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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