Software Project Management

The existential questions (Critical Management Questions)

• Why is the system being developed?

• Is there a good business case for initiating the project?

• Should it continue or be terminated?

The people side (soft side of software engineering) (Critical Management Questions)

• Who is on the team?

• do we have effective high performing teams?

• how is our team/project structured?

• what is our decision making process?

How much of each resource is needed? (Critical Management Questions)

People are the most important resource, selection ,hiring, and retention

Which life cycle model will we use? (Critical Management Questions)

Iterative and/or incremental approaches

Setting and managing expectations (Critical Management Questions)

• What is the scope of the product?

• When will it get done?

• How much is it gonna cost?

The customer will change the scope of the project (requirement volatility) which will impact the schedule and cost.

How will the work be done? (Critical Management Questions)

• which organizational assests will be used?

• which Engineering processes? XP, TDD, Peer reviews…

• Which management process will be used? Scrum, EVM, burndown charts…

Communications (Critical Management Questions)

• Do we have good communication with our customer and our staff?

• Who is responsible for implementing a module?

How are we managing risks? (Critical Management Questions)

• Have you gone through a risk identification process?

• Risk monitoring?

• Contingency plans, is there a backup plan?

According to Reifer, Software management is

• the act of motivating people

• to accomplish desired work-related goals and objectives

• using available resources in the most efficient and effective manner.

Healthcare.gov was mostly a…

management failure, there almost no management at all

What does it mean by “The problem is management”

• when a project is cancelled, management failure is usually the root cause

• There are lots of problems that will give us grief, with known solutions. We simply do not use them.

What causes today’s major problems within military software

Management problems rather than technical

(1/10) Most effective way of planning?

Use a work breakdown structure (WBS) as your primary planning tool

(2/10) How can you make sure you’re no over promise and under delivering?

Establish reasonable budgets and schedules for the effort required

(3/10) How can we solve and avoid scheduling issues and adhere to deadlines

Use critical path analysis to devise the shortest possible schedule

(4/10) What is the most effective way of identifying defects?

Embrace peer reviews as your primary appraisal methodology

(5/10) How can we gauge how much effort and time will be required to finish tasks?

Use rate of progress charts to get a handle on what it will take to finish tasks

(6/10) How does one know when to release a product

Embrace defect metrics to determine when it is reasonable to release the product.

T/F You dont have to fix all the bugs before the release of a product

True

(7/10) What can be used to gauge how much it will take to complete the effort?

Rely on cost and schedule-to-complete estimates to get a handle on what it will take to complete the effort.

(8/10) What needs to be tracked prior to release?

Track open issues and actions to their culmination prior to releasing the product. You should closely monitor and follow through on any outstanding problems, tasks, or actions that need to be resolved or completed before the product is ready for release or launch.

(9/10) What needs to be checked to ensure product meets user expectations?

Check quality often to ensure the product meets user expectations

(10/10) How can resources be managed effectively when issues arise?

Use risk management techniques to determine priorities so that you can use resources effectively once issues start arising.

What a work breakdown structure (WBS)?

An enumeration of all work activities in hierarchy

How is a WBS oriented?

• Can be task-oriented

• Can be product-oriented

• likely hybrid

How is work organized in a WBS?

Organizes work into work packages of short, manageable tasks.

What is the typical level of effort required according to WBS?

8-80 person-hours of effort(1-10 days)

T/F The WBS is used to assign responsibility for tasks

TRUE

What estimates are required by an item in the WBS?

Time and cost estimates are needed b each item in the WBS.

T/F For software projects, effort and cost are largely the same

TRUE

What creates a disconnect between managers and programmers?

Their definition of success

In one research study of a project that failed to meet its estimates, the management saw it as a ___ and the technical participants saw it as the most ____ project they had ever worked on

failure, successful

What is Estimating

The process of forecasting or approximating the time and cost of completing project deliverables

What parameters, other than time and cost need to be estimated?

• size – lines of code, function points, etc

• critical resources

T/F Software project cost is largely driven by effort.

TRUE

T/F Schedule and effort are the same when estimating.

FALSE

What are the two major classes of estimating

• Top-down

• bottom-up

T/F Top-Down estimating gives a rough estimate

TRUE

Top-Down estimating is usually done by ____

Senior Management

Bottom-Up estimating is usually done by _____

the people who are doing the work

Bottom-Up estimating is based on ______

Work Breakdown Structure

What is aggregating expert judgment?

Combine estimates from a number of experts. You could calculate the average or median of the individual estimates

How do you overcome the influences of assertive experts and authority figures when aggregating judgments?

The practice of the Wideband Delphi method

Wideband Delphi method is when ____

Experts estimate anonymously iteratively until convergence

T/F You should be pessimistic in your estimates

TRUE

the student syndrome - Starting at the last minute is an example of ____

Wasting the safety

Multitasking is an example of ____

Wasting the safety

T/F Dependencies between steps cause delays to accumulate and advances to be wasted

TRUE

User Story (Agile methods)

Describes functionality that will be valuable to either a user or purchaser of a system.

What are the three components of a user story?

1. Card

2. Conversation

3. Confirmation

In user story, the card is _____

written description of the story used for planning and as a reminder

User story conversations are ___

about the story that serve to flesh out details of the story

A user story confirmation are the ___

details that can be used to determine when a story is complete.

T/F A user story is a promise to have a discussion in which not every detail needs to be included.

TRUE

What are Story points?

the unit in which user stories are normally estimated in

T/F Story points are not artificial measures of effort, meaning they are a direct measure of effort (i.e. hours, minutes, weeks)

FALSE,

• Story points are artificial measures of effort

• They are not a direct measure of effort, such as hours

T/F Humans tend to be better at making relative or comparative estimations than they are at providing precise, absolute values. In Agile estimation, this principle is leveraged by comparing new user stories to existing ones.

TRUE

Y/N Do story point estimates change because of experience?

No

Y/N In agile project management and estimation, is it common for the absolute accuracy of estimations to be less important than maintaining consistency among the estimations?

Yes, the primary goal of estimation is not to achieve perfectly accurate estimations, so long as they are consistent.

Example:

• if Feature A is estimated as twice as complex as Feature B, this relative comparison should hold true across the board.

Y/N Does velocity, after a few sprints, tend to stabilize until and unless the team is changed?

Yes

Iron Triangle - Projects have imposed constraints of

1. scope (features, requirements)

2. cost (resource, effort)

3. time (schedule)

Y/N With regards to the Iron Triangle, can you change one constraint without affecting one or both of the others?

No, you can “fix” all three at the same time

Karl Wiegers (1996) suggests there are really 5 interrelated project dimensions

1. scope

2. schedule

3. cost

4. staff

5. quality

T/F According to Goldratt, multitasking is probably the biggest killer of lead time.

TRUE

Y/S Is there an inverse relationship between the number of simultaneous projects and productivity?

Yes

What is the required time commitment towards a specific team, in order to be considered as “full time”?

90%

What does it mean by providing 50-90% towards a team

Part time, “This is my home team but I have other commitments, too”

T/F Less than 50% means not a team member

TRUE, “I can support you guys from time to time, but I’m not part of your team and you can’t always count on me”

How can you maintain performance despite having to multitask?

The key to performance is focusing on the high-priority tasks first.

Plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios can be described by the _____

The Planning Fallacy

How can we mitigate the planning fallacy?

TBD

T/F The larger the software the higher the probability of the software project being cancelled

TRUE