software project management cseb233: fundamentals of software engineering b. computer science (se)...
TRANSCRIPT
Software Project Management
CSEB233: Fundamentals of
Software Engineering
B. Computer Science (SE) (Hons.)
Objectives
Discuss the importance of Software Project Management (SPM)
Explain the four P’s of effective project management: People, Product, Process, Project
Explain the W5HH Principle and critical practices for performance-based management
Software Project Management
Importance of SPM
Importance of SPM
Building computer software is complex, particularly if it involves many people working over a relatively long time
That is why software projects need to be managed
Software Project Management
Four P’s of Effective SPM
The Management Spectrum
Effective SPM focuses on four P’s:People
The most important element of a successful projectProduct
The software to be builtProcess
The set of framework activities and software engineering tasks to get the job done
Project All work required to make the product a reality
Four P’s: People
People must be organized to perform software work effectively
The “people factor” is so important that the Software Engineering Institute has developed People Capability Maturity Model (People-CMM). The maturity model defines key practice areas like staffing,
communication and coordination, work environment, training, career development, team/culture development and others.
Organizations that have a higher levels of People-CMM have a higher likelihood of implementing effective software project management practice
Four P’s: PeopleStakeholders
Defined as “individuals or organizations who stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system”
(Nuseibeh & Easterbrook, 2000)
By definition, stakeholders are those who are impacted by, or have an impact on the project, e.g.: Senior managers who define the business issues that
often have significant influence on the project Project (technical) managers who must plan, motivate,
organize, and control the practitioners who do software work
Four P’s: PeopleStakeholders
By definition, stakeholders are those who are impacted by, or have an impact on the project, e.g.:Practitioners who deliver the technical skills that are
necessary to engineer a product or applicationCustomers who specify the requirements for the
software to be engineered and other stakeholders who have a peripheral interest in the outcome
End-users who interact with the software once it is released for production use
Four P’s: People Team Leaders
To be effective, the project team must be organized in a way that maximizes each person’s skills and attributes, which is the job of the team leader
What do we look for when choosing a team leader?Based on MOI model of leadership by Weinberg (1986):
Motivation, Organization, Ideas or InnovationBased on four traits of effective project manager by
Edgemon (1995): Problem Solving, Managerial Identity, Achievement, Influence
and Team Building
Four P’s: People Team Leaders
The MOI Model of Leadership: Motivation
The ability to encourage (by “push or pull”) technical people to produce to their best ability
Organization The ability to mold existing processes (or invent new ones) that
will enable the initial concept to be translated into a final product Ideas or Innovation
The ability to encourage people to create and feel creative even when they must work within bounds established for a particular software product or application
Four P’s: People Team Leaders
Four traits of effective project manager Problem solving
Can diagnose relevant technical and organizational issues, systematically structure a solution or motivate others to develop the solution, apply lesson learned from past projects to new situation and many others
Managerial identity A good manager must take charge of the project
Four P’s: People Team Leaders
Four traits of effective project managerAchievement
Reward initiative and accomplishment to optimize the team productivity
Influence and team building Able to ‘read’ people, understand verbal and nonverbal signal
and react to the needs of the people sending the signals
How to lead?How to organize?
How to motivate?
How to collaborate?
How to create good ideas?
Four P’s: People Software Team
Four P’s: People Software Team
The following factors must be considered when selecting a software project team structure: the difficulty of the problem to be solved the size of the resultant program(s) in lines of code or
function points the time that the team will stay together (team lifetime) the degree to which the problem can be modularized the required quality and reliability of the system to be built the rigidity of the delivery date the degree of sociability (communication) required for the
project
Four P’s: People Agile Team
Agile teams are formed for agile software development
Agile philosophy encourages customer satisfaction and early incremental delivery of
softwaresmall highly motivated project teams informal methodsminimal software engineering work products, and overall development simplicity
Four P’s: People Agile Team
The distribution of skills must be appropriate to the problem
Mavericks (individualist) may have to be excluded from the team, if team cohesiveness is to be maintained.
Agile teams are self-organizing
Four P’s: People Issues
Software projects get into trouble because of:Scale
The scale of many development efforts is large, leading to complexity, confusion, and significant difficulties in coordinating team members
Uncertainty Resulting in a continuing stream of changes
Interoperability New software must communicate with existing software and
conform to predefined constraints imposed by the system or product
Four P’s: People Issues
Software projects get into trouble because of:Formal and informal communication among team
members and between multiple teams must be established
Formal communication – writing, structured meetings, and other non-interactive and impersonal communication channel.
Informal communication – more personal, members share ideas on ad hoc basis
Four P’s: Product
Before project can be planned:Establish product objectives and scope
Communication with the customer and other stakeholders must occur so that product scope and requirements are understood
Identify technical and management constraintsConsider alternative solutions
Enable the managers and practitioners to select a “best” approach, given the constraints imposed by delivery deadlines, budgetary restrictions, personnel availability and other factors
Four P’s: Product Scope
Scope is defined by answering the following questions:Context
How does the software to be built fit into a larger system, product, or business context?
What constraints are imposed as a result of the context? Information objectives
What customer-visible data objects are produced as output from the software?
What data objects are required for input?
Four P’s: Product Scope
Scope is defined by answering the following questions:Function and performance
What function does the software perform to transform input data into output?
Are any special performance characteristics to be addressed?
Software project scope must be unambiguous and understandable at the management and technical levels
Four P’s: Product Problem Decomposition
Sometimes called partitioning or problem elaboration
Once scope is defined … It is decomposed into constituent functions It is decomposed into user-visible data objectsor It is decomposed into a set of problem classes
Decomposition process continues until all functions or problem classes have been defined
Four P’s: Process
Once a process framework has been establishedConsider project characteristicsDetermine the degree of rigor requiredDefine a task set for each software engineering activity
Software engineering tasks Work products Quality assurance points Milestones
Four P’s: ProcessMelding Product and Process
Four P’s: ProcessMelding Product and Process
In the figure shown in previous slide:The job of the project manager (and other team
members) are to: estimate resource requirements for each matrix cell start and end dates for the tasks associated with each cell work products to be produced as a consequence of each task
Four P’s: ProcessProject Decomposition
Factors that you need to look at when choosing the process model:The customers who have requested the product and the
people who will do the workThe characteristics of the product itselfThe project environment in which the software team
works
Four P’s: ProcessProject Decomposition
Example of type of project and suitable approach:A relatively small project that is similar to past efforts -
linear sequential approach might be suitableThe deadline is so tight that full functionality cannot
reasonably be delivered – incremental approach might be suitable
Four P’s: Project
The project must be planned by estimating effort and calendar time to accomplish work tasks
Some of the required activities: defining work productsestablishing quality checkpoints, and identifying mechanisms to monitor and control work
defined by the plan
Four P’s: Project
Projects get into trouble when …Software people don’t understand their customer’s
needsThe product scope is poorly definedChanges are managed poorlyThe chosen technology changesBusiness needs change [or are ill-defined]
Four P’s: Project
Projects get into trouble when …Deadlines are unrealisticUsers are resistantSponsorship is lost (or was never properly obtained)The project team lacks people with appropriate skillsManagers (and practitioners) avoid best practices and
lessons learned
Four P’s: ProjectCommon-Sense Approach to Projects
How does a manager act to avoid the problems?Start on the right footing
This is accomplished by working hard (very hard) to understand the problem that is to be solved and then setting realistic objectives and expectations
Maintain momentum The project manager must provide incentives to keep turnover
of personnel to an absolute minimum, the team should emphasize quality in every task it performs, and senior management should do everything possible to stay out of the team’s way
Four P’s: ProjectCommon-Sense Approach to Projects
Track progress For a software project, progress is tracked as work products
(e.g., models, source code, sets of test cases) are produced and approved (using formal technical reviews) as part of a quality assurance activity
Make smart decisions In essence, the decisions of the project manager and the
software team should be to “keep it simple” Conduct a postmortem analysis
Establish a consistent mechanism for extracting lessons learned for each project
Software Project Management
The W5HH Principle & Critical Practices
The W5HH Principle
A series of questions that lead to a definition of key project characteristics and the resultant project plan Why is the system being developed? What will be done? When will it be accomplished? Who is responsible? Where are they organizationally located? How will the job be done technically and managerially? How much of each resource (e.g., people, software, tools,
database) will be needed?(Boehm, 1996)
Critical Practices
Example of practices that is important in software project management:
Metrics-based project management Measures of specific attributes of the process, project, and
product are used to compute software metrics. These metrics can be analyzed to provide indicators that
guide management and technical actions. Empirical cost and schedule estimation
Estimate how much money, effort, resources (people, hardware, software), risks, and time that will take to build a system
Critical Practices
Defect tracking against quality targetRequires that quality targets be set and that tracked
defects be analyzed against those targets. Involve activities such as:
recording defects in a database following a documented process to analyze, resolve, and
remove them tracking the process measuring defects against quality targets; and reporting metrics on the process to program management
Critical Practices
Example of quality measures with examples of target values, are as follows: Number of defects (a measure of reliability): less than 1 defect
per function point Cyclomatic Complexity (McCabe's): less than 10 for all modules Operator errors: Less than 5 per day Time to restore: less than 1 hour Timing: less than 1 second response time Fault tolerance: at least 80% of failures circumvented
Reference: https://goldpractice.thedacs.com/practices/gp_28.php
Critical Practices
Earned value trackingQuantitative technique for assessing progress as the
software team progresses through the work tasks allocated to the project schedule
People aware managementManagement of people that involve in project
Summary
The importance of Software Project Management The four P’s of effective project management:
People, Product, Process, Project The W5HH Principle and critical practices for
performance-based management
Copyright © 2013 M Mahmoud
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