Software project management intro

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Software project management (intro)

• An introduction

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What is a project?

• One definition
• a specific design or plan
• Key elements
• non-routine
• specific objectives
• planned
• predetermined timespan
• constrained resources

3
What is a project?

• More key elements
• work carried out for a third party
• work involves several specialisms or phases
• size and complexity

4
Are software projects really different from other
projects?

• Not really, but
• invisibility
• complexity
• flexibility
• need to conform to human ideas
• all add to difficulties

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Position of planning
feasibility study
planning
project

• Feasibility study - decide if project is worth
  doing
• Plan how you are going do it, then do it

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Contents of a feasibility study report

• Introduction identifies what the document is
• Description of current situation
• Problem description
• Proposed development
• business and financial aspects
• technical aspects
• organizational aspects
• continued gt

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Contents of feasibility study continued

• Estimated costs
• development costs
• operational costs
• Envisaged benefits
• Recommendations

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stages typically include
implement
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Some types of project

• Information systems versus industrial systems
• What type of system is an operating system?
• Project may be to create
• a product for the general market
• a system for a specific client

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Products vs objectives

• A project may be to
• create a product the details of which have been
  specified by the client
• the client has the responsibility for justifying
  the product
• meet certain objectives
• there might be several ways of achieving these
  objectives

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What is management?

• Management may involve
• planning deciding what is to be done
• organizing making arrangement
• staffing selecting the right people
• directing giving instructions
• monitoring checking on progress
• continued

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What is management? contd.

• controlling taking action to remedy hold-ups
• innovating coming up with new solutions
• representing liaising with users

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Stakeholders

• They may be
• in the project team
• outside the team but in the organization
• outside the organization
• External stakeholders may be
• customers or user affected by system
• contractors
• There will be different types of users with
  different interests
• Need for good communication!

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Objectives

• Different stakeholders will have different
  objectives
• need for agreed objectives
• Need for an identifiable project authority
• to set, monitor and modify objectives
• can contain user, development and management
  representatives
• Objectives
• can be informally expressed as in order for the
  project to be a success, the project must.

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Objectives -continued

• Objectives must be
• concrete
• have measures of success
• Objectives can be
• broken down into sub-objectives or goals
• can be informally expressed as in order to
  achieve A, we must achieve B,C,D etc
• identifying sub-objectives involves considering
  the how as well as the what

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Requirement specification

• Functional requirements
• what the system is to do
• systems analysis aims to provide these
• Quality requirements
• other attributes of the system e.g response time
  usability reliability
• Resource/time requirements
• cost
• time
• Trade-offs between the different factors

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The control cycle
real world
actions
collect data
define objectives
data
process data
implement
information
make decisions
modelling
decisions