Applied Software Project Management
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Applied Software Project Management
Applied Software Project
Management
Design and Programming
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Applied Software Project Management
Review the Design
• Once the SRS has been approved, implementation begins. Programming
teams have many options:
– The programmers can simply start building the code and create the objects
and user interface elements.
– Designers can build a user interface prototype to demonstrate to the users,
stakeholders and the rest of the team. Any code used to develop the
prototype is typically thrown away once the design has been finalized.
– Pictures, flow charts, data flow diagrams, database design diagrams and other
visual tools can be used to determine aspects of the design and architecture.
– An object model can be developed on paper, either using code, simple class
diagrams or Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams.
– A written design specification may be created, which includes some or all of
the tools above.
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Applied Software Project Management
Review the Design
• Design tasks should always include reviews, even
when there is no written design specification.
• Any written documentation should be reviewed and,
if possible, inspected.
– It is important that the reviews and inspections reach the
correct audience.
– Many users who have important input for the user
interface may be uninterested or confused by object
models and UML diagrams.
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Applied Software Project Management
Version Control
• A version control system allows programmers to keep track of
every revision of all source code files
– The main element of the version control system is the repository, a
database or directory which contains each of the files contained in the
system.
– A programmer can pick a point at any time in the history of the
project and see exactly what those files looked like at the time.
– It is always possible to find the latest version of any file by retrieving it
from the repository.
– Changing a file will not unexpectedly overwrite any previous changes
to that file; any change can be rolled back, so no work will accidentally
be overwritten.
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Applied Software Project Management
Version Control
• There are two common models for version control systems
– In a copy-modify-merge system, multiple people can work on a single
file at a time.
• When a programmer wants to update the repository with his changes, he
retrieves all changes which have occurred to the checked out files and
reconciles any of them which conflict with changes he made before
updating the repository.
– In a lock-modify-unlock system, only one person can work on any file
at a time.
• A programmer must check a file out of the repository before it can be
modified. The system prevents anyone else from modifying any file until it
is checked back in.
• On large projects, the team can run into delays because one programmer
is often stuck waiting for a file to be available.
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Applied Software Project Management
Refactoring
• Refactoring is a programming technique in which the design
of the software is improved without changing its behavior.
– There are many choices that programmers make which do not affect
the behavior of the software but which can have an enormous impact
on how easy the code is to read and understand.
– Refactoring works especially well during code reviews.
– Because refactoring is a change to the design, it may impact the
design review process. If previously reviewed code is refactored,
changes to that should be distributed to the review team.
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Applied Software Project Management
Unit Testing
• Before a build is delivered, the person or program building
the software should execute unit tests to verify that each unit
functions properly.
– All code is made up of a set of objects, functions, modules or other
non-trivial units. The purpose of unit testing is to create a set of tests
for each unit to verify that it performs its function correctly.
– Programmers create suites of unit tests, where each test is a small
block of code which exercises a specific behavior of one unit.
– The most common (and effective) way for programmers to do unit
testing is to use a framework, a piece of software that automatically
runs the tests and reports the results.
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Applied Software Project Management
Everyone is responsible for quality
• There are different kinds of testing that serve
different purposes.
– Programmers use unit tests is to verify that the software
works exactly as the programmer intended.
– Software testers are responsible for verifying that the
software meets its requirements (in the SRS) and the
needs of the users and stakeholders (in the Vision and
Scope Document).
• Many defects arise when a programmer delivers software that
worked as he intended, but did not meet the needs of the users.
Software testers can catch these problems.
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Applied Software Project Management
Everyone is responsible for quality
• Many programmers are confused about exactly what
it is that software testers do.
– All they know is that they deliver a build to the QA team.
The QA people run the program and find bugs, which the
programmers fix.
– It is often hard for them to figure out where unit testing
ends and functional testing begins.
– The project manager should watch for this confusion, and
help to clarify it by making sure that the programmers
understand what kinds of testing are expected of them.
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Applied Software Project Management
Project Automation
• Many quality problems happen because the team does not
build the software consistently, and loses track of the health
of the code.
• Effective project automation reduces these errors. The team
can adopt a tool which:
– Retrieves the latest build from the version control system, builds it,
copies it to a folder, and reports any build warnings or errors
– Runs unit tests, generating a test report and reporting critical failures
– Runs automated code review tools, reporting any warnings or rule
violations
– Lists any changes which have been committed and by whom, including
links to code listings for the changes
– end
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