Week 3:

Project management
Nguyễn Thị Minh Tuyền

Adapted from slides of Ian Sommerville

 Topics covered
1. Project planning
2. Risk management
3. Managing people
4. Teamwork

2
 Software project management
£ Concerned with activities involved in
p ensuring that software is delivered on time and on
schedule and
p accordance with the requirements of the organisations
developing and
p procuring the software.
£ Is needed because ...
p software development is always subject to budget and
schedule constraints that are set by the organisation
developing the software.
£ Good management cannot guarantee project success.
However, bad management usually results in project
failure. 3
 Success criteria
£ Important goals for most projects:
p Deliver the software to the customer at the agreed time.
p Keep overall costs within budget.
p Deliver software that meets the customer’s expectations.
p Maintain a happy and well-functioning development
team.

4
 Software management distinctions
£ The product is intangible.
p Software cannot be seen or touched.
£ Many software projects are 'one-off' projects.
p Large software projects are usually different in some
ways from previous projects.
£ Software processes are variable and organization-
specific.
p We still cannot reliably predict when a particular
software process is likely to lead to development
problems.

5
 Factors influencing project management
£ Company size
£ Software customers
£ Software size
£ Software type
£ Organizational culture
£ Software development processes
These factors mean that project managers in different
organizations may work in quite different ways.

6
 Universal management activities
£ Project planning
p Project managers are responsible for planning, estimating and
scheduling project development and assigning people to tasks.
£ Reporting
p Project managers are usually responsible for reporting on the
progress of a project to customers and to the managers of the
company developing the software.
£ Proposal writing
p Project managers write a proposal to win a contract to carry out
an item of work. The proposal describes the objectives of the
project and how it will be carried out.

7
 Universal management activities
£ Risk management
p Project managers assess the risks that may affect a
project, monitor these risks and take action when
problems arise.
£ People management
p Project managers have to choose people for their team
and establish ways of working that leads to effective
team performance.

8
 Topics covered
1. Project planning
2. Risk management
3. Managing people
4. Teamwork

9
 Project planning
£ One of the most important jobs of a software project
manager.
£ Project planning involves
p break down the work into parts and assign these to project team
members,
p anticipate problems that might arise and prepare tentative solutions
to those problems.
£ The project plan
p created at the start of a project,
p used to communicate how the work will be done to the project team
and customers, and to help assess progress on the project.

10
 Planning stages
£ At the proposal stage
p when you are bidding for a contract to develop or provide a software
system.
£ During the project startup phase
p when you have to plan who will work on the project, how the project
will be broken down into increments, how resources will be
allocated across your company, etc.
£ Periodically throughout the project
p when you modify your plan in the light of experience gained and
information from monitoring the progress of the work.

11
 Proposal planning
£ Planning may be necessary with only outline
software requirements.
£ Goal: to provide information that will be used in
setting a price for the system to customers.
£ Project pricing involves
p estimating how much the software will cost to develop,
p taking factors such as staff costs, hardware costs,
software costs, etc. into account.

12
 Project startup planning
£ Know more about the system requirements but do
not have design or implementation information.
£ Create a plan with enough detail to make
decisions about the project budget and staffing.
p This plan is the basis for project resource allocation
£ The startup plan should also define project
monitoring mechanisms.
p Keep track of the progress and
p Compare actual and planned progress and costs.
£ A startup plan is still needed for agile development
to allow resources to be allocated to the project.
13
 Development planning
£ The project plan should be regularly amended as
the project progresses and you know more about
the software and its development
£ The project schedule, cost-estimate and risks have
to be regularly revised.

14
 The project planning process

[project
«system» [unfinished] finished]
Project planner
Identify
constraints
Do the work
[ no problems ]
Identify Define project
risks schedule
Monitor progress
against plan
Define
[serious
milestones
problems]
and [minor problems and slippages]
deliverables

Initiate risk Replan

mitigation actions project

15
Project scheduling

16
 Project scheduling
£ Is the process of deciding how the work in a project will be
organized as separate tasks, and when and how these
tasks will be executed.
£ Estimate the calendar time needed to complete each task,
the effort required and who will work on the tasks that have
been identified.
£ Estimate the resources needed to complete each task, the
time required on specialized hardware, and what the travel
budget will be.

17
 Project scheduling activities
£ Split project into tasks and estimate time and
resources required to complete each task.
£ Organize tasks concurrently to make optimal
use of workforce.
£ Minimize task dependencies to avoid delays
caused by one task waiting for another to
complete.
£ Dependent on project managers intuition and
experience.

18
 The project scheduling process

Identify Identify activity Estimate resources Allocate people Create project

activities dependencies for activities to activities charts

Software requirements Bar charts describing the

and design information project schedule

19
 Scheduling problems
£ Estimating the difficulty of problems and hence the cost of
developing a solution is hard.
£ Productivity is not proportional to the number of people
working on a task.
£ Adding people to a late project makes it later because of
communication overheads.
£ The unexpected always happens. Always allow
contingency in planning.

20
 Schedule presentation
£ Use graphical notations to illustrate the project schedule.
p These show the project breakdown into tasks.
p Tasks should not be too small. They should take about a week or
two.
£ Calendar-based
p Bar charts (Gantt charts) are the most commonly used
representation for project schedules.
p They show who is responsible for each activity, the expected
elapsed time, and when the activity is scheduled to begin and end.
£ Activity networks
p Are network diagrams, Show task dependencies

21
 Project activities
£ Project activities (tasks) are the basic planning
element. Each activity has:
p a duration in calendar days or months,
p an effort estimate, which shows the number of person-
days or person-months to complete the work,
p a deadline by which the activity should be complete,
p a defined end-point, which might be a document, the
holding of a review meeting, the successful execution of
all tests, etc.

22
 Milestones and deliverables
£ Milestones are stages in the project where a
progress assessment can be made.
£ Deliverables are work products that are delivered
to the customer, e.g. a requirements document for
the system.

23
 Tasks, durations, and dependencies
Task Effort (person-days) Duration (days) Dependencies
T1 15 10
T2 8 15
T3 20 15 T1 (M1)
T4 5 10
T5 5 10 T2, T4 (M3)
T6 10 5 T1, T2 (M4)
T7 25 20 T1 (M1)
T8 75 25 T4 (M2)
T9 10 15 T3, T6 (M5)
T10 20 15 T7, T8 (M6)
T11 10 10 T9 (M7)
T12 20 10 T10, T11 (M8)
24
 Activity bar chart
Week 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Start
T1
T2
(M1/T1)
T3
T4 (M3/T2 & T4)
T5
(M4/T1& T2)
T6
T7
(M2/T4)
T8
(M5/T3 & T6)
T9
(M6/T7 & T8)
T10
(M7/T 9)
T11
(M8/T10 & T11)
T12 25
Finish
 Staff allocation chart
Week 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Jane T1 T3 T9 T10 T12

Ali T1 T8

Geetha T2 T6 T7 T10
T3

Maya T8

Fred T4 T8 T11 T12

Mary T5

Hong T7
T6 26
Estimation techniques

27
 Estimation techniques
£ Organizations need to make software effort and
cost estimates.
£ Experience-based techniques
p The estimate is based on the manager’s experience of
past projects and the application domain.
p The manager makes an informed judgment of what the
effort requirements are likely to be.
£ Algorithmic cost modeling
p A formulaic approach is used to compute the project
effort based on estimates of product attributes, such as
size, and process characteristics, such as experience of
staff involved. 28
 Estimate uncertainty
4x

2x

x
Feasibility Requirements Design Code Delivery

0.5x

0.25x

29
 Risk management
£ Risk management is concerned with identifying risks and
drawing up plans to minimise their effect on a project.
£ Software risk management is important because of the
inherent uncertainties in software development.
p These uncertainties stem from loosely defined requirements,
requirements changes due to changes in customer needs,
difficulties in estimating the time and resources required for
software development, and differences in individual skills.
£ You have to anticipate risks, understand the impact of
these risks on the project, the product and the business,
and take steps to avoid these risks.

30
 Risk classification
£ There are two dimensions of risk classification
p The type of risk (technical, organizational, ..)
p what is affected by the risk
£ Project risks affect schedule or resources;
£ Product risks affect the quality or performance of
the software being developed;
£ Business risks affect the organisation developing
or procuring the software.

31
 Examples of common project, product, and
business risks
Risk Affects Description
Staff turnover Project Experienced staff will leave the project before it is
finished.
Management change Project There will be a change of organizational management
with different priorities.
Hardware unavailability Project Hardware that is essential for the project will not be
delivered on schedule.
Requirements change Project and There will be a larger number of changes to the
product requirements than anticipated.
Specification delays Project and Specifications of essential interfaces are not available on
product schedule.
Size underestimate Project and The size of the system has been underestimated.
product
CASE tool Product CASE tools, which support the project, do not perform as
underperformance anticipated.
Technology change Business The underlying technology on which the system is built is
superseded by new technology.
Product competition Business A competitive product is marketed before the system is
32
completed.
 Risk management process
£ Risk identification
p Identify project, product and business risks;
£ Risk analysis
p Assess the likelihood and consequences of these risks;
£ Risk planning
p Draw up plans to avoid or minimise the effects of the
risk;
£ Risk monitoring
p Monitor the risks throughout the project;

33
 Risk management process

Risk Risk Risk Risk

identification analysis planning monitoring

Risk avoidance
List of potential Prioritized risk Risk
and contingency
risks list assessment
plans

34
 Risk identification
£ May be a team activities or based on the individual
project manager’s experience.
£ A checklist of common risks may be used to
identify risks in a project
p Technology risks.
p People risks.
p Organisational risks.
p Tools risks.
p Requirements risks.
p Estimation risks.

35
 Examples of different risk types
Risk type Possible risks
Technology The database used in the system cannot process as many transactions per
second as expected. (1)
Reusable software components contain defects that mean they cannot be
reused as planned. (2)
People It is impossible to recruit staff with the skills required. (3)
Key staff are ill and unavailable at critical times. (4)
Required training for staff is not available. (5)
Organizational The organization is restructured so that different management are responsible
for the project. (6)
Organizational financial problems force reductions in the project budget. (7)
Tools The code generated by software code generation tools is inefficient. (8)
Software tools cannot work together in an integrated way. (9)
Requirements Changes to requirements that require major design rework are proposed. (10)
Customers fail to understand the impact of requirements changes. (11)
Estimation The time required to develop the software is underestimated. (12)
The rate of defect repair is underestimated. (13)
The size of the software is underestimated. (14) 36
 Risk analysis
£ Assess probability and seriousness of each risk.
£ Probability may be very low, low, moderate, high or
very high.
£ Risk consequences might be catastrophic, serious,
tolerable or insignificant.

37
 Risk types and examples
Risk Probability Effects

Organizational financial problems force reductions in the Low Catastrophic

project budget (7).
It is impossible to recruit staff with the skills required for the High Catastrophic
project (3).
Key staff are ill at critical times in the project (4). Moderate Serious
Faults in reusable software components have to be Moderate Serious
repaired before these components are reused. (2).
Changes to requirements that require major design rework Moderate Serious
are proposed (10).
The organization is restructured so that different High Serious
management are responsible for the project (6).
The database used in the system cannot process as many Moderate Serious
transactions per second as expected (1).
38
 Risk types and examples

Risk Probability Effects

The time required to develop the software is High Serious
underestimated (12).
Software tools cannot be integrated (9). High Tolerable
Customers fail to understand the impact of Moderate Tolerable
requirements changes (11).
Required training for staff is not available (5). Moderate Tolerable
The rate of defect repair is underestimated (13). Moderate Tolerable
The size of the software is underestimated (14). High Tolerable
Code generated by code generation tools is inefficient Moderate Insignificant
(8).

39
 Risk planning
£ Consider each risk and develop a strategy to
manage that risk.
£ Avoidance strategies
p The probability that the risk will arise is reduced;
£ Minimisation strategies
p The impact of the risk on the project or product will be
reduced;
£ Contingency plans
p If the risk arises, contingency plans are plans to deal
with that risk;

40
 What-if questions
£ What if several engineers are ill at the same time?
£ What if an economic downturn leads to budget cuts of 20%
for the project?
£ What if the performance of open-source software is
inadequate and the only expert on that open source
software leaves?
£ What if the company that supplies and maintains software
components goes out of business?
£ What if the customer fails to deliver the revised
requirements as predicted?

41
 Strategies to help manage risk
Risk Strategy
Organizational Prepare a briefing document for senior management
financial problems showing how the project is making a very important
contribution to the goals of the business and presenting
reasons why cuts to the project budget would not be
cost-effective.
Recruitment problems Alert customer to potential difficulties and the possibility
of delays; investigate buying-in components.
Staff illness Reorganize team so that there is more overlap of work
and people therefore understand each other’s jobs.
Defective Replace potentially defective components with bought-
components in components of known reliability.
Requirements Derive traceability information to assess requirements
changes change impact; maximize information hiding in the
design.

42
 Strategies to help manage risk

Risk Strategy
Organizational Prepare a briefing document for senior management
restructuring showing how the project is making a very important
contribution to the goals of the business.
Database Investigate the possibility of buying a higher-
performance performance database.
Underestimated Investigate buying-in components; investigate use of
development time a program generator.

43
 Risk monitoring
£ Assess each identified risks regularly to decide
whether or not it is becoming less or more
probable.
£ Also assess whether the effects of the risk have
changed.
£ Each key risk should be discussed at management
progress meetings.

44
 Risk indicators

Risk type Potential indicators

Late delivery of hardware or support software; many
Technology
reported technology problems.
Poor staff morale; poor relationships amongst team
People
members; high staff turnover.
Organizational gossip; lack of action by senior
Organizational
management.
Reluctance by team members to use tools; complaints
Tools about CASE tools; demands for higher-powered
workstations.
Many requirements change requests; customer
Requirements
complaints.
Failure to meet agreed schedule; failure to clear reported
Estimation
defects.

45
 Topics covered
1. Project planning
2. Risk management
3. Managing people
4. Teamwork

46
 Managing people
£ People are an organisation’s most important
assets.
£ The tasks of a manager are essentially people-
oriented. Unless there is some understanding of
people, management will be unsuccessful.
£ Poor people management is an important
contributor to project failure.
 People management factors
£ Consistency
p Team members should all be treated in a comparable
way without favourites or discrimination.
£ Respect
p Different team members have different skills and these
differences should be respected.
£ Inclusion
p Involve all team members and make sure that people’s
views are considered.
£ Honesty
p You should always be honest about what is going well
and what is going badly in a project.
 Motivating people
£ An important role of a manager is to motivate the
people working on a project.
£ Means organizing the work and the working
environment to encourage people to work
effectively.
p If people are not motivated, they will not be interested
in the work they are doing. They will work slowly, be
more likely to make mistakes and will not contribute to
the broader goals of the team or the organization.
£ Is a complex issue but it appears that there are
different types of motivation based on:
p Basic needs (e.g. food, sleep, etc.);
p Personal needs (e.g. respect, self-esteem);
49
p Social needs (e.g. to be accepted as part of a group).
 Human needs hierarchy

Self-
realization needs

Esteem needs

Social needs

Safety needs

Physiological needs

50
 Need satisfaction
£ In software development groups, basic
physiological and safety needs are not an issue.
£ Social
p Provide communal facilities;
p Allow informal communications e.g. via social
networking
£ Esteem
p Recognition of achievements;
p Appropriate rewards.
£ Self-realization
p Training - people want to learn more;
p Responsibility.
51
 Personality types
£ The needs hierarchy is almost certainly an over-
simplification of motivation in practice.
£ Motivation should also take into account different
personality types:
p Task-oriented;
p Self-oriented;
p Interaction-oriented.

52
 Personality types
£ Task-oriented.
p The motivation for doing the work is the work itself;
£ Self-oriented.
p The work is a means to an end which is the
achievement of individual goals - e.g. to get rich, to play
tennis, to travel etc.;
£ Interaction-oriented
p The principal motivation is the presence and actions of
co-workers. People go to work because they like to go to
work.

53
 Motivation balance
£ Individual motivations are made up of elements
of each class.
£ The balance can change depending on personal
circumstances and external events.
£ However, people are not just motivated by
personal factors but also by being part of a group
and culture.
£ People go to work because they are motivated by
the people that they work with.

54
 Topics covered
1. Project planning
2. Risk management
3. Managing people
4. Teamwork

55
 Teamwork
£ Most software engineering is a group activity
p The development schedule for most non-trivial software
projects is such that they cannot be completed by one
person working alone.
£ A good group is cohesive and has a team spirit.
p The people involved are motivated by the success of the
group as well as by their own personal goals.
£ Group interaction is a key determinant of group
performance.
£ Flexibility in group composition is limited
p Managers must do the best they can with available
people.
56
 Group cohesiveness
£ In a cohesive group, members consider the group
to be more important than any individual in it.
£ The advantages of a cohesive group are:
p Group quality standards can be developed by the group
members.
p Team members learn from each other and get to know
each other’s work; Inhibitions caused by ignorance are
reduced.
p Knowledge is shared. Continuity can be maintained if a
group member leaves.
p Refactoring and continual improvement is encouraged.
Group members work collectively to deliver high quality
results and fix problems, irrespective of the individuals
who originally created the design or program.
 Effectiveness of a team
£ The people in the group
p You need a mix of people in a project group as
software development involves diverse activities such
as negotiating with clients, programming, testing and
documentation.
£ The group organization
p A group should be organized so that individuals can
contribute to the best of their abilities and tasks can
be completed as expected.
£ Technical and managerial communications
p Good communications between group members, and
between the software engineering team and other 58
project stakeholders, is essential.
 Selecting group members
£ A manager or team leader’s job is to create a
cohesive group and organize their group so that
they can work together effectively.
£ This involves creating a group with the right
balance of technical skills and personalities, and
organizing that group so that the members work
together effectively.

59
 Assembling a team
£ May not be possible to appoint the ideal people to work on
a project
p Project budget may not allow for the use of highly-paid
staff;
p Staff with the appropriate experience may not be
available;
p An organisation may wish to develop employee skills on
a software project.
£ Managers have to work within these constraints especially
when there are shortages of trained staff.

60
 Group composition
£ Group composed of members who share the
same motivation can be problematic
p Task-oriented - everyone wants to do their own thing;
p Self-oriented - everyone wants to be the boss;
p Interaction-oriented - too much chatting, not enough
work.
£ An effective group has a balance of all types.
£ This can be difficult to achieve software
engineers are often task-oriented.
£ Interaction-oriented people are very important as
they can detect and defuse tensions that arise.
61
 Group organization
£ The way that a group is organized affects
p the decisions that are made by that group,
p the ways that information is exchanged and
p the interactions between the development group
and external project stakeholders.
£ Key questions include:
p Should the project manager be the technical leader of the
group?
p Who will be involved in making critical technical decisions, and
how will these be made?
p How will interactions with external stakeholders and senior
company management be handled?
p How can groups integrate people who are not co-located?
62
p How can knowledge be shared across the group?
 Group organization
£ Small software engineering groups are usually
organised informally without a rigid structure.
£ For large projects, there may be a hierarchical
structure where different groups are responsible
for different sub-projects.
£ Agile development is always based around an
informal group on the principle that formal
structure inhibits information exchange

63
 Informal groups
£ The group acts as a whole and comes to a
consensus on decisions affecting the system.
£ The group leader serves as the external interface
of the group but does not allocate specific work
items.
£ Rather, work is discussed by the group as a whole
and tasks are allocated according to ability and
experience.
£ This approach is successful for groups where all
members are experienced and competent.
64
 Group communications
£ Good communications are essential for effective
group working.
£ Information must be exchanged on the status of
work, design decisions and changes to previous
decisions.
£ Good communications also strengthens group
cohesion as it promotes understanding.

65
 Group communications
£ Group size
p The larger the group, the harder it is for people to
communicate with other group members.
£ Group structure
p Communication is better in informally structured groups
than in hierarchically structured groups.
£ Group composition
p Communication is better when there are different
personality types in a group and when groups are mixed
rather than single sex.
£ The physical work environment
p Good workplace organisation can help encourage
communications. 66
Questions?

67