2.10. The Planning Deliverables

The process defined and described in the next chapter is made up of a number of deliverables. These include the UML-based deliverables that are produced as a part of any UML-based project. However, UML-based deliverables are not the only deliverables in a process. Of substantial importance are the planning deliverables, made up of the project organizational plan, the quality plan, and the test plan, which are worth discussing in this quality environment chapter.

2.10.1. Project Organizational Plan

What is usually referred to as a project plan, containing a list of tasks and corresponding resources, is actually a task plan. While a project task plan is an important deliverable and a project management tool, the project organizational plan is an equally important document. This is not merely a list of tasks, but a detailed and descriptive document containing the objectives and goals of the project, its risks, its resource strategy, and many other organizational issues. The project manager is responsible for creating and maintaining the project organizational plan. A typical project plan that describes the organizational aspect of a project contains the following:

• Objectives of the project, as discerned from the steering committee and the project sponsor

• Risks and their grading; these are identified from the project sponsor and the users and domain experts

• Categorization of project types and sizes

• People and roles (discussed earlier)—important to assign people to roles

• Procurement of hardware and software

• Reuse strategy

2.10.2. The Quality Plan

A quality plan describes the specific organizational needs of a quality software development environment. While a quality plan can be made a part of the project plan, it need not be. A quality plan categorically deals with issues such as:

• Quality approach and selection

• Environment (e-factor)—creation of the physical seating arrangement, emails, and other communication mechanisms

Creating an Iterative, Incremental, Parallel (IIP) development and integration plan provides a major impetus to real-life projects. Quality plans help to create such IIP plans. It is also essential to incorporate the IIP aspect in a project task plan. A starting template for such an IIP plan based on the process-components described in Chapter 3 is provided on the accompanying CD.

2.10.3. Test Plan

A test plan deals with the organizational aspect of quality control or testing. Once again, it can be a part of the quality plan, and therefore part of the overall project plan, because the organizational needs of resources, hardware, and tools for testing must be reflected in the project plan somehow. However, it is better to keep the test plan separate to enable focusing on the important activity of organizing testing, getting the resources, training the testers, conducting the testing, collating the results, and conducting regression tests. These issues are discussed in detail in Chapter 6, but the deliverable of the test plan is mentioned here because it remains the responsibility of the management team in the project.