Software Project Management
Software Project Management
Software Project Management
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Topics covered
Risk management
Managing people
Teamwork
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Software project management
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Success criteria
Project planning
Project managers are responsible for planning.
estimating and scheduling project development and
assigning people to tasks.
Reporting
Project managers are usually responsible for reporting
on the progress of a project to customers and to the
managers of the company developing the software.
Risk management
Project managers assess the risks that may affect a
project, monitor these risks and take action when
problems arise.
People management
Project managers have to choose people for their team and
establish ways of working that leads to effective team
performance
Proposal writing
The first stage in a software project may involve writing a
proposal to win a contract to carry out an item of work. The
proposal describes the objectives of the project and how it will
be carried out.
Risk identification
Identify project, product and business risks;
Risk analysis
Assess the likelihood and consequences of these risks;
Risk planning
Draw up plans to avoid or minimise the effects of the
risk;
Risk monitoring
Monitor the risks throughout the project;
Risk Strategy
Organizational financial Prepare a briefing document for senior management
problems showing how the project is making a very important
contribution to the goals of the business and presenting
reasons why cuts to the project budget would not be cost-
effective.
Recruitment problems Alert customer to potential difficulties and the possibility of
delays; investigate buying-in components.
Staff illness Reorganize team so that there is more overlap of work and
people therefore understand each other’s jobs.
Defective components Replace potentially defective components with bought-in
components of known reliability.
Requirements changes Derive traceability information to assess requirements
change impact; maximize information hiding in the design.
Risk Strategy
Organizational Prepare a briefing document for senior management
restructuring showing how the project is making a very important
contribution to the goals of the business.
Database Investigate the possibility of buying a higher-performance
performance database.
Underestimated Investigate buying-in components; investigate use of a
development time program generator.
Consistency
Team members should all be treated in a comparable
way without favourites or discrimination.
Respect
Different team members have different skills and these
differences should be respected.
Inclusion
Involve all team members and make sure that people’s
views are considered.
Honesty
You should always be honest about what is going well
and what is going badly in a project.
Motivating people
Alice is a software project manager working in a company that develops alarm systems.
This company wishes to enter the growing market of assistive technology to help elderly and
disabled people live independently. Alice has been asked to lead a team of 6 developers
than can develop new products based around the company’s alarm technology.
Alice’s assistive technology project starts well. Good working relationships develop within
the team and creative new ideas are developed. The team decides to develop a peer-to-
peer messaging system using digital televisions linked to the alarm network for
communications. However, some months into the project, Alice notices that Dorothy, a
hardware design expert, starts coming into work late, the quality of her work deteriorates
and, increasingly, that she does not appear to be communicating with other members of the
team.
Alice talks about the problem informally with other team members to try to find out if
Dorothy’s personal circumstances have changed, and if this might be affecting her work.
They don’t know of anything, so Alice decides to talk with Dorothy to try to understand the
problem.
After some initial denials that there is a problem, Dorothy admits that she has lost
interest in the job. She expected that she would be able to develop and use her
hardware interfacing skills. However, because of the product direction that has been
chosen, she has little opportunity for this. Basically, she is working as a C programmer
with other team members.
Although she admits that the work is challenging, she is concerned that she is not
developing her interfacing skills. She is worried that finding a job that involves
hardware interfacing will be difficult after this project. Because she does not want to
upset the team by revealing that she is thinking about the next project, she has
decided that it is best to minimize conversation with them.
Task-oriented.
The motivation for doing the work is the work itself;
Self-oriented.
The work is a means to an end which is the
achievement of individual goals - e.g. to get rich, to play
tennis, to travel etc.;
Interaction-oriented
The principal motivation is the presence and actions of
co-workers. People go to work because they like to go
to
work.
Alice also arranges monthly lunches for everyone in the group. These lunches are an
opportunity for all team members to meet informally, talk around issues of concern, and
get to know each other. At the lunch, Alice tells the group what she knows about
organizational news, policies, strategies, and so forth. Each team member then briefly
summarizes what they have been doing and the group discusses a general topic, such as
new product ideas from elderly relatives.
Every few months, Alice organizes an ‘away day’ for the group where the team spends
two days on ‘technology updating’. Each team member prepares an update on a relevant
technology and presents it to the group. This is an off-site meeting in a good hotel and
plenty of time is scheduled for discussion and social interaction.
Alice—self-oriented
Brian—task-oriented
Bob—task-oriented
Carol—interaction-oriented
Dorothy—self-oriented
Ed—interaction-oriented
Fred—task-oriented
Group size
The larger the group, the harder it is for people to
communicate with other group members.
Group structure
Communication is better in informally structured groups
than in hierarchically structured groups.
Group composition
Communication is better when there are different
personality types in a group and when groups are mixed
rather than single sex.
The physical work environment
Good workplace organisation can help encourage
communications.