Slide Deck 1

Question 1

What does management allow a company to do?

Answer 1

Understand, Plan, Measure, and Control

Question 2

What are the goals of software management?

Answer 2

To finish the project on time, on budget, feature-complete , and with high quality

Question 3

Project management is the ___ of project activities to achieve project ___

Answer 3

Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling

Objectives

Question 4

What is the capability maturity model?

Answer 4

Ranks company’s software in terms of their capability and their maturity.

2 benefits:
1. find problems and fix them
2. find things that work and spread them

Question 5

What are some software development processes?

Answer 5

Waterfall model, Incremental Model, Rapid Prototyping, Iterative & Incremental, and
eXtreme Programming

Question 6

What is the waterfall model?

Answer 6

Traditional approach, Requirements -> Design - > Development -> Testing -> Maintenance

Good for things that have been done before

You don’t have any value until the end, you don’t test until the end, and you don’t get stakeholder approvals until it’s too late

Question 7

What is the Incremental Life Cycle?

Answer 7

Create an initial build, then continue to test successive builds until the product has been finished.

Question 8

What is the Rapid Prototyping Life Cycle?

Answer 8

Create an initial prototype at the beginning that is more susceptible to realistic inputs about the design, but the requirements phase is dragged out to be longer

Question 9

What is the Iterative & Incremental Process?

Answer 9

Architecture-first approach, that leads to component-based development with proper change management and round-trip engineering.

Question 10

What is eXtreme Programming?

Answer 10

Design as you go, big emphasis on unit and functional testing, everyone owns the code and the clients are closely involved.

Question 11

What differs planning from estimating from scheduling?

Answer 11

Planning involves identifying activities and has no start or end date
Estimating is about finding out the size and duration of the activities
Scheduling regards the specific start and end dates, relationships and resources

Question 12

Planning is a ___ step program

Answer 12

12

Question 13

What are the 4 steps in scheduling?

Answer 13

1. Identify what needs to be done - create WBS
2. Identify how much (size) is required
3. Identify the dependency between tasks
4. Estimate total duration of the work to be done

Question 14

What is a Work Breakdown Structure?

Answer 14

Hierarchical list of work activities needed to complete the project; a description of the work to be performed broken down into its key components, down to the lowest level.

Divide and conquer mentality

Identifies teams with the necessary skills easily for these tasks

Question 15

What should you avoid with Work Breakdown Structures?

Answer 15

• too much detail and granularity
• dont over plan with too much detail so that you cannot manage it (i.e. dont break down a 2 week “design the UI” work into “data
  element identification”, “data flow diagram creation”, and “customer
  review”.
• Stop when their is sufficient information for the people that are going to be doing the task
• but dont be too general either (i.e. 8 week design UI )

Question 16

What is a milestone? And when are milestones in I&I and XP?

Answer 16

A milestone is a significant event usually associated with some intermediate deliverable. If there are not enough milestones, progress hard to track and if there are too many it could slow down the project

In I&I, milestones are at the end of each iteration
In XP, milestones are every 1-3 weeks

Question 17

What is a work package?

Answer 17

Lowest identifiable activities to be completed. It contains description of the work, staffing req., names of those responsible for completion, schedule, budget, and acceptance criteria

Question 18

What is an activity? task? in WBS

Answer 18

Activities are the smallest component of WBS, usually contains many tasks
Tasks are the lowest level of effort and can be completed by one individual.

Question 19

Compare Top-Down and Bottom-Up WBS

Answer 19

Top down is designed to increase in detail as you go down, it is quick and can be done once the requirements are understood but it may lack important details specific to the project that have never occurred in earlier projects

Bottom-Up is designed to start at the lowest level tasks and aggregate into summaries and higher levels. It can be time consuming and needs more requirements to complete but it is very detailed which is good.

Question 20

What is Analogy?

Answer 20

Basing the WBS off a previous project that is similar in nature, like a template.

Analogy can be used for estimation purposes as well

It is good since it is based off actual experience but if there is no similar project than it fails.

Question 21

What are the 8 reasons for late software delivery?

Answer 21

• unrealistic deadline from someone outside the engineering group
• changing cx requirements not reflected in schedule changes
• underestimate the amount of effort and resources needed
• risks that were not considered upon inception
• unforeseen technical difficulties
• unforeseen human difficulties
• miscommunication among staff members
• failure to recognize a failing project and not correcting it in time

Question 22

__% of projects are delivered within budget and on schedule

Answer 22

10

Question 23

__% of projects never finish

Answer 23

25

Question 24

The 12 step planning process is:

Answer 24

1. Set Goal and Scope
2. Select Lifecycle
3. Set team form
4. Start team selection
5. Determine risks
6. Create WBS
7. Identify tasks
8. Estimate size
9. Estimate effort
10. Identify task
11. Assign resources
12. Schedule work

Question 25

What are the general practices objectives

Answer 25

• Define all software tasks
• Build an activity network
• Identify the critical tasks
• Build a timeline for planned and actual progress of tasks
• Track task progress to ensure delays are recognized

In order to do all this, schedule should monitor progress and be controlled.

Question 26

Scheduling for projects can be viewed from two different perspectives

Answer 26

1. end-date for release has been scheduled
2. rough chronological bounds have been discussed and end-date is set by soft. engg. org.

Question 27

What are the basic principles for scheduling?

Answer 27

• Compartmentalization
• Interdependency
• Time Allocation
• Effort Validation
• Defined Responsibilities
• Defined Outcomes
• Defined Milestones

Question 28

What is a task set?

Answer 28

Task set is the WBS for the project. The task set should provide enough discipline to achieve high software quality.

Question 29

what are the two types of schedule dependency?

Answer 29

1. Activity Dependency - coding should be done after design
2. Resource Dependency - ie. there is only 2 test machines for 4 tests

Question 30

What is Finish-to-Start?

Answer 30

You must finish the first resource A before you can start the second resource B.

A->B

Question 31

What is Start-to-Finish?

Answer 31

You must start the second resource B before you can finish the first resource A

A<-B

Question 32

What is Start-to-Start?

Answer 32

You cannot start the second resource B until the first resource A is started.

— A
|
—> B

Question 33

What is Finish-to-Finish?

Answer 33

You cannot finish the second resource B until the first resource A is finished.

A —
|
B <–

Question 34

What are the five levels of maturity?

Answer 34

1. Initial
2. Repeatable
3. Defined
4. Managed
5. Optimizing