Project monitoring and control measures in cmmi

International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 5, No 5, October 2013

PROJECT MONITORING AND CONTROL MEASURES
IN CMMI
Mahmoud Khraiwesh
Faculty of Science and Information Technology
Zarqa University
Zarqa – Jordan

ABSTRACT
Project monitoring and control process is an important process in developing any computer information
system. Monitoring and Control provides an understanding of the project’s progress so that when the
project deviates significantly from the plan appropriate corrective actions can be taken. This research will
identify general measures for the specific goals and its specific practices of Project Monitoring and
Control Process Area in Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). CMMI is developed in USA by
Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Carnegie Mellon University. CMMI is a framework for assessment
and improvement of computer information systems. The procedure we used to determine the measures is to
apply the Goal Questions Metrics (GQM) approach to the two specific goals and its ten specific practices
of Project Monitoring and Control Process Area in CMMI.

KEYWORDS
Monitoring, control, Measures, CMMI, GQM.

1. INTRODUCTION
Project monitoring and control is one of the most important activities in the modern software
development process. Without an objective and realistic monitoring and control of software
project, there is no appropriate visibility of progress and the development of software process
cannot be managed effectively.
We will define measures for the project monitoring and control process. The set of measures that
will be defined in this research provides the organization with better insight into project
monitoring and control of the computer information systems so the system development will be
compatible with the plan.
Since software becomes common and embedded in nearly every thing we do and increasingly
govern our society and our world. We have to make sure that systems run in a better way as we
intend. A software project measures is the discipline that ensures that we stay in control.
Measurements of a software project apply to products, processes, and people [10].
Software project monitoring and control is critical to detect the deviation of the project plan
and to take appropriate actions, when needed. However, to determine the action which should be
taken is not an easy task. We will provide important knowledge to project managers in order to
improve monitoring and control activities of the projects [3].
DOI : 10.5121/ijcsit.2013.5503

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Successful software project development requires companies to pay special attention to
monitor and control the project activities during the project’s life cycle. If monitoring and control
activities are not done well, the productivity of the project decreases [35]. There will be an
emphasis on monitoring and control of the project against the planned progress. There is a need
for project managers to evaluate the application being developed according to an appropriate
management approach [28].
Development of software involves both managerial and technical decisions, so we have to
improve project management, such as planning, monitoring, and control projects. It is still
difficult to determine which mechanisms are useful to control large software development
projects [32]. Software processes and products improvements would have to be planned and
monitored starting from strategic level to the organization daily operations [2].
Nowadays we know the fact that software measurement helps us to better understand, evaluate,
and control the processes, products, and software projects from the perspective of evaluating,
tracking, forecasting, controlling and understanding [14]. A good measurement process can
provide organizations to make better and timelier decisions to achieve success in software
systems [19].
Measurement is a usefully support tool for software management [24]. Measurement is the key to
effective manage a process. Measurement is a mechanism for evaluating, characterizing, and
predicting for various software products and processes [4]. The efficient way to improve any
software process is to measure specific attributes of the process, develop a set of related metrics
based on these attributes of the process, and then use these metrics to provide indicators that will
lead to improvement strategy. Measurements of software perform an important role in
understanding and controlling of software development products and processes [23].
In measurement numbers or symbols are assigned to attributes of selected entities in the real
world in such a way to characterize the attributes by some defined rules [13]. Measurement is
important for three main activities: understanding, controlling and improvement [15]. We use
measurements to assess goals achievement, to determine status according to plans, to gain
understanding of processes, products, environments and resources, to establish principles for
comparisons with future assessments and follow improvement efforts [29]. The main
measurement objective is to monitor the performance of software process [27].
Software measurement is now in a status in which terminologies, methods and principles are still
being defined and combined. We should not look forward to find quantitative laws that are
mostly valid and applicable, and have the same accuracy and precisions as the laws of physics,
for instance. As a result, the identification of universally valid and applicable measures may be
long term and ideal research goal, which cannot be achieved in the closer future, if at all [8].
Software engineering measurements is not grounded in the basic quantitative laws of physics.
Explicit measurements such as mass, voltage, temperature, or velocity are uncommon in the
software engineering world. Because software metrics and measures are often indirect, they are
open to controversy [31]. There is a lack of an agreed-upon framework of validation metrics [17].
The purpose of software measures is to improve the software process [11].
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) initiated a study for determining the capabilities of
software contractors in the mid-1980s. The result of this capability assessment was the Software
Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM/SW) [30]. There are other capability maturity
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models were followed the CMM software framework, such as the People Capability Maturity
Model (P- CMM) [9].
Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and many organizations from industry are joined together
to develop the CMMI software framework, a set of integrated CMMI models.
In United State the Department of Defense and other parts of the government use the Capability
Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) for process improvement to reduce the risk of poor
implementation of contractors. The CMMI is a widely used and relatively complete framework
for improving the processes of organizations that build complex engineering products [33].
Materials included in the CMMI model are [1]:
1. Materials which help you evaluate the contents of your processes, information that is
essential for your managerial activities and technical support activities.
2. Materials which help you improve process performance, information that you use to
increase the capability in our organizations.
Through the process of choosing CMMI, we try to attain the following objectives: 1- to improve
project management capability; 2- to enhance product quality; 3- to increase productivity and cost
down; 4- to improve the capability of estimating the project budget and schedule; 5- to increase
customer satisfaction [25].
CMMI is a comprehensive model. CMMI involves several topics of knowledge in software
production, defined many Process Areas (PA), generic and specific goals, generic and specific
practices, and a lot of work products. CMMI is used to improve processes, increase productivity
and keep competitiveness of an organization [38].
Within each process area in CMMI/SW, there are one or more generic goals with generic
practices and specific goals with specific practices. A specific goal relates to a process area and
focuses on the related characteristics that describe what must be implemented to accept the
process area. A specific practice is considered as an important activity in achieving the associated
specific goal. However, specific practices are recognized by CMMI that a specific practice is the
goal rather than the way that we reach the goal [36].
Software process improvement becomes the key to the existence of many software development
organizations. CMMI can help set process improvement goals and provide guidance for quality
processes. CMMI supports process and product improvement, reduces redundancy and eliminates
inconsistency because of using multiple standalone models. The CMMI is designed to cover all
processes in the software development cycle and cover a wide range of products and systems
[37].
The Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) is an approach to process and metrics, it was developed by
Basili and Weiss [6] as an approach for identifying meaningful metrics for software development
processes. It has proven that it is an effective approach to selecting and implementing metrics.
This paper defines measures for the two specific goals and its ten specific practices of Project
Monitoring and Control which is one of the process areas in level 2 in CMMI-SW (Staged
Representation) model. Measures will be compatible with the ten specific practices associated
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with the two specific goals of Project Monitoring and Control PA. The measures will be
identified by applying the Goal-Question-Metrics (GQM) approach to the two specific goals and
its ten specific practices of Project Monitoring and Control PA. The defined measures will be
helpful to us to evaluate and control the software products and processes.
The remainder of the paper is arranged as the following: section 2 describes the relative work in
software development measurement for the CMMI/SW, section 3 presents an overview of the
CMMI/SW, section 4 presents an overview of the (GQM), section 5 describes the application of
the (GQM) to the CMMI/SW and defines the measures, section 6 describes the validity and
reliability of the defined measures for Project Monitoring and control process area, and section 7
presents conclusions.

2. RELATED WORK
Many software measures studies have been proposed in the literature, some of them are [7] [16]
[18] [20] [21] [22] [26] [30]. The most related to our work are [7] [26] [30] [20] [21] and [22].
Baumert and McWhinney [7] provide a set of indicators that are convenient with the
measurement practice (a common features) described in the Capability Maturity Model for
CMM/SW. These indicators cover thirteen categories, categories don’t occur at all of the maturity
levels. They don't concentrate on a specific process. Baumert and McWhinney work was related
to CMM not CMMI.
Paulk, Weber, Garcia, Crissis and Bush [30] provide a set of examples of measurements in
measurement practice (one of the common features) of the Capability Maturity Model for
Software (CMM/SW) in Key Process Areas (KPAs). They defined a few examples related to
requirements management KPA. They don't focus on a specific process. Their work was based on
CMM/SW
not CMMI/SW. Loconsole [26] provided measures for the Requirements
Management Key Process Area of the CMM/SW. Loconsole’s work was based on CMM/SW not
CMMI/SW. Khraiwesh [20] [21] [22] provided measurements for Requirements Validation, Risk
Management, and Project Planning process areas of the CMMI/SW.
This paper defines a set of general measures that are focused on a specific PA, which is Project
Monitoring and Control PA of the CMMI/SW. Measures are for the two specific goals and its ten
specific practices of Project Monitoring and control PA.

3. OVERVIEW OF THE CMMI-SW
The CMMI/SW (Staged Representation) consists of five maturity levels: Initial, Managed,
Defined, Quantitatively Managed and Optimizing. The five maturity levels are shown in Figure 1.
Each maturity level is composed of several process areas except Level1 [34].
For each process area in CMMI/SW, there are generic goals with generic practices and one or
more specific goals with specific practices. Generic goals are related to the institutionalization of
proper practices, they called generic because the same goal statement appears in multiple process
areas as shown in figure 2. The specific goal is applied to the process area and addressed the
features that only describe what must be implemented to satisfy the process area. The specific
practice is an activity that must be implemented to realize the associated specific goal [34].
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The purpose of Project Monitoring and control (PMC) is to provide an understanding for the
project progress and to take a suitable action when the project deviates from the plan. The
documented plan is the basis for monitoring activities. Progress is mainly determined by
comparing the plan to work product, effort, cost, and schedule [34].
The following are the specific goals related to Project Monitoring and Control process area and
the specific practices related to each specific goal:
1- Monitor the project against the plan.
1.1 Monitor project planning parameters.
1.2 Monitor commitments.
1.3 Monitor project risks.
1.4 Monitor data management.
1.5 Monitor stakeholder involvement.
1.6 Conduct progress reviews.
1.7 Conduct milestone reviews.
2- Manage corrective action to closure.
2.1 Analyze issues.
2.2 Take corrective action.
2.3 Manage corrective actions.

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Optimizing (5)
 Organizational innovation and Deployment.
 Causal Analysis and Resolution.
Quantitatively Managed (4)
 Organizational Process Performance.
 Quantitative Project Management.

Defined (3)
 Decision Analysis and Resolution.
 Risk Management.
 Integrated Project Management.
 Organizational Process Definition.
 Organizational Process Focus.
 Validation.
 Verification.
 Product Integration.
 Technical Solution.
 Requirements Development.

Managed (2)
 Configuration Management.
 Process and Product Quality
Assurance.
 Measurement and Analysis.
 Supplier Agreement Management
 Project Monitoring and Control.
 Project Planning.
 Requirements Management.

Project
Monitoring
and control

.
Initial (1)

Figure 1. five levels with Process Areas in CMMI.

4. OVERVIEW OF THE GQM
The Goal/Question/Metric (GQM) paradigm is a process that helps organizations to focus the
measurement activity on their goals. The GQM states that an organization should have identified
goals in mind before they collected data [4]. The more mature your process is, the more that it is
visible and therefore measurable. The GQM does not identify concrete goals, it is rather a
structure that defines goals and refines them into a set of quantifiable questions, and these
questions imply a specific set of measures and collected data in order to achieve these goals.
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The GQM paradigm consists of three steps:
1. Define a set of goals related to the needs of the organization and its projects. Determine what
should be learned or improved. We can define the goals in terms of purpose, perspective, and
environment. Measurement goals should be defined in a clear structure and an understandable
way. We do this by specifying the purpose (what object and why), viewpoint (what aspect and
who), and characteristics of context [5].
2. Generate a set of quantifiable questions. The defined goals are transferred into quantifiable
questions with a measurement focus. Basili and Rombach [4] provide different sets of guidelines
to classify questions associated to processes or products.
3. Define a set of measures that fit the quantitative information we need to answer the generated
quantifiable questions. In this step, we define the measures suitable to provide information to
answer the questions and relate them to each question. Several metrics may be generated from a
single goal. Several measurements may be needed to answer one question. One measurement may
apply to more than one question.
Maturity Levels

Process Area 1

Process Area 2

Specific
Goals

Process Area n

Generic
Goals

Specific
Practices

Figure 2. specific and generic goals

5. APPLYING GQM TO THE CMMI-SW
The CMMI/SW defines two specific goals for Project Monitoring and Control PA. There are ten
specific practices related to the specific goals. We consider the specific practices as goals. We
will apply the GQM on the ten specific practices.
The ten specific practices associated with Project Monitoring and Control process area are:
1-Monitor Project Planning Parameters: Monitor actual values of project planning parameters
against the project plan
2-Monitor Commitments: Monitor commitments against those identified in the project plan.
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3-Monitor Project Risks: Monitor risks against those identified in the project plan.
4-Monitor Data Management: Monitor the management of project data against the project plan.
5-Monitor Stakeholder Involvement: Monitor stakeholder involvement against the project plan.
6-Conduct Progress Reviews: Periodically review the project’s progress, performance, and issues.
7-Conduct Milestone Reviews: Review the project’s accomplishments and results at selected
project milestones.
8-Analyze Issues: Collect and analyze issues and determine corrective actions to address them.
9- Take Corrective Action: Take corrective action on identified issues.
10-Manage Corrective Actions: Manage corrective actions to closure.
These ten specific practices can be used as goals for the first step of the GQM. The second step in
the GQM paradigm is to generate a set of quantifiable questions related to the ten specific
practices. The third step of the GQM is to define a set of measures that provide the necessary
quantitative information to answer the generated questions. The typical work products and sub
practices which are found in each of the ten specific practices are take in consideration when we
define the measures.
A set of questions and measures are given in the following tables, table 1 through table 10, each
table related to one specific practice. There are overlaps between the questions and between the
measures. The same measure can be used to provide information to answer different generated
questions.

5.1 Measures for specific practice 1
Monitor Project Planning Parameters: Monitor actual values of project planning parameters
against the project plan
A set of questions and measures are given in the next table concerning specific practice 1.
Table 1. Set of questions and measures concerning practice 1.

Questions
Q1 Do you monitor the project planning
parameters to the project plan?
(Project plan parameters are indicators of
the project
progress, it includes
attributes of work products, tasks, costs,
efforts and schedule. Attributes of work
product include size, complexity, and
availability)
Monitoring involves the measure of the
actual parameter values of project
planning, comparing these values to that
estimated in the plan, and then identify
the deviation.

Measures
 Monitoring the project planning
parameters to the project plan.
 # Actual parameters of project planning.
 # Attributes of work products.
 # Attributes of tasks.
 # Attributes of costs.
 # Attributes of efforts.
 # Attributes of schedule.
 # Parameters of estimated plan.

Q2

 Monitoring the project progress against
the schedule.

Do you monitor the project progress
against the schedule?

(# means number of)

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Q3

Do you monitor periodically the actual
completion of activities and milestones?

Q4

Do you compare the actual completion
of activities and milestones against the
plan schedule of the project?

Q5

Do you identify significant deviations
for the plan schedule estimates of the
project?

Q6

Do you periodically measure the actual 
effort, costs expended and staff
assigned?
Do you compare the actual effort, costs, 
staffing, and training to the budget of
the project plan?
Do you identify attributes of work

products and tasks?
(Attributes include: si3e, availability, 
complexity, function, and service 
level).

Q7

Q8

 Monitoring periodically the actual
completion of activities and milestones.
 # Actual activities.
 # Actual milestones.
 Comparing the actual completion of
activities and milestones against the plan
schedule of the project.
 # Activities in the estimated plan.
 # Milestones in the estimated plan.
 Identifying significant deviations for the
plan schedule estimates of the project.
 # deviations.
Measuring periodically the actual effort,
costs expended and staff assigned.
Comparing the actual effort, costs,
staffing, and training to the budget of the
project plan.
Identifying attributes of work products
and tasks.
# Attributes of work products.
# Attributes of tasks.

Q9

Do you monitor the attributes of work
products and tasks?



Q1
0

Do you compare the actual attributes of
work products and tasks to the project
plan estimates?

Q1
1

Do you monitor resources provided and
used?
(Resources include: computers,
peripherals, software, networks, project
staff and security environment)?
Do you monitor the knowledge and
skills of the project staff?

 Comparing the actual attributes of work
products and tasks to the project plan
estimates.
 # Deviations.
 Monitoring resources provided and used.
 # Resources.

Q1
2

Q1
3

Do you measure the acquisition of
knowledge and skills by the project
staff?

Monitoring the attributes of work
products and tasks.

 Monitoring the knowledge and skills of
the project staff
 # Project staff.
 Knowledge and skill level.
 Measuring the acquisition of knowledge
and skills by the project staff.
 % Acquisition of knowledge and skills.

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Q1
4

Do you measure the actual training
obtained to that documented in the plan
of the project?

 Measuring the actual training obtained to
that documented in the plan of the
project.
 % Deviations.

Monitor Commitments: Monitor commitments against those identified in the project plan.
A set of questions and measures is given in the next table concerning specific practice 2.
Table 2. Set of questions and measures concerning specific practice 2.

Questions
Do you regularly review commitments?

Measures
 Reviewing commitments regularly.
 # Commitments.

Q2

Do you identify the unsatisfied
commitments?

 Identifying the unsatisfied
commitments.
 # unsatisfied commitments.

Q3

Do you document the results of
commitment reviews?

 Documenting the results of commitment
reviews.

Q1

Monitor Project Risks: Monitor risks against those identified in the project plan. A set of
questions and measures is given in the next table concerning specific practice 3.
Table 3. Set of questions and measures concerning specific practice 3

Questions
Q1 Do you review periodically the
documented risks in the context of the
current status of the project?

Measures
 Reviewing periodically the documented
risks in the context of the current status
of the project.
 # Documented risks.

Q2

 Identifying and analyze the new risks.
 # New risks.

Do you identify and analyze the new
risks?

Q3 Do you communicate the risk status to
the relevant stakeholders?
(Examples of risk status include: A
change in the probability that the risk
occurs and change in the risk priority).

 Communicating the risk status to the
relevant stakeholders.
 # relevant stakeholders to each risk.

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Monitor Data Management: Monitor the management of project data against the project plan.A
set of questions and measures is given in the next table concerning specific practice 4.
Table 4. Set of questions and measures concerning practice 4

Q1

Q2

Questions
Do you review periodically data
management activities to their
description plan?
(Data are various forms of
documentation required to support
program. Forms of data include: reports,
manuals, files, charts, etc).
Do you identify significant issues and
their impacts?
(Significant issue such as when
stakeholders don’t access to needed
project data to fulfill their roles).

Measures
 Reviewing periodically data
management activities to their
description plan.
 # Data management activities

 Identifying significant issues and their
impacts.
 # Significant issues.

Monitor Stakeholder Involvement: Monitor stakeholder involvement against the project plan.
A set of questions and measures is given in the following table concerning specific practice 5.

Questions
Q1 Do you monitor stakeholder involvement
to ensure that appropriate interactions
occur?

Measures
 Monitoring stakeholder involvement to
ensure that appropriate interactions
occur.
 # Stakeholders involved.

Q2 Do you review periodically the status of
stakeholder involvement?
(Strong, moderate, weak)

 Reviewing periodically the status of
stakeholder involvement.
 Involvement status.

Q3 Do you identify the significant issues and
their impacts?

 Identifying the significant issues and
their impacts.
 # significant issues.
 Documenting the results of stakeholder
involvement status reviews.
 Involvement status.

Q4 Do you document the results of
stakeholder involvement status
reviews?

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Identify Project Risks: Identify and analyze project risks.
Table 6. Set of questions and measures concerning practice 6

Questions
Q1 Do you regularly communicate status of
activities and work products to relevant
stakeholders?

Measures
 Communicating status of activities and
work products to relevant stakeholders.
 # Activities to relevant stakeholders.
 # Work products to relevant stakeholders.

Q2 Do you identify and document significant
derivations from the plan?

 Identifying and documenting significant
derivations from the plan.
 # Deviations from the plan.

Q3 Do you document change requests and
the identified problems in work products
and processes?

 Documenting change requests and the
identified problems in work products and
processes.
 # Change requests.
 # Identified problems.

Q4 Do you track change requests and
problem reports to closure?

 Tracking change requests and problem
reports to closure.
 Track status (tracked to closure or not).

Conduct Progress Reviews: Periodically review the project’s progress, performance, and issues.
set of questions and measures is given in the next table concerning specific practice 7.

Q1

Questions
Do you conduct milestone reviews with
relevant stakeholders at meaningful
points in the schedule of the project?
(milestones are preplanned events at
which a thorough status review is
conducted to check that stakeholder
requirements are being met)

Q2 Do you review commitments, the plan,
status, and risks of the project?

Measures
 Conducting milestone reviews with
relevant stakeholders at meaningful
points in the schedule of the project.
 # Milestones.

 Reviewing commitments, the plan, status,
and risks of the project.
 # Commitments.
 # Risks.
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Q3 Do you identify and document significant  Identifying and documenting significant
issues and their impacts?
issues and their impacts.
Q4

Do you track action items to closure?

 Tracking action items to closure.
 Track status (tracked to closure or not).

Analyze Issues: Collect and analyze issues and determine corrective actions to address them.

Questions
Q1 Do you gather issues for analysis?
(Issues are collected from reviews and
from execution of other processes)
(Issues including: significant derivation
in project planning parameters,
commitments that have not been
satisfied, significant changes in risk
status, security issues, and stakeholder
involvement issues).

Measures
 Gathering issues for analysis.
 # Issues.

Q2 Do you analyze issues to determine the
need for corrective actions?
(if issues are not resolved by a corrective
actions the project may be prevented
from meeting its objectives )

 Analyzing issues to determine the need
for corrective actions.
 # Corrective actions.

Take Corrective Action: Take corrective action on identified issues. A set of questions and
measures is given in the next table concerning specific practice 9.

Q1

Questions
Do you determine and document the
appropriate actions to address identified
issues?
(Examples of actions include: modifying
requirement, revising estimates and plans,
renegotiating commitments, adding
resources, and revising project risks).

Q2 Do you review and get agreement with
relevant stakeholders on the actions?

Measures
 Determining and documenting the
appropriate actions to address identified
issues.
 # Issues.
 # Corrective actions to address identified
issues.
 Reviewing and getting agreement with
relevant stakeholders on the actions.
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Manage Corrective Actions: Manage corrective actions to closure.

Questions
Q1 Do you monitor corrective actions for
completion?

Measures
 Monitoring corrective actions for
completion.
 # Monitored corrective actions.

Q2 Do you analyze the results of corrective
actions to determine the effectiveness?

 Analyzing the results of corrective
actions to determine the effectiveness.
 # Monitored corrective actions.
 Determining and documenting
appropriate actions to correct deviations
from the planned results.
 # Deviations from the planned results.

Q3 Do you determine and document
appropriate actions to correct deviations
from the planned results?

6. VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE DEFINED MEASURES
We have made a questionnaire to examine the validity and reliability of the measures we
defined for Project Monitoring and Control PA and confirm that they are actually measure the ten
specific practices. We will analyze the collected data by cronbach alpha reliability in SPSS.
The questionnaire was reviewed and confirmed by practitioners in software developing and
academics in software engineering in Zarqa University. The questionnaire was filled by software
engineers, system designers, and students in computer information system department. The
questionnaire consists of ten parts, each part is related to one of the ten specific practices of the
Project Monitoring and Control process, each part consists of a group of statements (measures)
related to the specific practice, alongside each statement there is five options: strongly agree,
agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree. The questioner reads the statement
then he will write his view of the statement relation with the specific practice by choosing one of
the above five options, a sample shown in Appendix A.
Cronbach alpha is used to measure the internal consistency, which means, do all items measure
the same thing? (Measure a single unidirectional structure). Values of Cronbach alpha are varying
between 0 and 1, if alpha is closer to 1, then there is a greater internal consistency of items being
assessed [15]. If Cronbach alpha is less than 0.5 then internal consistencies is rejected [15]. After
we apply the collected data on Cronbach Alpha we found alpha results between less than 1 and
over 0.5.

7. CONCLUSION
Our paper defined general measures for Project Monitoring and Control Process Area (PA) in
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI-SW) for software development. We defined the
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measures by applying the Goal Question Metrics (GQM) paradigm to the two specific goals and
its ten specific practices of Project Monitoring and Control PA. Our paper focused on defining
measures for a specific process area rather than defining measures for many process areas
together.
The set of defined measures in the paper provide the organization with better insight into the
activities related to Project Monitoring and Control, enhancing the development of software to the
goal of having a matured process. The set of measures can be used to evaluate and control
software products and processes. Using of the defined measures depends on the maturity of the
software development process in the organization.

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54


Appendix A
Questionnaire and Analysis
Questionnaire:
This questionnaire is related to the Project Monitoring and Control process. Project Monitoring
and Control process provides an understanding of the project’s progress so that appropriate
corrective actions can be taken when the project deviates significantly from the plan..
The Project Monitoring and Control process has ten goals:
1-Monitor Project Planning Parameters.
2- Monitor Commitments.
3- Monitor Project Risks.
4- Monitor Data Management.
5- Monitor Stakeholder Involvement.
6- Conduct Progress Reviews.
7- Conduct Milestone Reviews.
8- Analyze Issues.
9- Take Corrective Action.
10- Manage Corrective Actions.
We would like to measure the accomplishment of the above goals, thus, we define some
sentences related to each goal. We suppose that the information in these sentences help us in
accomplishment of the above ten goals.
Please, fill the enclosed form by writing  in the suitable place. Responding to this question:
do you think that the statements have an effect on the achievement of the goals?
1. Goal1: Monitor Project Planning Parameters.
(do you think that these sentences have an effect on the accomplishment of goal1:
Monitor Project Planning Parameters.)
stateme
nt
serial
1

statements

2

Monitoring the
project progress
against the
schedule.
Monitoring
periodically the
actual completion

3

Strongl
y
agree

Agree

Neither
agree nor
disagree

disagre
e

Strongly
disagree

Monitoring the
project planning
parameters to the
project plan.

55


of activities and
milestones.
4

5

Comparing the
actual completion
of activities and
milestones against
the plan schedule of
the project.
Identifying
significant
deviations for the
plan schedule
estimates of the
project.

Authors
Mahmoud khraiwesh is an associate professor at Faculty of Science and Information
Technology in Zarqa University, Jordan. He got his master degree in computer science
from Jordan University, Jordan, in 2002 and his doctorate degree in computer information
system from The Arab Academy for Banking and Financial sciences, Jordan, in 2006. His
area of research is in software development measures.

56

Project monitoring and control measures in cmmi

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