Process Management in CSCW

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Process Management in CSCW
Gu Maher ning_at_design-ning.net University of
Sydney, October 2004 DECO2005
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Life-Cycle of Design Projects

• Description of the events that occur between the
  beginning and the end of a project inclusively.

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Life-Cycle of Design Projects
Requirements Analysis
Design
Implementation
Review
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Purpose of Each Phase

• Requirements analysis
• Understand the design brief.
• Establish functional requirements, constrains and
  goals.
• Defined in a manner which is understandable by
  both users and the development team.
• Design
• Develop a design solution that meets the
  requirements.
• Defined and described in a way that is
  understandable by the implementer/builders.
• Implementation
• To realise the design.
• Review
• Critically access the product to see if it meets
  the requirements.
• Make any necessary revision.

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Business Reality in Developing Design Projects
Using CSCW

• Rapidly changing technology.
• Shortened time to market.
• Changing and unknown requirements.
• Products meet functional requirements do not meet
  the requirements of the market .
• Unwillingness to invest in large projects.
• Frozen or shrinking budget and human resources.
• Disbelief that products developed using CSCW will
  provide value.

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Industry Development of Design Projects Using
CSCW

• Large single projects fading away.
• Cultural shift to teams of lt10 people.
• Increased user involvement.
• Emphasis on requirements analysis and review.
• Increased process focus.
• Sub-divided tasks.
• Self-managed project teams.
• Require team members to competent in terms of the
  technical aspect as well as the administrative
  aspect.

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Clients Needs in Design Projects

• Reality most clients want products that are
• Cheap.
• Fast enough short life-cycle.
• Functional enough.
• Built soon enough to occupy the market.

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Key Elements in Design Projects

• Time total human resources involved.
• Quality
• Difficult to define.
• Meet the requirements, innovation, leading
  industry.
• Cost
• Financial investment, management time,
  opportunity cost, monetary valued expended or
  created.

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Business Strategies in Developing Design Projects

• User centered analysis and design.
• Experienced team and management.
• High performance team.
• High productivity tools.
• Prototyping.
• Time boxed development.
• 80/20 rule trivial many and vital few rules.

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Roles and Responsibilities

• Analyser
• Understand and define the goals, objectives, to
  reflect the clients needs.
• Strategy builder
• Define strategy, plan the process, resources,
  project growth areas.
• Designer
• Provide design solutions.
• Builder
• Implement the design.
• Project manager
• Control progress of the project against any
  detrimental influences on the time, cost, and
  quality in regard to the client, the place of
  work, market forces, other external influences
  and the design team.

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Project Managers Roles

• Knowledge
• Understand the industry and the teams
  capabilities.
• Understand business disciplines and skills and
  how they could enhance the project.
• Communication
• Liaison with the management of any external
  agencies, contracted parties.
• Effective briefing of resources, management
  meeting and team leadership.
• Communication of project progress to client,
  actions taken, change control, monitoring of
  factors affecting the progress of the project,
  risk management.
• Management and compliance with deadlines and
  milestones for the development team and the
  client.
• Project review to asses whether the project was
  conducted well and how the progress can be
  improved.

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Project Managers Roles

• Documentation
• Consultation with the client to produce a
  mutually acceptable project specification.
• Ensure parameters of teams involvement are clear
• Success criteria are defined.
• Documentation of project progress (storing
  emails, contact reports, all versions of
  documents, ensuring product is signed off.
• Archive of project, including documentation,
  assets and other resources.
• Quality control
• Ensure product is tested, review, agreed before
  release.
• Ensure each component of the project is produced
  to agreed technical and functional specification.
• Development
• Develop personal skills.
• Build team knowledge and skills.

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Project Managers Roles Where do they begin and
end?

• Involvement begins usually from the very
  beginning of the project, sometimes also from the
  early planning stage.
• Responsibilities begin and end as defined and
  agreed upon with the client and the organization.

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Project Management Principles

• Depends on goals
• Assembly line consistency achieved through
  repetition.
• Easy control, predictable, very manageable.
• Organic not exactly follow the convention, grow
  organically.
• More difficult to control, predict, manage,
  stifle the energy and dynamics.

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Project Management Principles

• Parallel development
• Multi-disciplinary teams work in parallel.
• Embrace changes that occur inevitably.
• Project manager orchestrate like a conductor.
• Sequential dependencies tasks cannot begin
  before another task is complete
• Clear awareness of what can be developed in
  parallel and what must remain sequential.
• Save time for creativity by running tasks in
  parallel.

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Strategies in Developing Design Projects Using
CSCW

• To use CSCW as the mean for supporting design
  projects or even to perform parts of the project
  managers roles.
• Methodology is a project management issue, not a
  technology issue , and business success is
  typically not a technology either.
• Good strategies have a specific method.
• A framework for making decisions about the
  project.
• Formal system for observing, analysing and
  monitor the process.

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Life-Cycle of Design Projects Using CSCW

• Life cycle methods tools procedures.
• Methods establish principles, describe typical
  activities, imply a sequencing frequency of
  activities, provide guidelines and rules of
  thump.
• Tools technology, automation, administration.
• Procedures manage different phases.
• Life cycle
• Waterfall.
• Incremental.
• Spiral.
• Evolutionary.
• Rapid Evolutionary.
• Extreme.

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Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Waterfall
• Typical engineering process
• Classic life-cycle in which each activity is
  completed once for the entire set of
  requirements.
• Simple activities are completed in sequential
  order.
• Top-down development.
• Independent phases done sequentially.
• Should understand each phase well.
• An entry and exit point of each phase.

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Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Incremental
• Waterfall in overlapping sections.
• Evolutionary delivery.
• Project delivered in pieces, highest priority
  first
• An iterative life-cycle is based on successive
  enlargement and refinement of a project through
  multiple sub-cycles.
• The project grows by adding new functions within
  each sub-cycles.
• Each sub-cycle tackles a relatively small set of
  requirements, proceeding through analysis,
  design, construction and review. The project
  grows incrementally as each cycle is completed.

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Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Spiral
• Project process is represented as a spiral.
• Identify sub-problems which has the highest
  associated risk.
• Find a solution for that problem.
• No fixed phases.
• Spiral size corresponds to project size.
• Distance between coils indicates resources.

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Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Prototyping
• Building a replica of design.
• Equivalent of a mock-up.
• Start with informal requirements, and use a
  working model to transform the requirements.
• Show the product to client to get feedback,
  repeat the cycle.

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Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Extreme
• Listening, designing, coding, testing.
• Lightweight, evolutionary development process.
• Rapid feedback
• Incremental change
• Embrace change

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Road Maps in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW
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Reminder

• Group presentation
• Time Oct. 15 (3pm to 5pm).
• 10 minutes each group, in front of the class.
• Presentation content.
• Introduce the group.
• Highlight the design brief.
• Present your synthesis of design components (both
  hardware and software) using images, 3D models,
  movies and any other relevant materials you have
  developed so far.
• Address how the design satisfies your brief.
• Preparation
• Make sure the presentation files can run on a PC
  and are suitable for projection.
• Copy all the files to a CD or a USB.