What is software project management?
Concerned with activities involved in ensuring that software is delivered on time and on schedule and in accordance with the requirements of the organizations developing and procuring the software.
•Project management is needed because software development is always subject to budget and schedule constraints that are set by the organization developing the software.
What are the success criteria for a software project?
- Deliver the software to the customer at the agreed time.
- Keep overall costs within budget.
- Deliver software that meets the customer’s expectations.
- Maintain a coherent and well-functioning development team.
What factors influence software project management?
- Company size
- Software customers
- Software size
- Software type
- Organizational culture
- Software development processes
- These factors mean that project managers in different organizations may work in quite different ways.
What are four things a manager can control?
–Resources(can get more dollars, facilities, personnel)
–Time(can increase schedule, delay milestones, etc.)
–Product(can reduce functionality -e.g. scrub requirements)
–Risk(can decide which risks are acceptable)
What is the approach to any management?
–Understand the goals and objectives
•quantify them where possible
–Understand the constraints
•if there is uncertainty, use probability estimates
–Plan to meet the objectives within the constraints
–Monitor and adjust the plan
–Preserve a calm, productive, positive work environment
What are some universal management activities?
- Project planning
- Risk management
- People management
- Proposal writing.
- Project planning and scheduling.
- Project costing.
- Project monitoring and reviews.
- Personnel selection and evaluation.
- Report writing and presentations.
What is project planning?
- Probably the most time-consuming project management activity.
- Continuous activity from initial concept through to system delivery. Plans must be regularly revised as new information becomes available.
- Various different types of plan may be developed to support the main software project plan that is concerned with schedule and budget.
What does project plan do?
The project plan sets out: –The resources available to the project; –The work breakdown; –A schedule for the work. •Introduction. •Project organisation. •Risk analysis. •Hardware and software resource requirements. •Work breakdown. •Project schedule. •Monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
How are activities in a project organized?
- Activities in a project should be organized to produce tangible outputs for management to judge progress.
- Milestonesare the end-point of a process activity.
- Deliverablesare project results delivered to customers.
- The waterfall process allows for the straightforward definition of progress milestones.
How to organize project scheduling for a project?
- Split project into tasks and estimate time and resources required to complete each task.
- Organize tasks concurrently to make optimal use of workforce.
- Minimize task dependencies to avoid delays caused by one task waiting for another to complete.
- Dependent on project managers intuition and experience.
What are some problems with scheduling?
- Estimating the difficulty of problems and hence the cost of developing a solution is hard.
- Productivity is not proportional to the number of people working on a task.
- Adding people to a late project makes it later because of communication overheads.
- The unexpected always happens. Always allow contingency in planning.
What is risk management?
Risk management is concerned with identifyingrisks and drawing up plansto minimize their effect on a project.
1.Risk Assessment
2.Risk Control
•A risk is a probability that some adverse circumstance will occur.
–Project risks affect schedule or resources;
–Product risks affect the quality or performance of the software being developed;
–Business risks affect the organisation developing or procuring the software.
What are the ways to classify risk?
There are two dimensions of risk classification
–The type of risk (technical, organizational, ..)
–What is affected by the risk:
•Project risks affect scheduleor resources;
•Product risks affect the quality or performance of the software being developed;
•Business risks affect the organization developing or procuring the software.
What is risk management process?
- Risk identification
- Risk analysis
- Risk planning
- Risk monitoring
What is risk identification?
•May be a team activities or based on the individual project manager’s experience.
•A checklist of common risks may be used to identify risks in a project
–Technology risks.
–People risks.
–Organisational risks.
–Requirements risks.
–Estimation risks.
What is risk analysis?
- Assess probability and seriousness of each risk.
- Probability may be very low, low, moderate, high or very high.
- Risk effects might be catastrophic, serious, tolerable or insignificant.
What is risk planning?
•Consider each risk and develop a strategy to manage that risk.
•Avoidance strategies
–The probability that the risk will arise is reduced;
•Minimisation strategies
–The impact of the risk on the project or product will be reduced;
•Contingency plans
–If the risk arises, contingency plans are plans to deal with that risk;
What is risk monitoring?
- Assess each identified risks regularly to decide whether or not it is becoming less or more probable.
- Also assess whether the effects of the risk have changed.
- Each key risk should be discussed at management progress meetings.
What are different measures?
Types of Metric
–algorithmic vs. subjective
–process vs. product
•➜Good metrics are:
–simple (to collect and interpret)
–valid (measure what they purport to measure)
–robust (insensitive to manipulation)
–prescriptive
–analyzable
•➜5 types of scale
–nominal (=, ≠ make sense; discrete categories)
–ordinal (, =, make sense; e.g. oven temps: cool, warm, hot, very hot)
–interval (+, -, , = make sense; e.g. temperature in centigrade)
–ratio (x, ÷, +, -, , = make sense; e.g. temperature in Kelvin)
–absolute (a natural number count)
What are people management factors?
- Consistency
- Respect
- Inclusion
- Honesty
What is need satisfaction in software development project?
•In software development groups, basic physiological and safety needs are not an issue. •Social –Provide communal facilities; –Allow informal communications e.g. via social networking •Esteem –Recognition of achievements; –Appropriate rewards. •Self-realization –Training -people want to learn more; –Responsibility.
What are some different personality types?
–Task-oriented people, who are motivated by the work they do. In software engineering.
–Interaction-orientedpeople, who are motivated by the presence and actions of co-workers.
–Self-orientedpeople, who are principally motivated by personal success and recognition.
What are some designations in a software project?
- Project Manager is a Person who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in One month.
- Developeris a Person who thinks it will take 18 months to deliver a Baby.
- Onsite Coordinator is one who thinks the single woman can deliver nine babies in one month.
- Clientis the one who doesn’t know why he wants a baby.
- Marketing Manager is a person who thinks he can deliver a baby even if no man and woman are available.
- Resource Optimization Teamthinks they don’t need a man or woman; they’ll produce a child with zero resources.
- Documentation Teamthinks they don’t care whether the child is delivered, they’ll just document 9 months.
- Quality Auditoris the person who is never happy with the PROCESS to Produce a baby.
- Testeris a person who always tells his wife that this is not the Right baby
- HR manageris a person who thinks that a donkey can deliver a human baby in given 9 months
What is the role of teamwork in the software project?
•Most software engineering is a group activity
–The development schedule for most non-trivial software projects is such that they cannot be completed by one person working alone.
•A good group is cohesive and has a team spirit. The people involved are motivated by the success of the group as well as by their own personal goals.
•Group interaction is a key determinant of group performance.
•Flexibility in group composition is limited
–Managers must do the best they can with available people.
