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Title: Lecture 3: Structured Project Management1: Introduction


1
Lecture 3 Structured Project Management(1)
Introduction
  • Project Management may seem a commonsense
    topic, and it arguably is, however
  • There many (often competing) techniques and
    supporting tools and toolsets for managing I.T.
    projects
  • Some techniques in common use can overwhelm the
    unwary but arguably they should not, i.e. they
    should be tailored to the organisations business
    needs (in the jargon used in an agile manner)
  • Modern techniques emphasise structured
    approaches, i.e. the processes undertaken are
    defined and documented, e.g. the workflows,
    activities, tasks, in particular their inputs and
    outputs
  • Planning, however tedious and inexact, is the
    fundamental problem solving tool
  • Configuring a technique (or method or
    methodology) is problematic, e.g. needs
    comprehensive knowledge of business itself,
    management technique(s) used, tool/toolset,
    software developers
  • Mature software development organisations
    recognise intrinsic value of projects that have
    been effectively managed, i.e. the knowledge
    gained and documented has value in its own right

2
Structured Project Management(2)
  • Structured project management requires a software
    project management plan
  • 2. Software Project is
  • The combination of all technical and managerial
    activities that enable a clients deliverables to
    be developed.
  • Software projects have a defined duration,
    consume resources and produce work products.
  • Forms of work to be managed during a software
    project include Tasks, Activities and Functions
  • Simple example of project components

3
Structured Project Management(3)
  • Another, more realistic example of project
    components

4
Structured Project Management(4)
  • A project has States

5
Structured Project Management(5)
  • 3. Software project management plan is a
  • reference document for controlling a software
    project.
  • Specifies both technical and managerial
    approaches to obtaining software product
  • Is allied to requirements analysis document
  • Plan is as important as requirements
    documentation
  • Change in either document may require change in
    the other document, i.e. documents have a
    dependency relationship
  • The Software project management plan may be part
    of the Project Agreement.
  • 4. Project Agreement
  • Document written for a client that defines
  • Scope, duration, cost and deliverables for
    project.
  • Exact items, quantities, delivery dates, delivery
    location.
  • Client Individual or organization that specifies
    requirements and accepts project deliverables.
  • Can be contract, statement of work, business
    plan, or a project charter.
  • Deliverables Work Products that will be
    delivered to the client
  • Documents
  • Demonstrations of function
  • Demonstration of nonfunctional requirements
  • Demonstrations of subsystems

6
Structured Project Management(6)
  • There are standards for Software Project
    Management Plans, e.g. IEEE Std 1058 Standard
    for Software Project Management Plans (SPMP)
  • Standard
  • Specifies format and contents of software project
    management plans.
  • Provides standard set of abstractions for project
    manager or whole organization to construct own
    set (c.f. agile tailored to organisations
    business needs) of practices and procedures for
    developing software project management plans
  • Abstractions include Project, Function,
    Activities, Tasks
  • Standard does NOT
  • Specify procedures or techniques to be used in
    development of plan
  • Provide examples

7
Structured Project Management(7)
  • Example template for software project management
    plan
  • 0. Front Matter
  • Title Page
  • Revision sheet (update history)
  • Preface Scope and purpose
  • Tables of contents, figures, tables
  • 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Project Overview
  • Executive summary description of project,
    product summary
  • 1.2 Project Deliverables
  • All items to be delivered, including delivery
    dates and location
  • 1.3 Evolution of the SPMP
  • Plans for anticipated and unanticipated change
  • 1.4 Reference Materials
  • Complete list of materials referenced in SPMP
  • 1.5 Definitions and Acronyms
  • 2. Project Organization
  • 3. Managerial Process
  • 4. Technical Process

8
Structured Project Management(8)
  • 2. Project Organisation
  • 2.1 Process Model
  • Relationships among project elements
  • 2.2 Organizational Structure
  • Internal management, organization chart
  • Example organisation chart

9
Structured Project Management(9)
  • 2.3 Organizational Interfaces
  • Relations with other entities (subcontractors,
    commercial software)
  • 2.4 Project Responsibilities
  • Major functions and activities nature of each
    whos in charge
  • Matrix of project functions/activities versus
    responsible individuals
  • 3. Managerial Process
  • 3.1 Management Objectives and Priorities
  • Describes management philosophy, priorities
    among requirements, schedule and budget
  • 3.2 Assumptions, Dependencies and Constraints
  • External events the project depends on,
    constraints under which the project is to be
    conducted
  • 3.3 Risk Management
  • Identification and assessment of risk factors,
    mechanism for tracking risks, implementation of
    contigency plans
  • 3.4 Staffing Plan
  • Numbers and types of personnel required to
    conduct the project
  • 3.5 Monitoring and Controlling Mechanisms
  • Frequency and mechanisms for reporting

10
Structured Project Management(10)
  • Example Risk Factors
  • Contractual risks
  • e.g. What does vendor do if client becomes
    bankrupt and vice versa
  • Size of the project
  • Action plan for over-large project
  • Complexity of the project
  • Action plan for requirements creep
  • Personal
  • Plan for staff recruitment and retention
  • Client acceptance
  • Plan if client rejects system

11
Structured Project Management(11)
  • 4. Technical Process
  • 4.1 Methods, Tools and Techniques
  • Specifies methods, tools and techniques to be
    used during project
  • 4.2 Software Documentation
  • Describes documentation plan
  • 4.3 Project Support Functions
  • Plans for (at least) three project support
    functions.
  • To ensure quality assurance
  • Configuration management plan (e.g. IEEE Std
    1042)
  • Verification and validation plan
  • Plans can be included in this section or this
    may be reference to a separate document
  • 5. Description of Work Packages
  • 5.1 Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  • Hierarchical decomposition of the project into
    activities and tasks
  • 5.2 Dependencies between tasks
  • An important temporal relation, i.e. defines
    what must be proceeded by what follows
  • Dependency graphs indicate time-ordered
    dependencies of activities

12
Structured Project Management(12) Work
Breakdown Structures (WBS) and Work Package (WP)
  • Simple Concept Divide and conquer
  • Use Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and Work
    Package (WP) definitions to identify and manage
    logical units of work.
  • Mini-milestones
  • When planning, identify binary milestones
    which are either complete/not complete.
  • Communication
  • Ensure all stakeholders are identified and
    understand their responsibilities.
  • Ensure stakeholders attend necessary meetings,
    workshops, etc. and approve the appropriate
    project deliverables.
  • Include stakeholders from the customer and all
    IT areas impacted by the project.

13
Structured Project Management(13) A Project
Management Method(ology) Prince21
  • PRINCE (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a
    project management method covering the
    organisation, management and control of projects.
  • Reference http//www.prince2.org.uk/web/site/home
    /Home.asp
  • First developed by Central Computer and
    Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) now part of the
    Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in 1989 as a
    UK Government standard for IT project management.
  • Has become widely used in both the public and
    private sectors and is now the UK's de facto
    standard for project management.
  • Although originally developed for the needs of IT
    projects, the method has also been used on many
    non-IT projects.
  • Latest version of the method, PRINCE2, is
    designed to incorporate the requirements of
    existing users and to enhance the method towards
    a generic, best practice approach for the
    management of all types of project.

1 Practical PRINCE 2 (ISBN 0117028533).
14
Structured Project Management(14) Work
Breakdown Structure
  • As with any widely-used method(ology), Prince2
    has Work Breakdown Structure
  • WBS is a divide and conquer" approach to
    breaking a large project into manageable units
    with respect to discipline, subsystem, etc.
  • WBS has a Product-Based Planning Rationale
  • - Identify products to determine activities
    needed to produce them.
  • - Quality of product can be measured and thus
    planned, quality of an activity can only be
    measured by quality of its outcome, i.e. the
    product.
  • Product-Based Planning Components
  • - Product Breakdown Structure
  • Hierarchy of required products including
    management and quality products.
  • - Product Descriptions
  • For each product, at all levels of PBS
    refinement
  • a) Description of the product suitable for
    planning its production
  • b) Quality criteria Degree and kind of quality
    checking
  • - Product Flow Diagram Indicates how product is
    derived from another product (or group of
    products).

15
Structured Project Management(15) Work Package
  • WP defines logical units of work.
  • - Determine who is to undertake the work.
  • - What is required.
  • - What standards are to be used.
  • - How it will be tested.
  • Work Packages are mechanism for Project Manager
    to collate details of and pass responsibility for
    work or delivery to a Team Manager, team member,
    external supplier.
  • WP may be informal or formal, e.g. verbal
    instruction, written instruction, formal
    specification, contractual agreement.
  • WP contains
  • Product Description(s)
  • Techniques, processes, procedures to be used
  • Interfaces to be satisfied by work
  • Interfaces to be maintained during work
  • Quality checking arrangements
  • Reporting requirements

16
Structured Project Management(16) Measurement
  • Measurement Rationale (why it is done).
  • - Raises project visibility.
  • - Supports corrective measures.
  • Measurement What to measure.
  • - Effort by activity.
  • - Number of milestones achieved.
  • - Number of requirements and features developed.
  • Measurement What not to measure and Software
    Metrics.
  • - Arguably a problematic discipline (but 30
    years old too!).
  • - Involves defining the actual measures
    (numerical metrics some success here!) and
    also determining how to collect, manage and
    exploit measurements made (still a fundamental
    research topic)
  • - Results of metrics research have been
    criticised as being unable to support
    decision-making for risk assessment and reduction
    (e.g. 1) due to emphasis on regression-based
    models for cost estimation and defects
    prediction.
  • Reference 1 "The Future of Software
    Engineering" , Anthony Finkelstein (Ed.), ACM
    Press 2000, Order number is 592000-1, ISBN
    1-58113-253-0. ACM E-Store http//store.acm.org/a
    cmstore

17
Structured Project Management(17)
  • Problems not addressed include causality,
    uncertainty and usefully combining different
    (often subjective) evidence.
  • Some limited success with Bayesian Belief
    Networks (e.g. BBNs underpin help wizards in
    MSOffice) but
  • BBNs limited Bayes rule assumes that all
    hypotheses are mutually exclusive
  • Also assumes that findings are conditionally
    independent, and the occurrence of one finding
    does not influence the occurrence of another,
    hence other research on belief networks, etc

18
Structured Project Management(18) Risk
  • Risk If outcomes will occur with known or
    estimable probability the decision maker faces a
    risk. Certainty is a special case of risk in
    which this probability is equal to zero or one.
  • For a software development project Any threat
    to the delivery of a project.
  • Risk is inherent in any activity you are
    unfamiliar with, makes that activity difficult to
    accurately estimate, effectively plan and
    systematically control.
  • Must have definitive approach to risk, i.e. to
    risk assessment and risk control.
  • Involves accepting initially that whole or part
    of project involves work of a kind unfamiliar to
    developers involved.

19
Structured Project Management(19) Risk
Assessment
  • Must identify component(s) that are risk
    candidates.
  • Assign a risk level to each risk candidate
    based on
  • Estimate of work involved.
  • Number of other components affected by design of
    each (dependency relationships)
  • Risk Candidate component (e.g. due to changes
    to interface or expected behaviour).
  • Number of other components that depend on each
    risk candidate (directly or indirectly, i.e.
    dependency relationships).
  • Novelty of technology involved.
  • Availability of existing knowledge, e.g.
  • - Design patterns (more in later lecture)
  • - Off-the-shelfcomponents
  • - Knowledge Base articles, e.g. MSDN
  • - Even books, research papers!
  • Possibly using a logarithmic scale!

20
Structured Project Management(20) Risk Control
  • Resolve and Monitor risk candidates
    recurrence of problems most likely due to risk
    candidates and ineffective resolution.
  • Prototype risk candidates first (but assume
    prototypes will have limited potential for
    re-use).
  • Dont amplify risk Use known technology to
    build risk candidate prototypes
  • Feedback
  • Feedback is critical to achieving control and
    improvement of a process.
  • Enables a process to be refined as experience
    increases.
  • Example NASA Software Engineering Laboratory

21
Structured Project Management(22) Feedback
and Experimentation
  • NSL has conducted many hundreds of experiments
    on critical software products.
  • Experiments have yielded extensive set of
    empirical studies.
  • Studies have guided evolution of standards,
    policies, management practices, technologies and
    training.
  • Between 1987 and 1993 raw error rates in
    completed software fell by 75, cost of software
    reduced by 50, cycle time to produce equivalent
    software products reduced by 40.
  • Exploits a process improvement paradigm (three
    phase model) with three main steps
    Understanding, assessing, packaging.
  • Software defect analysis tool(s) provide support
    for analysing data (that is continuous on
    attribute to be examined to find correlations)
  • Error Resolution
  • When problems arise
  • 1. Stop development immediately.
  • 2. Investigate cause of problem.
  • 3. Re-plan and re-estimate.
  • 4. Start development again.
  • Sacrifice some aspects of the project to the
    benefit of others
  • - Reduce the feature set, e.g. "de-scope.
  • - Adjust the schedule.
  • - Increase the cost.

22
Structured Project Management(23)
  • Using Structured Project Management
  • Benefits include
  • Clear risk and issue identification, management
    and ownership.- Clear roles and
    responsibilities.- Clear definition of WBS's and
    WP's.- Effective measurement and control of time
    and cost.
  • Repeatable levels of development performance
  • Evolving maturity and recognition of intrinsic
    value of what is documented
  • Not Using Structured Project Management
  • - The reverse of the above!

23
Structured Project Management(24) PRINCE2
Critique
  • Strengths
  • Produces highly standardised projects which share
    a common approach, vocabulary and documents.
    Consequently it is a transferable skill and
    anyone familiar with a method can quickly be
    brought up to speed on a properly applied PRINCE2
    project.
  • It is a method which embodies best (known)
    practise in project management.
  • It enshrines management by exception as a guiding
    rule, which allows the Project Manager to do
    their job without undue interference, while at
    the same time involving higher level managers
    when things go badly off plan or in PRINCE terms
    out of tolerance.
  • It provides a controlled start, middle and end of
    projects.
  • Each type of document required by PRINCE2 is
    supplied as a template, which includes required
    sub-headings which produces easily
    comprehensible, standardised and complete
    documentation.
  • Weaknesses
  • A number of organisations suffer from PINO
    (Prince In Name Only), carelessly picking and
    choosing from the methodology, thereby failing to
    abide by its key principles.
  • PRINCE2 is strongly document centric in order to
    provide good control. However, in some
    organisations the documents become ends in
    themselves, and the actual projects themselves
    falter.
  • Similiarly PRINCE2 stresses the need for good
    organisation and regular meetings between
    stakeholders. In some organisations this has
    degenerated into too many meetings and too little
    work.
  • PRINCE2 provides no explicit treatment of
    requirements analysis. It is an implementation
    methodology, which can lead to projects being
    adopted on false premises, and thereby inevitably
    failing.
  • If too strictly applied PRINCE2 can be far too
    heavy duty an approach for small projects.

24
Structured Project Management(25)Managing
Requirements
  • Primary measure of a software systems success is
    degree to which it meets the purpose for which it
    was intended.
  • Developing descriptions of a systems
    requirements involves discovering the systems
    purpose by identifying stakeholders and their
    needs, and documenting these in a form which is
    suitable for analysis, communication and
    implementation.
  • Requirements must be elicited, modelled and
    analysed, communicated, agreed and evolved.
  • Problems are caused by stakeholders (paying
    customers, users and developers) who are numerous
    and distributed, whose goals vary and conflict
    depending on their perspectives of the
    environment in which they work and the tasks they
    wish to accomplish.
  • - Stakeholders goals problematic as they may
    be implicit, difficult to articulate, difficult
    to accomplish due to constraints imposed by a
    variety of factors outside their control.

25
Structured Project Management(26)
  • In the Real-World, goals (business, technical)
    motivate the development of software systems,
    i.e. few systems are developed simply as
    experiments
  • Requirements link Real-World goals with
    software systems which enable those goals to be
    achieved.
  • Descriptions of requirements provide basis for
    analysing requirements, validating that
    requirements are what stakeholders want, defining
    what designers and developers have to build and
    verifying that what is built has been built
    correctly when delivered.
  • Developing such descriptions is a
    multi-disciplinary human-oriented process tools
    and techniques used come from computer science,
    cognitive psychology, anthropology, sociology,
    linguistics and (ultimately) philosophy.
  • Requirements evolve and must be managed minimal
    solution involves techniques and tools for
    configuration management and version control that
    enable monitoring and control of the impact of
    changes to requirements documentation.

26
Structured Project Management(27)
  • Some techniques for effectively managing
    requirements-
  • Employ a (Lightweight) Requirements Management
    Tool
  • Automate the management (i.e. at least the
    shared collective storage of) requirements
    (including their shared updating) and determine
    their impact on architecture, design, user
    interface, etc.
  • Recognise different types of requirement
  • Examples stakeholder requests, functional
    requirements (involve data modelling,
    behavioural modelling, domain modelling),
    non-functional (or q uality) requirements
    (safety, security, reliability, useability).
  • Identify Your Stakeholders
  • Ensure the key decision-makers are identified
    and kept in the loop.

27
Structured Project Management(28)
  • Eliciting Requirements Use appropriate
    techniques
  • Traditional/general purpose data gathering
    techniques
  • e.g. questionnaires, interviews, surveys,
    analysis of existing documentation e.g.
    structure/organisation charts, process
    models/standards, existing systems
    documentation
  • Group techniques e.g. brainstorming, focus
    groups, workshops
  • Problem analysis1 e.g.
  • Ishikawa diagrams Cause-and-effect diagram
    (or tree diagram, or fishbone diagram) that
    displays factors that affect a particular quality
    characteristic, outcome, or problem.
  • Pareto Analysis Used to determine priorities
    for quality improvement activities via a bar
    chart (bars in decreasing order or relative
    frequency) that displays the relative frequency
    of problems in a process or operation. Pareto
    principle A small subset of problems affecting
    a common outcome tend to occur much more
    frequently than the remainder.
  • Prototyping (i.e. executable modelling)
  • Model-driven techniques e.g. goal based,
    scenario based
  • Cognitive techniques e.g. protocol analysis
  • Contextual techniques e.g. observation,
    conversation analysis
  • 1 http//support.sas.com/rnd/app/qc/qcparish.htm
    l

28
Structured Project Management(29)
  • Do Modelling
  • - Where possible, use techniques for modelling
    the problem domain, e.g. prototypes, simulations,
    (executable) graphical models.
  • Constrain Your Requirements
  • Avoid "feature creep".
  • Employ a (formal) change control process
  • Determines the impact of change on the project
    (time / cost / quality / etc.), allowing a
    controlled decision to go / no go with the
    change.
  • Measure Your Requirements (n.b. more advanced)
  • Monitor the change in requirements over the
    duration of projects (n.b. plural) to determine
    how the initial requirements set correspond to
    the final requirements set.
  • Adjust requirements process to minimise change.

29
Structured Project Management(30)
  • State the Problem Define the "mission statement"
    or "vision" for the project and get it agreed.
  • The problem of
  • Affects
  • The impact of which is
  • A successful solution would
  • Employ Specialist Roles Allocate a
    Requirements Manager to perform the process.
  • Use Industry Standards - UML has become the
    de-facto standard for modelling, Use Cases are
    generally used for functional requirements.
  • Ensure requirements are can be tested (develop
    test specification at same time as requirements
    specification).
  • Ensure requirements are precise ("high-level" is
    not the same as "imprecise").
  • Ensure requirements are bounded (particularly
    for non-functional requirements, ensure a
    definite start and end point is defined)

30
Structured Project Management(31)
  • Modelling construction of (abstract)
    descriptions that are amenable to interpretation
    (n.b. also supports elicitation)
  • Levels/kinds of modelling
  • - Enterprise-level modelling
  • - Behavioural modelling
  • - Domain modelling
  • - Quality (non-functional requirements)
    modelling
  • Exploit automated support
  • - Animators
  • - Automated (analogical, case-based) reasoning
  • - Consistency (model) checkers
  • - Validation and verification checkers

31
Structured Project Management(32) Summary
  • Early SE techniques not directly concerned with
    requirements emphasis was on formal
    specification of systems functionality
    independent of (many possible) implementations,
    e.g. using Formal Methods such as VDM, Z.
  • Other techniques emphasised executional
    (formal) specifications, e.g. specifications of
    ADTs1.
  • Modern process-oriented approaches emphasise need
    for communication (equally important as
    discovering and specifying).
  • Managing requirements (descriptions) now seen as
    essential e.g. documentation standards/guideline
    s for structuring documents.
  • Such techniques (and tools that support them e.g.
    for creating completing templates) enable
    traceability, integrity and completeness as
    requirements evolve.
  • Resulting descriptions then suitable for
    validating evolving requirements establishing
    that requirements and their models provide
    accurate account of stakeholders needs/goals.
  • 1 The Computer Journal, Volume 32, Issue 5, pp.
    413-421 UMIST OBJ a language for executable
    program specifications, R M Gallimore, D Coleman
    and V Stavridou.

32
Structured Project Management(33)
  • Inspection/analysis of requirements for coherence
    (consistency and structural completeness) is
    still problematic.
  • Validation is very problematic, ultimately it
    involves determining if something is true, i.e.
    it is true that software fullfils its purpose..
  • (a) Philosophical considerations Question of
    truth and what is knowable, i.e. many
    philosophical meanings for truth as defined by
    e.g.
  • 1Correspondence Theory
  • It is true that P ("P" stands for a
    proposition) iff P corresponds with the facts
    (or more simply), It is true that P iff it is a
    fact that P, or even more simply (Redundancy
    Theory) It is true that P iff P.
  • or
  • 2 Coherence theory It is true that P iff P
    is part of a coherent system of propositions.
  • or, arguably more pragmatically,
  • 3 It is true that P iff P is agreed upon in
    the consensus achieved at the ideal limit of
    inquiry.
  • (b) Social considerations problems agreeing
    (c.f. consensus) among different stakeholders,
    conflicting goals.
  • Evolving requirements cause inherent problems and
    require systematic approach to their management.

33
Structured Project Management(34)
  • More generally, it is now accepted that
    requirements
  • Cannot be effectively modelled and analysed in
    isolation from organisational and social context
    in which any new system will have to operate.
  • Requirements process should concentrate on
    modelling of indicative properties and users
    wishes for the environment that system will be
    used within to effectively model its purpose.
  • Generating complete and consistent models of
    requirements is impossible, i.e. need techniques
    for-
  • Analysing and resolving conflicting requirements
  • Supporting stakeholder negotiation
  • Reasoning (ultimately reasoning formally) about
    incomplete and inconsistent models of evolving
    requirements

34
Structured Project Management(35)Questions and
Exercises
  • Explain, briefly, the eight processes in PRINCE2
    and how the various PRINCE2 management products
    might be reduced to those necessary for a
    small-scale project involving a small team of
    software developers.
  • Explain the importance of the Business Case in
    PRINCE2 and identify the components of a minimum
    Business Case.
  • Explain the importance of roles, responsibilities
    and line of authority in PRINCE2 and how the
    project organisation structure can be tailored to
    suit small and larger-scale projects.
  • Explain how the three elements of PRINCE2s
    control enable both technical and managerial
    activities to be organised.
  • Explain the purpose of the Project Plan in
    PRINCE2 how it is refined into stage plans, team
    plans and exception plans.

35
Structured Project Management(36)
  • Explain, with the aid of simple examples, the
    headings under which a customers quality
    expectations might be considered in PRINCE2 and
    hence how the approach chosen for the provision
    of the end product influences the way in which a
    project can plan to meet a customers quality
    expectations.
  • Explain PRINCE2s approach to risk management and
    hence the terms risk log, risk tolerance, risk
    responsibilities, risk ownership and risk
    analysis.
  • Explain what is meant by the term configuration
    management in PRINCE2, the role of the
    Configuration Management Plan and the terms
    product identification, product attributes,
    product submission and issue procedures,
    baseline, release package, configuration status
    accounting and configuration auditing.
  • Identify the causes of change in a project and
    explain the role of the issue log and the three
    types of project issues in PRINCE2.

36
Structured Project Management(37)
  • Explain, briefly what is meant by the term
    product-based planning technique in PRINCE2 and
    hence, with the aid of examples, the terms
    product breakdown structure, product description
    and product flow diagram.
  • What are the main aims of quality review in
    PRINCE2, who should be considered for attendance
    at quality reviews and what distinct phases are
    there in a PRINCE2 quality review procedure?
  • What factors influence the choice of a formal or
    informal quality review and how would these
    factors themselves be influenced by the size of
    the project to be undertaken?

37
Structured Project Management(38)
  • What data is there to justify the view that
    requirements errors are the most common kind of
    error and also the most expensive to fix during a
    typical software development project?
  • What relationship exists between the relative
    costs of various kinds of error and the cost of
    fixing such errors at different stages in the
    software lifecycle?
  • What is the justification for stating that a
    requirement is a capability that is imposed on
    the system?
  • What is the significance of the statement that
    the requirements challenge is understanding a
    users problems in their culture and their
    language, and to build systems that meet their
    needs?
  • Why does an iterative approach to software
    development reflect the view that requirements
    cannot be completely identified and fully
    documented in advance of actual software
    development?

38
Structured Project Management(39)
  • Why does effective requirements management
    require an effective software team?
  • Why and how do requirements have an affect on the
    work of all team members?
  • What team skills must be acquired for effective
    requirements management?
  • Why do users needs dominate all other
    considerations during problem analysis?
  • How does identifying stakeholders and arriving at
    a collective agreed stakeholder judgement enable
    the boundaries of the solution to be identified
    and the constraints and degrees of freedom
    available when solving the problem to be
    determined?

39
Structured Project Management(40)
  • What purpose does a business model fulfil and
    how can such a model be best represented?
  • How do software-intensive systems differ
    fundamentally from IS/IT applications and how
    does systems engineering deal with such
    differences?
  • What problems are encountered when eliciting
    requirements that enable user and stakeholder
    needs to be met?
  • What technique enable problems encountered when
    eliciting requirements to be resolved?
  • What is the role of use cases in defining a
    systems requirements?
  • Who develops the use cases, what format do such
    use cases take and can test case development be
    driven by use cases?

40
Structured Project Management(41)
  • How can requirements be effectively organised?
  • What purpose does a vision document fulfil?
  • Why role does a project champion or champion team
    play?
  • How do product functionality, project resources
    and available time combine to define the scope of
    a project?
  • How do a systems requirements enable effort to
    be reconciled with available resources and
    over-scoped projects to be reduced in scope?
  • How can a customer be effectively engaged in the
    management of their requirements so that they
    own the results of such management and be
    provided with sufficient functionality at the
    correct time to meet their real needs?
  • Explain how use cases can be systematically
    refined and supplementary specifications
    developed.
  • What is the significance of ambiguity and
    specificity?
  • What technical methods are available for
    specifying requirements?

41
Structured Project Management(42)References
  • Practical PRINCE 2 (ISBN 0117028533).
  • Managing Software Requirements A Use Case
    Approach (ISBN 032112247X).
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