RECOMMENDED APPROACH FOR SOFTWARE PROJECT PLANNING AND COST ESTIMATIONS IN THE SUDAN

Abstract

ABSTRACT Most -if not all - the software projects, of demand, in Sudan are small- sized or, possibly, medium-sized in some cases. The software projects that the various institutions, developers and the software houses have attempted, during the elapsed decades were not inclined to adopting software engineering basics. The standard techniques, standard documentation and systematic project reviews have been neglected. Consequently, the products came too feeble to suffice customers’ requirements or, as in the overwhelming majority of cases, a complete failure to serve the cause and purpose, for which it was originally entitled. In other cases the projects were terminated at earlier stages than completion and left unfinished due to the perplexed approaches during their development. The local software project development has been born accompanied by the problems of immaturity, because it did neither follow the systematic planning nor the proper cost estimation. Recently and when software projects were in demand the problem has escalated into a severe crisis. A tremendous effort has to be made clearing the present messy situation. indeed, a start from scratch is needed to revive the proper conception of the software project development, built on understanding the basics of software engineering fundamentals. ‘- The author made a keen survey upon 26 companies that practice software project development. A careful study has been made on the ways they adopt in planning and estimating the costs of software projects. Great efforts were made attempting to put these methods as indicators that could possibly be compared with the techniques, tools and systematic approaches adopted in Software Engineering. lt was observed that Software Engineering training progress was lacking and thus leading to insufficiency in software Engineering infrastructure. Eventually, Software Engineering methodology, tools, techniques and procedures were often absent. As a consequence schedules suffered frequent changes, the thing that lead to over-budgeting and conformed a mighty causal to time slips. Beyond that, no planning for standards, as well as no proper software development procedures were maintained and plans for Quality Assurance and Risk Management were rarely considered. The study has proposed some indicators and practical procedures that can be adopted and easily followed to achieve satisfactory results in this aspect.