Software Project Management Automation for Offshore Development (SOUL)

Abstract

To be in pace with the new world of technology all major processes at different levels are being automated. There is also a need of such kind of process automation in the Software Industry. Although this industry has taken the world by storm particularly in the last fifteen years but unfortunately no attention was given towards the improvement and automation of its processes and procedures. That is why only 16.2% of IT projects are successful. Currently in software houses, Project management activities are performed manually which requires a lot of paperwork and wastage of time and cost. Another drawback of manual project management is wastage of time in communication with Client especially in case of offshore clients. And above all, because of this manual operation after project reviews, lesson learned from the project and very important information related to team capabilities and weaknesses are lost. The proposed solution “SOUL”, Software hOuse aUtomation has provided Project managers and clients with an interface to access and monitor the project work and the performance of the developers. SOUL is comprised of several small modules which automate every process of a software house including Documentation, Resource Management, Quality Assurance and Quality Control, Project Initiation, Project Management, Project Estimation, Policy Management, Workflow control, Communication, etc. SOUL has successfully optimized resource utilization and has reduced the communication time and cost which in turn has increased the synergy between client and software house. The future work will include the enhancement of existing features and GUI and addition of new functionalities.