Monitoring of Software Projects

The monitoring process is intended to carry out the verification of requirements stated in a contract and/or agreed by a Customer and a Supplier (either external or internal).

Monitoring comprises all those activities that contribute to the achievement of the best possible result and of both the formal and substantial fulfilment of the requirements, thus guaranteeing the achievement of the qualitative and quantitative results planned for the project.

Hence the monitoring process assumes a strong co-operative approach between the Customer and the Supplier and should be regarded a production process component of the project, whether during development, maintenance, management or outsourcing.

Aims

Monitoring aims to allow any Body or Company, that requires the support of a third party for the supply of IT application and/or services, to obtain substantial guarantees on the actual quality of the required product/service and, at the same time, the qualification of its Supplier through the evaluation of the Supplier's processes.

In brief, by means of the control and verification carried out by applying specific methodologies and techniques, monitoring guarantees:

• the quality of both intermediate and final products and/or services
• the validity of every phase of the project
• the acceptance level and the satisfaction of the end user
• the system actual usefulness in relation to its cost
• the control of the Supplier activities.

Advantages

The technique adopted for monitoring is oriented to the analysis and resolution of the detected problems rather than to the plain detection of faults and/or inefficiencies.

In short, the monitoring activities are intended to assure:

• the fulfilment of contractual requirements and constraints
• the actual compliance of products/services with the quality requirements
• the fulfilment of all the aspects stated in the technical specifications
• the actual compliance of the supplied system with both the explicit and implicit expectations of the Customer
• the handling of project risks.

Methodological Scheme

Etnoteam's methodology distinguishes three types of monitoring:

• monitoring of the Supplier process
• monitoring of the project management provided by the Supplier
• monitoring of the quality of the product/service provided by the Supplier.

Monitoring of the Supplier process

The quality of the provided products/services strongly depends on the quality of the related production/service process.

The characteristics of the organisation, resources, procedures and standards used by the Supplier affect most of the quality results.

Process monitoring consists of:

• evaluation of the performance level detected throughout the project
• control of the adequacy of activities, skills and organisational structure with respect to the contractual directions and aims
• verification of the overall quality of the supply.

Monitoring of the project management provided by the Supplier

The monitoring of the project management consists of controlling that:

• the whole project follows specific rules for planning, resources allocation, progress and management control
• the activities are carried out by the Supplier in a proper and controlled way
• the achieved results are detectable and measurable.

Monitoring of the quality of product/service provided by the Supplier

Monitoring of the quality of product/service consists of the verification of the product/service quality in terms of compliance with the stated specification of functions, stated quality and cost.

Such monitoring can be applied to any phase of the production cycle and its derived benefits could also be meaningful in the case of an application at the end of the production cycle.

Besides this, monitoring assures that the proposed IT solution actually provides the expected value to the user, and also satisfying expected times and costs constraints.

Integrated Evaluation

The integrated evaluation consists of the combination of the results of the various types of monitoring in order to supply an overall judgement.

The monitoring activity is strongly conditioned by the project evolution and focuses, step by step, on the aspects related to the current contractual phase.

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