CSEB233: Fundamentals of Software Engineering B. Computer Science (SE) (Hons.) CSEB233: Fundamentals of Software Engineering Software Project Management

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 project Product The software to be built Process 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: People Stakeholders 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: People Stakeholders 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 application Customers 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 Innovation Based 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 manager Achievement 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

Four P’s: People Software Team How to lead? How to organize? How to motivate? How to collaborate? How to create good ideas?

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 software small highly motivated project teams informal methods minimal 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 constraints Consider 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 objects or 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 established Consider project characteristics Determine the degree of rigor required Define a task set for each software engineering activity Software engineering tasks Work products Quality assurance points Milestones

Four P’s: Process Melding Product and Process

Four P’s: Process Melding 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: Process Project 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 work The characteristics of the product itself The project environment in which the software team works

Four P’s: Process Project Decomposition Example of type of project and suitable approach: A relatively small project that is similar to past efforts - linear sequential approach might be suitable The 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 products establishing 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 needs The product scope is poorly defined Changes are managed poorly The chosen technology changes Business needs change [or are ill-defined]

Four P’s: Project Projects get into trouble when … Deadlines are unrealistic Users are resistant Sponsorship is lost (or was never properly obtained) The project team lacks people with appropriate skills Managers (and practitioners) avoid best practices and lessons learned

Four P’s: Project Common-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: Project Common-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 target Requires 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 tracking People aware management Quantitative technique for assessing progress as the software team progresses through the work tasks allocated to the project schedule People aware management Management 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

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