Project activities and experiences in an Albanian software company Luan Jubica Zagreb 2004

Objectives  Overview of the first experiences  Problems  New experiences

First experiences  It all began with 3-4 programmers wishing to build and accounting software  Continues with 2-3 “analysts” in our case accountants  The accountants where the “analysts” and the “testers” of the software  The programmers where the “designers” and “implementers”

Programmers Accountants First experiences (cont...) Design Implementation Analysis and Definition Test

First experiences (cont...)  Changes or modifications made by two persons One programmer ( to do the implementation ) One accountant ( to describe and test it )  The programmer usually kept track of the changes and was responsible for versions of a certain software

First experiences (sum up)  No real software process  Building only desktop applications  No project management or version control  No CASE tools used so far

Environmental changes  Inside problems  Evolution in technology  Market changes

What’s happening inside?!  Key members (developers) leaving the company.  The documentation of the products being very poor (limited to the code comments, or small documents).  Very difficult the tracking of versions.

Evolution in technology  More advanced hardware features  New developing platforms  Database design facilities

Market changes  Increasing computer usage and knowledge  Wider and more advanced technical equipment  Number of companies and their size growing  The company began to grow in terms of : number of clients requests for new software  The market required the software architecture to change in client/server.

Problems (sum up)  More requirements Quality New features More advanced security solutions  Leaking in management No strategy No versioning control Members leaving Immediate need for changes !

New experiences  Technology  Management  The software process (some kind at least!!)

Technology  Moved from Visual Basic 4 to Visual Basic 6.0  Started using some CASE tools Sybase Power Designer for database design Microsoft Visio Microsoft Visual Source Safe for version control Code generation tools

Management  The staff became organized in groups or teams (usually 3-4 team members)  Every team developed a new software or specific modules of existing ones  Started using CVS systems  Documenting changes using more sophisticated software (Microsoft Project)

The software process  Started using a software process like RUP  Started using UML, building use cases  Rational Rose used as main CASE – tool in Analysis and Design phase

Summary  Software process applied  New CASE tools  New project management  New code generation tools