tasks that determines the longest duration of time needed to complete the project. These tasks drive the schedule and continually change, so they must be updated. The critical path may encompass only one task or a series of interrelated tasks." ²⁷³ The software lead identifies the critical path and the resources needed to complete the critical tasks along the path if the software development is to be completed on time and within its resources. As the development of the software work products progresses, the critical path changes as the critical tasks are completed or as other tasks are delayed. This evolving critical path with its identified tasks needs to be carefully monitored during the progression of the work. ²⁷³

Critical path analysis constructs a model of the project that includes the following:

• A list of all activities required to complete the project (typically categorized within a work breakdown structure).
• The time (duration) that each activity will take to be completed.
• The dependencies between the activities.

Using these values, a critical path analysis will calculate the longest path of planned activities to the end of the development activities, and the earliest and latest that each activity can start and finish without making the project longer. This process determines which activities are "critical" (i.e., on the longest path) and which have "total float" (i.e., can be delayed without making the time period longer). Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project/system completion date (i.e. there is no float on the critical path). A software development activity can have several, parallel, near critical paths. An additional parallel path through the graph with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a sub-critical or non-critical path.

These results allow managers to prioritize activities for the effective management of work product completion, and to shorten the planned critical path of a task by pruning critical path activities, by "fast tracking" (i.e., performing more activities in parallel), and/or by "crashing the critical path" (i.e., shortening the durations of critical path activities by adding resources).

Additional guidance related to software project schedules may be found in the following related requirements in this handbook:

4. Small Projects

Microsoft's Project software is frequently used to develop and track schedules.  This software is typically accessible for use on small projects.  The level of detail associated with a small project's schedule could be less than that for a larger project.  This saves small projects time in both the development and tracking of the schedule. Use a tool that is appropriate for the scale of your project. The development team may also use a Project Management Tool (like MS Project or Omniplan) to which it already has access. However, a small project of 2-3 people, or a project of less than 1 month, that may not already have access to an existing tool, may be better served by an Excel/Word/Text based schedule then by acquiring and being trained on using a Project Management Tool.

5. Resources

5.1 Tools

Tools to aid in compliance with this SWE, if any, may be found in the Tools Library in the NASA Engineering Network (NEN).

NASA users find this in the Tools Library in the Software Processes Across NASA (SPAN) site of the Software Engineering Community in NEN.

The list is informational only and does not represent an “approved tool list”, nor does it represent an endorsement of any particular tool. The purpose is to provide examples of tools being used across the Agency and to help projects and centers decide what tools to consider.

6. Lessons Learned

• One of the activities in the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program required the review of a project schedule in a short time (9000 pages in 45 days). However, lack of integration between NASA's schedule and the contractors' schedules led to a failure to foresee the consequences of accelerating the schedule. The overall finding recommends that the program should integrate both the NASA and contractor schedules and those schedules should be resource loaded. ⁴⁴⁵
• If only high-level schedule risks are considered because of the lack of an integrated continuous risk management plan, longer-term risks ("Risks beyond a short time...") to the overall schedule may not be identified and mitigated.  See the Software Program Managers Network lesson learned schedule entry under "Continuous Risk Management." ⁴⁴⁶