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Chapter 1: Introduction to Software Project Management

• Software Project Management (SPM) is both an art and science.
• SPM involves planning and coordinating the work of software developers and other personnel.
• The goals of SPM are to develop and modify software artifacts that please users/customers, are economical and timely, and are maintainable.

Topics Covered

• Why Managing and Leading Software Projects Is Difficult
• The Nature of Project Constraints
• A Workflow Model for Managing Software Projects
• Organizational Structures for Software Projects
• Organizing the Project Team
• Maintaining the Project Vision and the Product Vision
• Frameworks, Standards, and Guidelines

What is a Project?

• A project is a planned, one-time effort with prescribed starting and ending dates.
• Projects involve assembling a team, allocating schedules and budgets, and establishing well-defined objectives.
• Project define roles, assign responsibilities, and delegate authority
• Software projects are temporary organizational units

What is Management?

• Management coordinates the work activities of others to achieve goals that individuals cannot achieve alone

The Four Major Activities of SPM

• Planning and Estimating: identify work activities, prepare a schedule and a budget.
• Measuring and Controlling: requirements, quality and productivity, schedule and budget, product evolution.
• Leading and Communicating: motivating/coaching project members, communicating with management/customers/subcontractors.
• Managing Risk: identifying and confronting potential problems.

Managing vs Leading

• Managing focuses on quantitative aspects of SPM, like planning, estimating, measuring, controlling, and quantitative risk management.
• Leading focuses on qualitative aspects of SPM, like communicating, coordinating, inspiring, maintaining morale, and qualitative risk management.
• An effective project manager is both a manager and a leader

Project Success Criteria

• The primary goal of S/W engineering is to develop and modify S/W.
• S/W needs to satisfying technical requirements, user needs & expectations.
• The S/W needs to delivered on time & within budget, where development milestones are achieved in time & within budget.
• The S/W needs to be easy to modify and maintain.
• High staff morale throughout project, where work instills pride in the developers

Project Manager's Success Criteria

• Delivering an acceptable product on time and within budget, within project constraints.
• Projects need to maintain good relations with customers, suppliers, managers, and other organizational units.
• Criteria includes maintaining a motivated project team and advancing the career of each project member.

Why Software Projects Are Difficult

• Fred Brooks states accidental and essential difficulties make software projects difficult.
• Accidental difficulties arise from the current state of methods, tools, and techniques in technology.
• Essential difficulties stem from the inherent nature of software.

Essential Difficulties

• Complexity: Software has many unique, interacting parts in a software system.
• Conformity: Software must conform to specifications, interfaces, and the operating environment.
• Changeability: Software changes because customers' minds, competing products, mission objectives evolve over time
• Invisibility: Software has no physical properties. Software products under development are often reported to be "almost complete" for long periods of time with no evidence.

Additional Difficulties

• Software development is intellect-intensive and team-oriented, using "plan-driven" or "agile" approaches.
• Software have externally imposed constraints such as Hardware, process standards, business considerations, and ethical considerations

Project Constraints

• Useful constraints provide guidance for planning and evaluation.
• Inhibiting constraints inhibit the ability to achieve success criteria.
• Managing software projects involves balancing constraints on scope, budget, resources, technology, and scheduled delivery date.

Workflow Model/ Process Model for Software Projects

• A workflow model includes aspects of change requests, requirements, planning, directives, reporting and software development.
• Other stages include activity definition, work assignments, validation, quality, configuration and supporting services.

Supporting Processes for S/W Projects

• Supporting processes include Configuration Management, Verification, Validation, Quality Assurance, and others.
• Configuration Management involves change control, baseline management, product audits, and product builds.
• Verification determines the degree to which work products satisfy conditions, while Validation assesses their fitness for intended use.
• Quality Assurance assures conformance of work processes/products to policies, plans, and procedures.
• Documentation involves preparation/updating of intermediate and deliverable work products, and maintaining developer/user training.

Eight Supporting Processes in ISO & IEEE Standards 12207

• Documentation
• Configuration management
• Quality assurance
• Verification
• Validation
• Joint review
• Audit
• Problem resolution

Organizational Structures for S/W Projects

• Organizations conducting engineering projects are typically organized in one of four ways: functional, project, matrix, or hybrid structure.
• Functional Structures are either process-oriented, containing Requirements groups, Design groups and Implementation groups, or are product-oriented, containing User Interface groups, Algorithm Groups, or Database groups.
• Project-Structured Organizations include project managers that have authority and responsibility for managing budget and resources.
• Matrix-Structured Organizations combine both project and functional structures; workers thus have two bosses

Hybrid Structures

• Few if any, organizations are purely functional, project, or matrix in nature.
• Organizations fall on a spectrum of high functional emphasis to high project emphasis.

An Organizational Model for S/W Projects

• Customer
• Project Manager
  • Software Architect
    • Team Leader #1
    • Team Leader #2
    • Team Leader #3 -V&V -CM -XX -Member -Member -Member -Member Each team has 2 to 5 members plus a team leader

Organizing The Project Team

• A complex system is composed of hardware, software, and people (operators, maintainers).
• A software project may be one of a collection of projects under the technical direction of a system engineering team

The System Engineering Team

• Defining/specifying system requirements and developing the system design.
• Allocating system requirements to components and integrating them, while verifying and validating system operation.
• These functions are termed “software system engineers" for "software only" projects.

Maintaining Project and Product Visions

• The project manager keeps the process vision, documented in the project roadmap.
• The software architect keeps the product vision (goals), documented in the requirements and architectural design.

Movie Producer/Director Analogy

• Project manager = the movie producer has overall responsibility for schedules, budgets, resources, customer relations, and delivery of a satisfactory product on time and with budget.
• The director (software architect) is responsible for the content of the product.
• Producer/director, maintain/communicate the process and product vision to developers/stakeholders.

Frameworks, Standards, and Guidelines

• A process framework is a generic process model adaptable to specific projects and organizations.
• An engineering standard codifies methods, practices and is endorsed by societies/agencies.
• Guidelines are pragmatic statements of practices effective in many situations.

Well Known Frameworks

• The Capability Maturity Model® Integration for development CMMI-DEV-v1.2) [www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/models]
• ISO/IEC and IEEE/EIA Standards 12207 [www.iso.org]; [standards.ieee.org/software]
• IEEE/EIA Standard 1058 [standards.ieee.org/software]
• The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) [www.pmibookstore.org]

Main Points of Chapter 1

• A project is a coordinated set of activities within a timeframe to achieve objectives
• SPM activities are planning/estimating, measuring/controlling, leading/communicating.
• Software projects are inherently difficult due to complexity, changeability and invisibility.
• Software projects are conducted by teams of individuals who engage in intellect-intensive teamwork
• Workflow model indicates the work activities and the flow of work products among work activities in a software project
• Organizations must use functional, project, weak matrix, and strong matrix structures
• Hierarchies must expand and shrink to fit the needs of each project
• Requirements must be allocated and the design structured so that the work of each small team can proceed concurrently with the work of other teams.