Project Management Flashcards
Project Management
Organising, planning and scheduling software projects.
Software Management Distinctions
- Product is intangible (cannot be seen or touched)
- Software engineering is not recognised an an engineering discipline with same status as mechanical etc
- Software development process is not standardised
- Many software projects are one off projects.
Project Management Activies
- proposal writing
- project planning and scheduling
- project costing
- project monitoring and reviews
- personnel selection and evaluation
- report writing and presentations
Management Commonalities
- these activities are not peculiar to software management
- many techniques of engineering project management are equally applicable to software project management
- complex engineering systems tends to suffer from the same problems as software systems
Project Staffing
May not be possible to appoint the ideal people to work on a project due to budget.
Project Planning
Most time consuming project management activity.
Types of Project Plans
- quality plan
- validation plan
- configuration management plan
- maintenance plan
- staff development plan
Quality Plan
Describes the quality procedures and standards that will be used in the project.
Validation Plan
Describes the approach, resources and schedule used for the system validation.
Configuration Management Plan
Describes the configuration management procedures and structures to be used.
Maintanence Plan
Predicts the maintenance requirements of the system, maintenance costs and effort required.
Staff Development Plan
Describes how the skills and experience of the project team members will be developed.
Project Plan Structure
- introduction
- project organisation
- risk analysis
- hardware and software resource requirements
- work breakdown
- project schedule
- monitoring and reporting mechanisms
Activity Organisation
Activities in a project should be organised to produce tangible outputs for management to judge progress.
Milestones
End-point of process activity.
Deliverables
Project results delivered to customers.
Project Scheduling
Split project into tasks and estimate time and resources required to complete tasks.
Organise tasks concurrently to make optimal use of workforce.
Minimise task dependencies to avoid delays by one task on another task.
Scheduling Problems
Estimating the difficulty of problems and hence the cost of developing a solution is hard.
Productivity != number of people working on task.
Adding people late can make it even later due to communication overheads.
Always allow for contingency in planning.
Bar Charts and Activity Networks
Graphical notation used to illustrate the project schedule.
Activity charts show dependencies and the critical path.
Bar charts show schedule against calendar time.
Tasks should not be too small and should take a week or two.
Risk Management
Concerned with identifying risks and drawing up plans to minimise the effect of those risks on the project.
Product Risks
Affect quality or performance of the software being developed.
Business Risks
Affect the organisation developing or procuring the software.
Pert Charts
Project management tool used to schedule, organize and coordinate tasks within a project.
Includes time frames for tasks, like early start and late end.
Risk Management Process
- risk identification
- risk analysis
- risk planning
- risk monitoring
Risk Identification
Identify project, product and business risks
Risk Analysis
Access the likelihood and consequences of these risks.
Risk Planning
Draw up plans to avoid or minimise the effects of the risk
Risk Monitoring
Monitor the risks throughout the project.
Risk Types
- technology
- people
- organisational
- tools
- requirements
- estimation
Risk Analysis
Assess probability and seriousness of each risk.
Probability may be very low, low, moderate, high or very high.
Risk effects might be catastrophic, serious, tolerable or insignificant.
Risk Planning
- avoidance strategies
- minimisation strategies
- contingency plan
Avoidance strategies
Probability that the risk will arise is reduced.
Minimisation strategies
The impact of the risk on the project or product will be reduced.
Contingency plans
If the risk arises, contingency plans are plans to deal with that risk.
