Deck 00

Question 1

Challenges in SW Project Management

Answer 1

• The requirements are unknown or hard to elicit from the user
• The requirements change frequently (volatile)
• New technology that effects the outcome appears during the project
• The end user cannot be identified
• The mobile end user is not able to evaluate
• visionary scenarios
• We cannot look the end user “over the shoulder”
• The development is distributed.

Question 2

Additional Challenges in Global Software Project Management

Answer 2

• Coordination Challenges
  
  • reduced communication bandwidth
  • Increased latency
  • Lack of organizational cohesion
  • No informal communication
• Change Request Challenges
  
  • Change requests mostly through formal channels
  • Changes as ‘late surprises’
  • Rationale for change request often unavailable.

Question 3

Why is Project Management is a Problem Solving Activity

Answer 3

• Analysis: Understand the problem nature and break the problem into pieces
• Synthesis: Put the pieces together into a large structure that prepares for the solution
• Problem solving always happens in the context of methodologies
• Once a problem is solved it is often not hard anymore.
  
  • Example: Columbus’ egg
    
    • A metaphor for a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact.

Question 4

What is Polyas book?

Answer 4

First: understand the problem.
Second: devise a plan.
Third: carry out your plan.
Fourth: have to examine the solution obtained.

Question 5

What tools and techniques are used in project management

Answer 5

• Methodologies: Collection of techniques, heuristics and tools unified by a philosophical approach
• Techniques: Formal procedures for producing results using some well-defined notation
• Heuristics: Informal collection of steps
• Tools: Instruments or automated systems that help in accomplishing a technique or supporting heuristics
• Specific project management problems occur
  
  • When the available resources time, people and budget are limited
  • When we allow the problem to change (or the problem changes, even if we don’t allow it J)

Question 6

Project Management: Traditional Definition

Answer 6

Project Management is a collection of techniques, methodologies, tools and heuristics that support the

development of
a high quality software system with a given budget

before a given deadline.

Question 7

Project Management: Definition used in POM

Answer 7

Project Management is a collection of techniques, methodologies, tools and heuristics that support the

development of
a high quality software system with a given budget

before a given deadline while change occurs

Question 8

What is Change?

Answer 8

• Change is when something becomes clear (“it crystalizes”)
• Change is when something new appears (“technology enabler”)
• Change is when something becomes important (“change of requirements”)
• Change can happen fast, changes are often unexpected
• Manager must anticipate and react to unusual technology
• One strategy: Look at universities, R&D labs, what is done there will be out on the market soon.
• Hammer and Champy (Reengineering the Corporation, 1993): “Change is the only thing that is constant”.

Question 9

Examples of Change in Software Projects

Answer 9

• Several jobs are combined
  
  • Example: Case worker, a person who deals with the complete workflow of helping another person
• Processes have multiple versions to support multiple products
  
  • Example: Product line requirements engineering
• Checks and controls are reduced
  
  • Example: Developers have the power to make decisions
• Work is performed where it makes sense
  
  • Outsourcing: A company subcontracts an activity such as product design or manufacturing to a third-party company
  • Offshoring: A company transfers an organizational function to another country (regardless of whether the work is outsourced or stays within the same company).

Question 10

Methodology Issues

Answer 10

• Methodology: Provides guidance, general principles and strategies for selecting methods and tools in a given project environment in the context of change
• The key questions for which methodologies typically provide guidance include:
  
  • Customer: How much should the customer be involved? Should the team interact with the customer?
  • Planning: How much planning should be done in advance?
  • Reuse: How much of the design should result from reusing past solutions?
  • Modeling: How much of the system should be modeled before it is coded?
  • Process: In how much detail should the process be defined?
  • Project Monitoring: How often should the work be controlled and monitored? When should the project goals be redefined?

Question 11

Management vs. Project Management vs. Software Project Management

Answer 11

• Management: Getting a specific task done through people
  
  • usually defined in terms of functions: Planning, organizing, directing, controlling and communicating are typical management functions
• Project management is defined in the context of a project
  
  • tries to accomplish a specific task within a time frame and limited resources (given deadline and given budget)
• Software project management is defined in the context of software development
  
  • Activities to develop a software system within a given time frame and with limited resources while change occurs: Planning, Requirements Elicitation, System Design, Reviews, Release Planning, …

Question 12

The rules Scrum Master, Product Owner and Developer describe what kind of project?

Answer 12

Agile Project

Question 13

What kind of project organization do we propose for the team exercise?

Answer 13

Project based organization