Chapter : Project Management Concept

Management Spectrum
Effective project management focuses on four
aspects of the project known as the 4 Ps:
People - The most important element of a successful
project. Key areas for software people - recruiting,
selection, performance management, training,
compensation, career development, organization &
work design, team/culture development.
Product - The software to be built (product
objectives, scope, alternative solutions, constraint)
Process - The set of framework activities and
software engineering tasks to get the job done
(framework activities populated with tasks,
milestones, work products, and QA points)
Project - All work required to make the product a
reality. (planning, monitoring, controlling)
People
Player of the project:
The Stakeholders
Team leaders
The Software Team
Coordination and Communication
Issues.
Stakeholders
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.
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
End-users who interact with the software once it is
released for production use.
Team Leaders
MOI model for 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.

Characteristics of effective project managers

(problem solving, managerial identity,
achievement, influence and team building)
Software Teams
How to lead?
How to organize?
How to collaborate?

How to motivate? How to create good ideas?

Software Teams
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 (hardness) of the delivery date
The degree of sociability (communication) required for the
project
Organizational Paradigms for
software engineering team
Closed paradigm
Structures a team along a traditional hierarchy of
authority.
Such teams can work well when producing software
that is quite similar to past efforts.
So, Less likely to be innovative when working within
the closed paradigm.
Random paradigm
Structures a team loosely and depends on individual
initiative of the team members.
When innovation or technological breakthrough is
required, teams following the random paradigm will
excel.
It struggles when orderly performance is required.
Contd.
Open paradigm
Structure a team in a manner that achieves some of the
controls associated with the closed paradigm but also
much of the innovation that occurs when using the
random paradigm.
Open paradigm team structures are well suited to the
solution of complex problems but may not perform as
efficiently as other teams.
Synchronous paradigm
Relies on the natural categorization of a problem and
organizes team members to work on pieces of the problem
with little active communication among themselves.
Team Coordination &
Communication
Characteristics of modern software
Scale, - development effort is high
Uncertainty, - continuing stream of changes
Interoperability - New software must communicate with existing
software
Software engineering team must establish effective methods for
coordinating the people who do the work.
To accomplish this, mechanisms for formal and informal communication
among team members and between multiple teams must be established.
Formal communication is accomplished through writing, structured
meetings, and other relatively activities.
Informal communication is more personal. Members of a software team
share ideas on an ad hoc basis, ask for help as problems arise, and
interact with one another on a daily basis.
The Product
The product is consists of two things.
Softwareor product scope
Problem decomposition.
Product Scope
Software 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 compulsory 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?
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.
Problem Decomposition
Sometimes called partitioning or problem elaboration
Decomposition is applied in 2 major areas
Functionality that must be delivered.
Process that will be used to deliver it.
Software functions, described in the statement of scope, are evaluated
and refined to provide more detail prior to the beginning of estimation
Once scope is defined
It is decomposed into part 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
Decomposition will make planning easier.
The Process
Process model chosen must be appropriate for the:
the customers who have requested the product and the people
who will do the work,
Characteristics of the product itself, and
Project development environment
Once a process framework has been established
Determine the degree of thoroughness required
Define a task set for each software engineering activity
Task set =
Software engineering tasks
Work products
Quality assurance points
Milestones
Melding the Product and
Process
Melding the Product and Process
Project planning begins with melding the product and the
process
Each function to be engineered must pass through the
set of framework activities defined for a software
organization
Each major product function is listed in the left-hand
column.
Framework activities are listed in the top row.
Software engineering work tasks would be entered in the
following row.
The job of the project manager is to estimate resource
requirements for each matrix cell, start and end dates for
the tasks associated with each cell, and work products to
be produced as a consequence of each task.
Process decomposition
Process decomposition begins when the project manager
tries to determine how to accomplish each activity.
E.g. A small, relatively simple project might require the
following work tasks for the communication activity:
1. Develop list of clarification issues.
2. Meet the customer to address clarification issues.
3. Jointly develop a statement of scope.
4. Review the statement of scope with all concerned.
5. Modify the statement of scope as required.
Now, we consider a more complex project, which has a broader scope
and more significant business impact. Such a project might require
the following work tasks for the customer communication activity:

Review the customer request.

Plan and schedule a formal, facilitated meeting with the
customer.
Conduct research to specify the proposed solution and existing
approaches.
Prepare a working document and an agenda for the formal
meeting.
Jointly develop mini-specs that reflect data, function, and
behavioral features of the software.
Review each mini-spec for correctness, consistency, and lack of
ambiguity.
Assemble the mini-specs into a scoping document.
Review the scoping document with all concerned.
Modify the scoping document as required.
The Project
Projects get into jeopardy when
Software people dont understand their customers
needs.
The product scope is poorly defined.
Changes are managed poorly.
The chosen technology changes.
Business needs change [or are ill-defined].
Deadlines are unrealistic.
Users are opposing.
The project team lacks people with appropriate
skills.
Managers [and developers] avoid best practices and
lessons learned.
Common-Sense Approach
1. Start on the right foot. This is accomplished by working
hard (very hard) to understand the problem that is to be
solved and then setting realistic objectives and
expectations.
2. Maintain momentum. The project manager must provide
incentives to their personnel & the team should emphasize
quality in every task it performs
3. 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 as part of a
quality assurance activity.
4. Make smart decisions. In essence, the decisions of the
project manager and the software team should be to keep
it simple.
5. Conduct a postmortem analysis. Establish a consistent
mechanism for extracting lessons learned for each project.
Evaluate plan, schedule, analysis of project, customer
feedback, etc in written form.
Project - W5HH Approach
Approach(W5HH) that addresses project objectives,
milestones and schedules, responsibilities, management
and technical approaches, and required resources.
Why is the system being developed?
Enables all parties to evaluate the validity of business
reasons for the software work
What will be done?
Establish the task set that will be required.
When will it be accomplished?
Establish a project schedule by identifying key
project tasks to achieve milestone.
Who is responsible?
Role and responsibility of each member.
 Where are they organizationally located?
Not only software team itself. Customer, end user and
other stakeholders also have responsibility.
How will the job be done technically and managerially?
Once product scope is established, a management
and technical strategy for the project must be
defined.
How much of each resource is needed?
Develop estimation.

W5HH principle is applicable regardless of size or

complexity of software project
In order to develop project plan, W5HH approach
is more appropriate.