Software Project Management
Software Project Management
Software Project Management
In the past ten years, typical goals in the software process improvement of several companies are to achieve a 2x, 3x, or 10x increase in productivity, quality, time to market, or some combination of all three, where x corresponds to how well the company does now. The funny thing is that many of these organizations have no idea what x is, in objective terms.
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Reducing Software Product Size Improving Software Processes Improving Team Effectiveness Improving Automation through Software Environments Achieving Required Quality Peer Inspections: A Pragmatic View The Principles of Conventional Software Engineering The Principles of Modern Software Management Transitioning to an Iterative Process
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Part 1
The almost anything characteristic has made it difficult to plan, monitor, and control software development.
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Drawbacks
Protracted integration and late design breakage Late risk resolution Requirements - driven functional decomposition Adversarial stakeholder relationships Focus on document and review meetings
Testing
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Finding and fixing a software problem after delivery costs 100 times more than finding and fixing the problem in early design phases. You can compress software development schedules 25% of nominal, but no more. For every $1 you spend on development, you will spend $2 on maintenance. Software development and maintenance costs are primarily a function of the number of source lines of code. Variations among people account for the biggest differences in software productivity. The overall ratio of software to hardware costs is still growing. In 1955 it was 15:85; in 1985, 85:15. Only about 15% of software development effort is devoted to programming. Walkthroughs catch 60% of the errors. 80% of the contribution comes from 20% of contributors.
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Part 1
Evolution of Software Economics
Most software cost models can be abstracted into a function of five basic parameters:
Size (typically, number of source instructions) Process (the ability of the process to avoid non-valueadding activities) Personnel (their experience with the computer science issues and the applications domain issues of the project) Environment (tools and techniques available to support efficient software development and to automate process) Quality (performance, reliability, adaptability)
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Part 1
Evolution of Software Economics
Three generations of software economics
Cost
Software size
1960s-1970s Waterfall model Functional design Diseconomy of scale Environments/tools: Custom Size: 100% custom Process: Ad hoc 1980s-1990s Process improvement Encapsulation-based Diseconomy of scale Environments/tools: Off-the-shelf, separate Size: 30%component-based, 70% custom Process: Repeatable 2000 and on Iterative development Component- based Return to investment Environments/tools: Off-the-shelf, integrated Size: 70%component-based, 30% custom Process: Managed/measured
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Evolution of Software Economics
The predominant cost estimation process
Software manager, software architecture manager, software development manager, software assessment manager
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Evolution of Software Economics
Pragmatic software cost estimation
A good estimate has the following attributes: It is conceived and supported by the project manager, architecture team, development team, and test team accountable for performing the work. It is accepted by all stakeholders as ambitious but realizable. It is based on a well defined software cost model with a credible basis. It is based on a database of relevant project experience that includes similar processes, technologies, environments, quality requirements, and people. It is defined in enough detail so that its key risk areas are understood and the probability of success is objectively assessed.
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Part 1
Higher order languages (C++, Java, Visual Basic, etc.) Object-oriented (Analysis, design, programming) Reuse Commercial components
Iterative development Process maturity models Architecture-first development Acquisition reform Training and personnel skill development Teamwork Win-win cultures
Integrated tools (Visual modeling, compiler, editor, etc) Environment Open systems Automation technologies and tools Hardware platform performance Automation of coding, documents, testing, analyses Hardware platform performance Quality "Software Project Management" Demonstration-based assessment 16/112 Performance, reliability, accuracy Statistical quality control Walker Royce
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The most significant way to improve affordability and return on investment is usually to produce a product that achieves the design goals with the minimum amount of human-generated source material.
Reuse, object-oriented technology, automatic code production, and higher order programming languages are all focused on achieving a given system with fewer lines of human-specified source directives.
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Ada 83
C++ Ada 95 Java Visual Basic
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56 55 55 35
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The use of continuous integration creates opportunities to recognize risk early and make incremental corrections without destabilizing the entire development effort.
This aspect of object-oriented technology enables an architecture-first process, in which integration is an early and continuous life-cycle activity.
An object-oriented architecture provides a clear separation of concerns among disparate elements of a system, creating firewalls that prevent a change in one part of the system from rending the fabric of the entire architecture.
This feature of object-oriented technology is crucial to the supporting languages and environments available to implement object-oriented architectures.
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Many-project solution: Operating with high value per unit investment, typical of commercial products
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APPROACH
DISADVANTAGES
Frequent upgrades Up-front license fees Recurring maintenance fees Dependency on vendor Run-time efficiency sacrifices Functionality constraints Integration not always trivial No control over upgrades and maintenance Unnecessary features that consume extra resources Often inadequate reliability and stability Multiple-vendor incompatibility
Commercial components
Custom development
Complete change freedom Smaller, often simpler implementations Often better performance Control of development and enhancement
Expensive, unpredictable development Unpredictable availability date Undefined maintenance model Often immature and fragile Single-platform dependency Drain on expert resources
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Attributes
Subject Objectives
Metaprocess
Line of business Line-of-business profitability Competitiveness
Microprocess
Iteration Resource management Risk resolution Milestone budget, schedule, quality Subproject managers Software engineers On budget, on schedule Major milestone progress Release/iteration scrap and rework Content vs. schedule 1 to 6 months
Audience
Acquisition authorities, customers Organizational management Project predictability Revenue, market share
Metrics
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The principle of top talent: Use better and fewer people. The principle of job matching: Fit the task to the skills an motivation of the people available. The principle of career progression: An organization does best in the long run by helping its people to selfactualize. The principle of team balance: Select people who will complement and harmonize with one another. The principle of phase-out: Keeping a misfit on the team doesnt benefit anyone.
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
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Architecture-first approach
The central design element The risk management element The technology element The control element The automation element
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Life-Cycle Phases
Engineering and Production Stages Inception Phase Elaboration Phase Construction Phase Transition Phase The Artifact Sets Management Artifacts Engineering Artifacts Pragmatic Artifacts
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Part 2
PRODUCTION STAGE EMPHASIS Cost Product release baselines Implementation, testing Testing Exploiting economics of scale Operations
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Engineering Stage
Inception Elaboration
Production Stage
Construction Transition
Idea
Architecture
Beta Releases
Products
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Overriding goal to achieve concurrence among stakeholders on the life-cycle objectives Essential activities : Formulating the scope of the project (capturing the requirements and operational concept in an information repository) Synthesizing the architecture (design trade-offs, problem space ambiguities, and available solutionspace assets are evaluated) Planning and preparing a business case (alternatives for risk management, iteration planes, and cost/schedule/profitability trade-offs are evaluated)
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During the elaboration phase, an executable architecture prototype is built Essential activities : Elaborating the vision (establishing a high-fidelity understanding of the critical use cases that drive architectural or planning decisions) Elaborating the process and infrastructure (establishing the construction process, the tools and process automation support) Elaborating the architecture and selecting components (lessons learned from these activities may result in redesign of the architecture)
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During the construction phase : All remaining components and application features are integrated into the application All features are thoroughly tested
Essential activities : Resource management, control, and process optimization Complete component development and testing against evaluation criteria Assessment of the product releases against acceptance criteria of the vision
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The transition phase is entered when baseline is mature enough to be deployed in the end-user domain This phase could include beta testing, conversion of operational databases, and training of users and maintainers
Essential activities : Synchronization and integration of concurrent construction into consistent deployment baselines Deployment-specific engineering (commercial packaging and production, field personnel training) 1. Assessment of deployment baselines against the complete vision and acceptance criteria in the requirements set
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Life-Cycle Phases
Evaluation Criteria : Is the user satisfied? Are actual resource expenditures versus planned expenditures acceptable?
Each of the four phases consists of one or more iterations in which some technical capability is produced in demonstrable form and assessed against a set of the criteria The transition from one phase to the nest maps more to a significant business decision than to the completion of specific software activity.
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Design Set
Implementation Set
1.Source code baselines 2.Associated compile-time files 3.Component executables
Deployment Set
1.Integrated product executable baselines 2.Associated run-time files 3.User manual
Operational Artifacts
5.Release descriptions 6.Status assessments 7.Software change order database 8.Deployment documents 9.Enviorement "Software Project Management" Walker Royce 42/112
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Two important forms of requirements : vision statement (or user need) - which captures the contract between the development group and the buyer. evaluation criteria defined as management-oriented requirements, which may be represented by use cases, use case realizations or structured text representations.
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Environment A robust development environment must support automation of the development process. It should include : requirements management visual modeling document automation automated regression testing
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Architecture Description
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IV. IV.
it should include installation procedures, usage procedures and guidance, operational constraints, and a user interface description. It should be written by members of the test team, who are more likely to understand the users perspective than the development team. It also provides a necessary basis for test plans and test cases, and for construction of automated test suites.
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Over the past 30 years, the quality of documents become more important than the quality of the engineering information they represented.
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An architecture baseline (the tangible artifacts) is a slice of information across the engineering artifact sets sufficient to satisfy all stakeholders that the vision can be achieved within the parameters of the business case (cost, profit, time, people). An architecture description (a human-readable representation of an architecture) is an organizes subsets of information extracted from the design set model.
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Design View
Process View
Component View
Deployment View
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The design view addresses the basic structure and the functionality
of the solution. The process view addresses the run-time collaboration issues involved in executing the architecture on a distributed deployment model, including the logical software network topology, interprocess communication and state management. The component view describes the architecturally significant elements of the implementation set and addresses the software source code realization of the system from perspective of the project's integrators and developers. The deployment view addresses the executable realization of the system, including the allocation of logical processes in the distribution view to physical resources of the deployment network.
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Management
Requirements Design Implementation Assessment Deployment
Results for the next iteration "Software Project Management" Walker Royce 55/112
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Management
Requirements
Design Implementation Assessment Deployment
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2. Minor milestones iteration-focused events, conducted to review the content of an iteration in detail and to authorize continued work.
3. Status assessments periodic events provide management with frequent and regular insight into the progress being made.
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Part 3
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Work Breakdown Structures Planning Guidelines The Cost and Schedule Estimating Process The Iteration Planning Process Pragmatic Planning
Line-of-Business organizations Project Organizations Evolution Organizations Tools: Automation Building Blocks The Project Environment
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Process Automation
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The Seven Core Metrics Management Indicators Quality Indicators Life-Cycle Expectations Pragmatic Software Metrics Metrics Automation Process Discriminants Example: Small-Scale Project Versus Large-scale Project
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The development of a work breakdown structure is dependent on the project management style, organizational culture, customer preference, financial constraints and several other hard-to-define parameters. A WBS is simply a hierarchy of elements that decomposes the project plan into the discrete work tasks. A WBS provides the following information structure:
A delineation of all significant work A clear task decomposition for assignment of responsibilities A framework for scheduling, budgeting, and expenditure
tracking.
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Two simple planning guidelines should be considered when a project plan is being initiated or assessed.
FIRST-LEVEL WBS ELEMENT DEFAULT BUDGET
INCEPTION 5% 10%
The second guideline prescribes the allocation of effort and schedule across the life-cycle phases
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Backward-looking:
1. The lowest level WBS elements are elaborated into detailed tasks, for which budgets and schedules are estimated by the responsible WBS element manager. 2. Estimates are combined and integrated into higher level budgets and milestones. 3. Comparisons are made with the top-down budgets and schedule milestones. Gross differences are assessed and adjustments are made in order to converge on agreement between the top-down and the bottom-up estimates.
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Elaboration
Architecture iterations
Transition
Product releases
Macro-level task estimation for production-stage artifacts Micro-level task estimation for engineering artifacts Stakeholder concurrence Coarse-grained variance analysis of actual vs. planned expenditures Tuning the top-down projectindependent planning guidelines into project-specific planning guidelines.
Micro-level task estimation for production-stage artifacts Macro-level task estimation for engineering artifacts Stakeholder concurrence Fine-grained variance analysis of actual vs. planned expenditures
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Infrastructure
Project administration Engineering skill centers Professional development
Project A Manager
Project B Manager
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Project N Manager
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Business case Vision Software development plan Work breakdown structure Status assessments Requirements set
Responsibilities
Life-Cycle Focus
Inception
Elaboration phase planning Team formulating Contract base lining Architecture costs
Resource commitments Personnel assignments Plans, priorities, Stakeholder satisfaction Scope definition Risk management Project control
Transition
Customer satisfaction Contract closure Sales support Next-generation planning
Elaboration
Construction phase planning Full staff recruitment Risk resolution Product acceptance criteria Construction costs
Construction
Transition phase planning Construction plan optimization Risk management
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Responsibilities
Requirements trade-offs Design trade-offs Component selection Initial integration Technical risk solution
Life-Cycle Focus
Inception
Architecture prototyping Make/buy trade-offs Primary scenario definition Architecture evaluation criteria definition
Elaboration
Architecture base lining Primary scenario demonstration Make/buy trade-offs base lining
Construction
Architecture maintenance Multiple-component issue resolution Performance tuning Quality improvements
Transition
Architecture maintenance Multiple-component issue resolution Performance tuning Quality improvements
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Artifacts
Responsibilities
Component Component Component Component Component
Life-Cycle Focus
Inception
Prototyping support Make/buy trade-offs
Elaboration
Critical component design Critical component implementation and test Critical component base line
Construction
Component Component Component Component design implementation stand-alone test maintenance
Transition
Component maintenance Component documentation
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Deployment set SCO database User manual Environment Release specifications Release descriptions Deployment documents
Inception
Infrastructure planning Primary scenario prototyping
Responsibilities
Life-Cycle Focus
Construction
Project infrastructure Independent testing Requirements verification Metrics analysis Configuration control Change management User deployment
Transition
Infrastructure maintenance Release base lining Change management Deployment to users Requirements verification
Elaboration
Infrastructure base lining Architecture release testing Change management Initial user manual
Infrastructure upgrades Release testing Change management User manual base line Requirements verification
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Software management 50% Software architecture 20% Software development 20% Software assessment 10% Software architecture 50%
Inception
Transition
Software management 10% Software architecture 5% Software development 35% Software assessment 50%
Elaboration
Construction
Software management 10% Software architecture 10% Software development 50% Software assessment 30%
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Process Automation
Computer-aided software engineering
Part 3
Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is software to support software development and evolution processes. Activity automation
Graphical editors for system model development; Data dictionary to manage design entities; Graphical UI builder for user interface construction; Debuggers to support program fault finding; Automated translators to generate new versions of a program.
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Process Automation
Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) Technology
Part 3
Case technology has led to significant improvements in the software process. However, these are not the order of magnitude improvements that were once predicted
Software engineering requires creative thought this is not readily automated; Software engineering is a team activity and, for large projects, much time is spent in team interactions. CASE technology does not really support these.
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Process Automation
CASE Classification
Part 3
Classification helps us understand the different types of CASE tools and their support for process activities. Functional perspective
Tools are classified according to their specific function.
Process perspective
Tools are classified according to process activities that are supported.
Integration perspective
Tools are classified according to their organisation into integrated units.
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Process Automation
Functional Tool Classification
Tool type Planning tools Editing tools Change management tools Configuration management tools Prototyping tools Method-support tools Language-processing tools Program analysis tools T esting tools Debugging tools Documentation tools Re-engineering tools Examples PERT tools, estimation tools, spreadsheets T ext editors, diagram editors, word processors Requirements traceability tools, change control systems Version management systems, system building tools Very high-level languages, user interface generators Design editors, data dictionaries, code generators Compilers, interpreters Cross reference generators, static analysers, dynamic analysers T est data generators, file comparators Interactive debugging systems Page layout programs, image editors Cross-reference systems, program re-structuring systems
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Process Automation
CASE Integration
Part 3
Tools
Support individual process tasks such as design consistency checking, text editing, etc.
Workbenches
Support a process phase such as specification or design, Normally include a number of integrated tools.
Environments
Support all or a substantial part of an entire software process. Normally include several integrated workbenches.
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Process Automation
Tools, Workbenches, Environments
CASE techn olo g y
Part 3
T ls oo
W kb en ch es or
Envir ments on
Ed ito rs
Co mp ilers
Pro gramming
T estin g
Mu lti-metho d workb en ch es
General-pu rp os e workb en ch es
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METRIC
Work and progress
PURPOSE
Iteration planning, plan vs. actuals, management indicator Financial insight, plan vs. actuals, management indicator Resource plan vs. actuals, hiring rate, attrition rate Iteration planning, management indicator of schedule convergence Convergence, software scrap, quality indicator
PERSPECTIVES
SLOC, function points, object points, scenarios, test cases, SCOs Cost per month, full-time staff per month, percentage of budget expended People per month added, people per month leaving Software changes
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Straightforward automation, single thread Interactive performance, single platform Many precedent systems, application re-engineering
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Rank
Small Commercial Project Design Implementation Deployment Requirements Assessments Management Environment
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Large Complex Project Management Design Requirements Assessment Environment Implementation Deployment
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Looking Forward
Part 4
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Looking Forward
Table of Contents
Part 4
Continuous Integration Early Risk Resolution Evolutionary Requirements Teamwork Among Stakeholders Top 10 Software Management Principles Software Management Best Practices Next-Generation Cost Models Modern Software Economics Culture Shifts Denouement
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Environment
Requirements Design Implementation Assessment Deployment Total
5%
5% 10% 30% 40% 5% 100%
10%
10% 15% 25% 25% 5% 100%
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Modern Project Profiles Continuous Integration The continuous integration inherent in an iterative development process enables better insight into quality trade-offs. System characteristics that are largely inherent in the architecture (performance, fault tolerance, maintainability) are tangible earlier in the process, when issues are still correctable.
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The effect of the overall life-cycle philosophy on the 80/20 lessons provides a useful risk management perspective.
80% of the engineering is consumed by 20% of the requirements. 80% of the software cost is consumed by 20% of the components. 80% of the errors are caused by 20% of the components. 80% of the progress is made by 20% of the people.
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Most modern architectures that use commercial components, legacy components, distributed resources and object-oriented methods are not trivially traced to the requirements they satisfy.
The artifacts are now intended to evolve along with the process, with more and more fidelity as the life-cycle progresses and the requirements understanding matures.
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2. Establish an iterative life-cycle process that confronts risk early 3. Transition design methods to emphasize component-based development 4. Establish a change management environment the dynamics
of iterative development, including concurrent workflows by different teams working on shared artifacts, necessitate highly controlled baselines
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VERSUS
It will be difficult to improve empirical estimation models while the project data going into these models are noisy and highly uncorrelated, and are based on differing process and technology foundations.
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Separation of the engineering stage from the production stage will force estimators to differentiate between architectural scale and implementation size. Rigorous design notations such as UML will offer an opportunity to define units of measure for scale that are more standardized and therefore can be automated and tracked.
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Aim.
Select a critical project. Staff it with the right team of complementary resources and demand improved results.
Fire.
Execute the organizational and project-level plans with vigor and follow-through.
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Appendix
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A sequence of actions a system performs that yields a valuable result for a particular actor.
What is an Actor?
A user or outside system that interacts with the system being designed in order to obtain some value from that interaction
Use Cases describe scenarios that describe the interaction between users of the system and the system itself. Use Cases describe WHAT the system will do, but never HOW it will be done.
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Appendix
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Use Cases Describe Function not Form Use Cases describe WHAT the system should do, but never HOW it will be done Use cases are Analysis products, not design products
Appendix
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Why spend time on the Analysis Model, why not just face the cliff?
By performing analysis, designers can inexpensively come to a better understanding of the requirements of the system By providing such an abstract overview, newcomers can understand the overall architecture of the system efficiently, from a birds eye view, without having to get bogged down with implementation details. The Analysis Model is a simple abstraction of what the system is going to do from the point of view of the developers. By speaking the developers language, comprehension is improved and by abstracting, simplicity is achieved Nevertheless, the cost of maintaining the AM through construction is weighed against the value of having it all along.
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Appendix
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Literature
Software Project Management A Unified Framework Walker Royce Software Processes Ian Sommerville 2004 Process and Method: An Introduction to the Rational Unified Process
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