Software Project Management Chapter 9

Chapter 9 - Software Project Management

• Software project management is concerned with ensuring software is delivered on time and within budget, meeting organizational requirements.
• Project management is needed as software development often faces budgetary and scheduling constraints.
• Success criteria for software projects include delivering the software by the agreed time, staying within budget, meeting customer expectations, and maintaining a functioning development team.
• Software projects are unique, intangible, and frequently one-off projects, making them inherently unpredictable and differing from previous projects.
• Software processes are diverse and depend on the organization.
• Factors influencing project management include company size, software customers, software type, software size, organizational culture, and software development processes.
• These factors impact how project managers operate in different organizations.

Universal Management Activities

• Project planning involves planning, estimating, scheduling development, and assigning tasks.
• Risk management involves assessing risks impacting a project, monitoring these risks, and taking action when necessary.
• People management involves selecting team members and establishing effective working methods.

Management Activities

• Reporting is the project manager's responsibility for informing customers and management on project progress.
• Proposal writing is often the initial stage of software projects to win contracts and define project objectives and implementation plans.

Risk Management

• Risk management focuses on identifying risks, planning to minimize their impact, and continuously monitoring them.
• Software risk management is crucial due to uncertainties in development, loosely defined requirements, evolving customer needs, estimating time and resources, and variations in individual skills.
• Accurate risk anticipation, understanding their impact on the project, product, and business, and implementing mitigation strategies are essential for effective risk management.

Risk Classification

• Risk classification involves considering the type of risk (technical, organizational) and what is affected by that risk (project, product, business).
• Project risks involve schedule or resource issues.
• Product risks relate to software quality or performance.
• Business risks involve the software-developing or procuring organization.

The Risk Management Process

• Risk identification involves determining project, product, and business risks.
• Risk analysis involves assessing the likelihood and consequences of identified risks.
• Risk planning involves creating strategies to avoid or mitigate risks.
• Risk monitoring involves observing risks, evaluating their potential changes, and the impact throughout the project lifecycle.
• A cyclical process encompassing identification, analysis, planning, monitoring, and assessment.

Risk Identification Examples

• Risk identification can be based on teamwork, individual project manager's experience, or a common risk checklist.
• Common risks include technology issues, organizational factors, and concerns related to personnel, requirements, and estimation.

Examples of Different Risk Types

• Specific examples of risks within estimation, organizational, people, requirements, and technological domains.

Risk Analysis

• Risk analysis involves evaluating the probability and seriousness of risks, with classifications like very low, low, moderate, high, and very high.
• Risk consequences can range from catastrophic to serious, tolerable, or insignificant.
• Probability and impact/effect are considered for each risk.

Risk Types and Examples

• Examples of risks with their probabilities and potential negative effects, including organizational financial problems, staff illness, defective components, requirements changes, and technological issues.

Risk Planning

• Risk planning involves strategies to manage risks.
• Avoidance strategies reduce the probability of a risk occurring.
• Minimization strategies reduce the impact of a risk.
• Contingency plans provide responses for when a risk materializes.

What-If Questions

• A crucial part of risk preparation, raising potential issues.

Strategies to Help Manage Risk

• Strategies tailored for different risk scenarios.

Risk Monitoring

• Regularly assessing identified risks, observing changes in their probability and impact.
• Engaging management in progress meetings to discuss risks.
• Tracking risk indicators that may point to potential problems.

Risk Indicators

• Key indicators from each risk type: estimation, organizational, people, requirements, technology, and tools.

Managing People

• People are an organization's valuable assets.
• Successful management requires people-focused strategies.
• Poor people management contributes to project failure.

People Management Factors

• Ensuring consistency in treating team members.
• Recognizing and respecting individual skills and perspectives.
• Fostering inclusion through consideration of team member views.
• Providing honest feedback on successes and challenges.

Motivating People

• Motivate team members through comprehensive project organization and working environment design.
• Motivated teams are more active, productive, and effective.
• Factors impacting motivation in different types include basic needs, personal needs, and social needs.

Human Needs Hierarchy

• The hierarchical nature of human needs.

Need Satisfaction

• Factors of need satisfaction in software development environments.

Personality Types

• Different personality types in teams and their impact on workflow and motivation.
• Task-oriented, self-oriented, and interaction-oriented personality types are discussed.

Motivation Balance

• Individual motivation compositions and how they may change under various circumstances.
• The influences of group and cultural factors on overall motivation.

Teamwork

• Software engineering is frequently a team effort, requiring a cohesive group that can be coordinated towards a common goal.
• A well-integrated team is key for achieving optimal results and staying on schedule and budget.

Group Cohesiveness

• Members prioritize the group over individual needs within a cohesive group.
• Group cohesiveness results in development of group-standard methodologies for quality control and shared knowledge.

The Effectiveness of a Team

• The necessity of having diverse expertise within teams for effective project delivery to clients.
• Effective team interactions to achieve a consensus decision and efficiently completing tasks.

Selecting Group Members

• Selecting group members with right balance of technical skills and personality types is crucial for efficiency.

Assembling a Team

• Practical limitations of assembling teams, such as budget constraints or expertise availability, need to be considered.

Group Composition

• Teams are problematic if individuals are simply pursuing their own goals versus those of the group.
• Interaction-oriented personalities are valuable in helping navigate project dynamics.

Group Organization

• The organization of software development groups influences information exchange and interaction between team members and external stakeholders.
• Determining the appropriate leader and how to structure teams is essential.

Informal Groups

• Group decisions are based on consensus, not explicitly assigned tasks.
• This structure promotes efficiency when groups have shared expertise and a cooperative environment for completing projects.

Group Communications

• Importance and need for communicating to ensure group cohesion and effectiveness.
• Various factors, such as group size, structure, and personal dynamics, may influence communication within a software development team.
• Good communications promote understanding, allowing teams to work toward shared goals.

Key Points

• Emphasizing the crucial role of effective project management in successfully developing software projects.
• Defining the differences of software project management from other engineering fields.
• Underscoring the significance of implementing risk management, people management, and communication to support efficient and cohesive software development teams.