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Project Management

Learn the essentials of project management, including planning, scheduling, scope creep, risk management, and motivational techniques. Get practical schedule examples and demos.

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Project Management

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  1. Project Management Dan Fleck Sping 2009 Coming up: Overview

  2. Overview • Planning • Scheduling • Scope Creep • Managing Risk • Motivating People • Schedule examples and demo Coming up: Planning

  3. Planning • The bad news: time flies • The good news: you’re the pilot! • You must begin planning immediately • Given limited information • Plan anyway and then revise Coming up: Creating a plan: Things to know

  4. Creating a plan: Things to know • Scope • Context. How does the software to be built fit into a larger system, product, or business context and what constraints are imposed as a result of the context? • Informationobjectives. What customer-visible data objects (Chapter 8) are produced as output from the software? What data objects are required for input? • Function and performance. What function does the software perform to transform input data into output? Are any special performance characteristics to be addressed? • Software project scope must be unambiguous and understandable at the management and technical levels. Coming up: Creating a plan: Things to do

  5. Creating a plan: Things to do • Problem Decomposition: Sometimes called partitioning or problemelaboration • Once scope is defined … • It is decomposed into constituent functions • It is decomposed into user-visible data objects or • It is decomposed into a set of problem classes • Decomposition process continues until all functions or problem classes have been defined (this won’t be far at the beginning of your project) Coming up: Create a schedule

  6. Create a schedule • An idea without a schedule is just a dream. - Unknown Coming up: At the beginning you should ask yourself these questions

  7. At the beginning you should ask yourself these questions • Why is the system being developed? • What will be done? • When will it be accomplished? • Who is responsible? • Where are they organizationally located? • How will the job be done technically and managerially? • How much of each resource (e.g., people, software, tools, database) will be needed? Barry Boehm Coming up: Your job (one view)

  8. Your job (one view) • The MOI Model • Motivation. The ability to encourage (by “push or pull”) technical people to produce to their best ability. • Organization. The ability to mold existing processes (or invent new ones) that will enable the initial concept to be translated into a final product. • Ideas or innovation. The ability to encourage people to create and feel creative even when they must work within bounds established for a particular software product or application. Coming up: Your job (another view)

  9. Your job (another view) Make sure these happen • Formal risk management • Empirical cost and schedule estimation • Metrics-based project management • Tracking – amount of work done, costs, work remaining, etc… • Defect tracking against quality targets • People aware project management Coming up: Define success and failure

  10. Define success and failure • Don’t lie to yourself! • Be confident, trust yourself for success! • Quantify your plans to allow success or failure • A vague or un-measurable idea is much less helpful - Dan Fleck Coming up: Scheduling

  11. Scheduling • One of the most important things you can do is schedule. • Also one of the first things you should do! • Tools help • Microsoft Project • OpenProj.org <-- This is what I will use • OpenWorkbench.org • Find another good one? Let me know… there are web-based tools out there also. Coming up: Schedule

  12. Schedule • List of tasks • With dates • With assigned resources (people) • With durations • With predecessors and successors • How do you get buy-in from the team for a schedule? Coming up: Schedule Terms

  13. Schedule Terms • Critical path • Sequence of tasks that form the longest path to completion of the project. Any delay on any of these will make the overall completion date move. • Slack • Amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the overall completion date. • Start slack - amount before task needs to start • Finish slack - amount before task needs to finish • Milestone - An import date in the schedule • Dependencies - relationship between tasks Coming up: Schedule Dependencies

  14. Schedule Dependencies • FS - Finish to start (most common) • A FS B. B doesn’t start until A is finished • Build wall FS Paint wall • FF - Finish to finish • A FF B. B doesn’t finish before A is finished • Write final chapter FF Complete Index • SS - Start to start • A SS B. B doesn’t start until A has started • Project funded SS project management activies begin • SF - Start to finish • A SF B. B doesn’t finish before A has started Coming up: Resource Leveling

  15. Resource Leveling • A process to examine a project for an unbalanced use of people and to resolve over-allocations or conflicts • Happens when multiple tasks are scheduled at the same time for the same person • Solution: • Make tasks sequential • Split resource usage among tasks (50% on task 1, 50% on task 2) See example: NeedToLevel.pod Coming up: Gantt Chart

  16. Gantt Chart Coming up: Finding Critical Path

  17. Finding Critical Path • Draw a network diagram of the activities • Determine the Early Start (ES) of each node. Work from beginning node to final node • ES - earliest time the activity can start • ES = Max(ESprevNode + DurationPrevNode) ES: 4 ES: ?? A 7 C 10 ES: 2 B Coming up: Finding Critical Path

  18. Finding Critical Path • Determine the Late Start (LS) of each node. Work from the final node to the beginning node. • The latest time the activity can start without changing the end date of the project • LS = MIN(LSnext - DurationNode) • For the last node LS = ES LS: 13 B 10 LS: ? LS: ? LS: 12 LS: 12 A A 7 7 C C 10 LS: ? B Coming up: Example

  19. Example Here's the example: Activity Description Predecessor Duration A Product design (None) 5 months B Market research (None) 1 C Production analysis A 2 D Product model A 3 E Sales brochure A 2 F Cost analysis C 3 G Product testing D 4 H Sales training B, E 2 I Pricing H 1 J Project report F, G, I 1 Coming up: Example Node Network

  20. Example Node Network ES:5LS: ES:7LS: C F ES:0LS: ES:12LS: ES:5LS: A G J D ES:8LS: ES:0LS: ES:5LS: B E I ES:9LS: Here's the example: Activity Description Predecessor Duration A Product design (None) 5 months B Market research(None) 1 C Production A 2 D Product model A 3 E Sales brochure A 2 F Cost analysis C 3 G Product testing D 4 H Sales training B, E 2 I Pricing H 1 J Project report F, G, I 1 H ES:7LS: Coming up: Example Node Network

  21. Example Node Network ES:5LS:7 ES:7LS:9 C F ES:0LS:0 ES:12LS:12 ES:5LS:5 A G J D ES:8LS:8 ES:0LS:8 ES:5LS:7 B E I ES:9LS:11 Here's the example: Activity Description Predecessor Duration A Product design (None) 5 months B Market research(None) 1 C Production A 2 D Product model A 3 E Sales brochure A 2 F Cost analysis C 3 G Product testing D 4 H Sales training B, E 2 I Pricing H 1 J Project report F, G, I 1 H ES:7LS:9 Coming up: Example Node Network

  22. Example Node Network ES:5LS:7 ES:7LS:9 C F ES:0LS:0 ES:12LS:12 ES:5LS:5 A G J D ES:8LS:8 ES:0LS:8 ES:5LS:7 B E I ES:9LS:11 Here's the example: Activity Description Predecessor Duration A Product design (None) 5 months B Market research(None) 1 C Production A 2 D Product model A 3 E Sales brochure A 2 F Cost analysis C 3 G Product testing D 4 H Sales training B, E 2 I Pricing H 1 J Project report F, G, I 1 H ES:7LS:9 Coming up: Game Development In-Class Exercise

  23. Game Development In-Class Exercise Find the critical path Coming up: Review Questions

  24. Review Questions • What is the critical path? • Do all nodes on the critical path have to be connected to each other? (directly) • What is slack? • When should you write your schedule for the work? • What is resource leveling? Coming up: Earned Value Management

  25. What about Agile? • Planning and tracking is still important! • Scrum Burndown Chart • Release level: Number of story points versus Release • Sprint Level: Number of story points versus day • Burndown chart shows amount of work remaining, and charts the trajectory to help predict success or failure

  26. Sprint Burndown Chart Story Points Remaining Day

  27. Release Burndown Chart Story Points Remaining Iteration Number

  28. Burndown Chart • Vertical axis can be any metric describing amount of work remaining: • Story points • User Stories • Use Cases • Requirements • Ideal developer hours

  29. Scheduling Rules of Thumb • Don’t work backwards! • One person should always edit the schedule (you!) • If you have two people that need to, create two files and link them together • Keep it simple and useful • Level your resources • Share the schedule with your team Coming up: Schedule Example

  30. Schedule Example • Lets try to schedule this work among our three developers “John, Mary, Carl” Coming up: Scheduling Steps

  31. Scheduling Steps • Add in all the tasks (preferably in a hierarchy) • Add in all the dependencies • Break down large tasks into smaller tasks. Optimally (in Dan Fleck’s opinion) you want to schedule so the duration of each smallest task is at most 3-5 days • Assign people (resources) to tasks • Level your resources Coming up: Classic Mistakes

  32. Classic Mistakes • Overly optimistic schedule • Failing to monitor schedule • Failing to update schedule • Adding people to a late project • Failure to manage expectations of others Coming up: Scope Creep

  33. Scope Scope Creep • The scope of your project is all the work you initially planned to do. • Scope creep is when your project gets new tasks throughout it’s lifetime without adding more resources to handle new tasks. The scope is “creeping” up… • Scope changes are OK, and really unavoidable… that’s fine. However you must update the resources (time, features or people accordingly) BOO! Coming up: Why would scope changes occur?

  34. Why would scope changes occur? • A. You get more money to do more things • B. The customer asks you to do something extra because “it is critical for success” • C. A competing product has a feature that you must have to be competitive • D. All of these Coming up: Which are causes of scope creep?

  35. Which are causes of scope creep? • A. poor change control • B. lack of proper initial identification of what is required to satisfy project objectives • C. a weak project manager • D. all of theseSource: Wikipedia: Scope Creep Coming up: Managing Scope

  36. Scope Managing Scope • How to deal with the inevitable “Scope creep”? • JAD and prototyping • Formal change approval • Defer additional requirements as future system enhancements Coming up: Managing Risk

  37. Managing Risk • Document your risks in a risk management plan • Description of risk • Likelihood of occurrence (0-100%) • Impact - 1(low)  5 (high), or cost $20,000 • Exposure = Impact * Liklihood • Mitigation strategy • How to lessen the impact of the risk • How to lessen the liklihood • An action plan if risk occurs • Update and track your risks • Communicate your risks to upper management Coming up: Managing Risk

  38. Managing Risk • The most important thing to do for risk management is spend some time thinking about possible risks, mitigations and impacts BEFORE risks occur. • Once your house is on fire, it is too late to buy the fire extinguisher Coming up: Motivating People

  39. Motivating People • Use monetary rewards cautiously • Use intrinsic rewards • Recognition • Achievement • The work itself • Responsibility • Advancement • Chance to learn new skills Coming up: Project Manager

  40. Project Manager • Management is using tools and techniques • Leadership is inspiring people to do the right thing • Leadership with poor management practices can be successful, management with poor leadership will fail. Coming up: Leadership Case Study: 3M

  41. Leadership Case Study: 3M Philosophy: • As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way. • "Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.” • "Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow." . • These are common themes now, but not in 1940s when 3M codified them Coming up: 3M Results

  42. 3M Results • Encouragement and a culture of innovation yields: • 1968 Dr. Spence Silver does an experiment that yields an adhesive that sticks, but not strongly • Presents around the company for 5 years with no “takers” • In 1973, 3M scientist Art Fry was trying to mark his place in his church choir hmn book with bits of paper that kept falling out. As he did so • Art works with Spence. Creates little notepapers. • Marketing says “not enough market, who wants to pay for scraps of paper?”, engineering says “too hard to make, will be costly” • Response: If it’s hard to make that’s great, no one but 3M will be able to do it! • Fry sends out “free samples” across the company, making sure to include executive’s assistants • Demand rises – finally the product is introduces. Within 1 year PostIt notes named “Outstanding New Product” and today generates $100 million in US sales • This is possible because of a culture in the company to empower, encourage, and experiment! Coming up: Avoid team toxicity

  43. References • www.projity.com • Wikipedia: Project Management • Pressman R., Software Engineering A Practical Approach, Ch 21 • Pressman R., Software Engineering A Practical Approach, Slides for Ch 21 • Kazman R., The CIO, People Issues, Project & Change Management, kazman.shidler.hawaii.edu/619ch12.ppt • Pratt M, Earned Value Management, http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=110065&intsrc=article_pots_bot End of presentation

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