comp3521 Ch22

Software Project Management

• Involves activities to ensure software is delivered on time and schedule.
• It also makes sure the software meets organizational requirements for development and procurement.
• Is needed due to budget and schedule constraints set by the developing organization.

Success Criteria

• Deliver software to the customer at the agreed time.
• Stay within the budget.
• Ensure the developed software meets customer expectations.
• Maintain a cohesive and well-functioning development team.

Software Management Distinctions

• The product is intangible, meaning it cannot be physically seen or touched.
• Software project managers cannot visually gauge progress like in tangible product construction.
• Many software projects are "one-off," differing from previous ones, making it difficult for managers to anticipate problems even with prior experience.
• Software processes vary and are specific to the organization.
• It is challenging to reliably predict when a software process might lead to development issues.

Factors Influencing Project Management

• Company size, software customers, software size, and software type influence project management.
• Organizational culture and software development processes also have an impact.
• Project managers in different organizations may operate differently due to these factors.

Universal Management Activities

• Project planning involves managers planning, estimating, scheduling project development, and assigning tasks.
• Risk management includes managers assessing and monitoring risks and responding to problems.
• People management requires managers to select their team and create effective working methods.

Additional Management Activities

• Reporting on project progress to customers and company management is a key activity.
• Proposal writing is often the first step to secure a contract, outlining project objectives and execution.

Risk Management

• Identifies risks and creates plans to minimize their impact on a project.
• It's important due to uncertainties in software development like:
  • Loosely defined requirements.
  • Changes in customer needs.
  • Difficulty estimating time and resources.
  • Differences in individual skills.
• It is important to anticipate risks, understand their impact on the project, product, and business, and take steps to avoid them.

Risk Classification Dimensions

• The type of risk, whether technical, organizational, or other.
• What the risk affects.

Risk Categories

• Project risks affects schedule or resources.
• Product risks affects the quality or performance of the software.
• Business risks affects the organization developing or procuring the software.

Examples of Project, Product, and Business Risks

• Project risks can include staff turnover, management changes, hardware unavailability.
• Product risks includes requirements changes, specification delays, size underestimates, and CASE tool underperformance.
• Business risks includes technology change, and product competition.

Risk Management Process

• Involves risk identification, analysis, planning, and monitoring.
• Identification - identify project, product, and business risks.
• Analysis - assess the likelihood and consequences of identified risks.
• Planning - develop strategies to avoid or minimize the effects of the risks.
• Monitoring - keep track of risks throughout the project.

Risk Identification

• Can be team activities or rely on the project manager's experience.
• A checklist of common risks in the project can be used.
• Common risk checklists includes technology, organizational, people, requirements, and estimation risks.

Examples of Different Risk Types

• Estimation risks can be that the time, rate of defect repair, or size of the software is underestimated.
• Organizational risks range from restructuring that changes management responsibilities to financial problems.
• People risks includes difficulty in recruiting skilled staff, staff illness, and unavailable training.
• Requirements risks include major rework and the customer's failure to understand the impact of changes.
• Technology risks cover database performance issues and defects in reusable components.
• Tools risks relate to inefficient code generation.

Risk Analysis

• Involves assessing the probability and seriousness of each risk.
• Probability scales ranges from very low to very high.
• Consequences can be catastrophic, serious, tolerable, or insignificant.

Risk consequences and examples, with probability factor

• Low probability and catastrophic effects results from Organizational financial problems forcing budget reductions.
• High probability and catastrophic effects results from the Impossibility to recruit skilled staff.
• Key staffs being ill at critical times results in moderate probability and serious effects.
• Faults in reusable software components leads to moderate probability and serious effects.
• Changes to requirements needing major design rework result in moderate probability and serious effects.
• Organizational restructuring leads to high probability and serious effects.
• Moderate probability and serious effects results from a Database being unable to process as many transactions as expected.
• The time required to develop the software being underestimated results in high probability and serious effects.
• Software tools not being integrated leads to high probability and tolerable effects.
• The Underestimation of software size leads to high probability and tolerable effects.

Examples Risk Planning Strategies

• Avoidance strategies reduces risk probability.
• Minimization strategies reduces the impact of the risk on the project or product.
• Contingency plans detail actions to handle the risk if it occurs.

What-If Questions

• Examples are "what if an economic downturn leads to budget cuts" or "What if engineers are ill at the same time?"

Risk management strategies examples:

• If facing organizational financial problems, prepare a briefing document for senior management on the project importance.
• If there are staffing issues, alerting the customer about potential delays and explore buying components may help.
• When employees are sick,reorganizing the team to increase work overlap.
• When components are defective, replace parts with reliable ones
• When there are too many changed requirements, enhance traceability for impact assessment and boost information hiding in design.
• If a database has performance problems, investigate buying a better database.

Risk Monitoring

• Regularly assess identified risks to determine if they are more or less probable.
• Evaluate if the effects of risks have changed.
• Key risks should be discussed at management meetings.

Risk indicators examples

• Estimation includes failure to meet agreed schedule.
• Failure to clear reported defects indicates risk in estimates.
• Organizational gossip can reflect organizational risk.
• High staff turnover signals people-related risk.
• Frequent changes to requirements reflects risk in requirements.
• Late hardware delivery reflects risk in technology.
• Reluctance to use tools reflects risk in tools.

Managing People

• People are an organization’s most important assets.
• Management relies on grasping the human element; without it, it's destined to fail.
• Poor people management is a leading cause of project failures.

People management factors include:

• Consistency in treatment without favoritism.
• Respect for diverse skills among team members.
• Inclusion of all team members’ views.
• Honesty about project progress is essential.

Motivating People

• An essential role is to motivate people working on a project.
• Project motivation should organize the work and environment to encourage effective work.
• Motivating people includes meeting basic needs, respecting personal needs, meeting social needs

Types of Motivation

• Basic needs (food, sleep, etc.)
• Personal needs (respect, self-esteem)
• Social needs (acceptance as part of a group)

Need Satisfaction in Software Development

• Addresses social, esteem, and self-realization needs, as basic physiological and safety needs aren't concerns.
• Social needs are addressed with facilities and communications.
• Esteem needs are addressed with achievements and rewards.
• Self-realization is addressed with training and responsibilities.

Individual Motivation Case-Study

• Dorothy, a hardware design expert, has lost interest in her job in a software development group for assistive technology.
• She's working as a C programmer and is not developing her interfacing skills
• Dorothy minimized conversation with team members to avoid revealing she is thinking about the next project.
• Group members may become dissatisfied if the problem of unacceptable work is not addressed.
• Personal difficulties affect motivation as People can’t focus on their work.
• Alice attempts to give Dorothy more design autonomy and offers the software engineering training.

Personality Types

• Motivation considers task-oriented, interaction-oriented, self-oriented people.
• Motivation is more than a needs hierarchy.
• Task-oriented people motivated by software work.
• Interaction-oriented people motivated by others.
• Self-oriented people motivated by achievements.

Characteristics of Different Personality Types

• Task-oriented people find motivation in the work itself.
• Self-oriented types sees the work as an achievement of personal goals (wealth, hobbies, etc.).
• Interaction-oriented people derives motivation from others, and enjoy going to work.

Motivation Balance

• Individual motivations combine elements of all classes.
• The balance depends on personal circumstances and events.
• Group culture are a part of motivation.
• People are motivated by others.

Teamwork

• Most software engineering is group oriented.
• Group cohesiveness and team spirit are essential for any trivial projects.
• Members are motivated by what the group aims to achieve.

Group Cohesiveness

• Members thinks group is more important then any person in cohesiveness
• Cohesive groups have members that set standards, learn, reduces ignorance, shares, refactors, and continually improves.

Team spirit example

• Alice involves the members of her assistive technology group in product specification design.
• Has group discusses technology and has them meet with seniors/ elderly relatives.
• Alice also arranges monthly lunches, bringing the team together to solve problems.
• Team has an away day every few months

Effectiveness of Team

• Project teams needs a variety of skill, such as client negotiation, programming, testing and documentation
• Project team should be organised and effective
• Communication team member enhances the effectiveness

Selection of Group Members

• A team leader has to organize a cohesive group for effective teamwork.
• Selection depends on the balance of skills, personality, etc.

Assembling a Team

• Assembling depends on budget, experience, and the needs of the software project.
• Managers still have to work around staff shortages.

Group Composition

• Groups of member with one motivation can be problematic.
• A task-oriented team may have many members want to do there own thing.
• A self-oriented team may all want to be the boss
• An Interaction-oriented team may chat too much to the deficit of work.
• Key to making an effective team is to have a group with both of these.
• Interaction-oriented are effective as they detect problems and defuse them.

Creating a Group Based on Personalities

• Alice, has to select members based on complementary personalities
• Alice selects members based on task-oriented, self-oriented, or interaction-oriented members.
• The final selection were a mix of all 3.

Group Organization

• The way that information is exchanged and the interaction it has.
• Should project managers be technical leaders of group?
• What roles are for critical tech.
• How does interactions with external stakeholders and senior company management be handled?

Group Organization Factors

• Small software engineering groups should be organized informally.
• Large projects structure groups into subprojects.
• Agile development is based on an informal group on formal structure inhibits.

Informal Groups

• An entire group contributes to consensus.
• A groups leader facilitates and handles work.
• The group determines work based on skills.

Group communications

• Good communications are essential for effective group working.
• Information must be exchanged on the status of work.
• Communication strengthens group cohesion as it promotes understanding.

Group Communications include:

• Group Size affects communication
• Group structure affects communication
• Group composition affects communication
• Work environment affects communication