ISAD357SL

Software Development and

Project Management
Craig Banyard
Centre for Security Communications and Network Research
[email protected]
Outline
1 Introduce module and expectations

2 Introduce Software Project management

3 Identify International Standards

4 Explore Project Constraints

5 Introduce Assignment
About me…
• Centre for Security Communications and
Network Research

• Research Interests:
• Learning Analytics, Cyber Security
Education and Technology-supported
learning
Expectations
o I start at the time I say I will
o Do not sit in the lecture theatre ignoring the presentations, activities
and doing your own work / browse Facebook on your laptop
o You are here to work
o If you do not attend the sessions, do not email just before the
coursework is due because you do not understand what you are
doing
o If your English is weak, you may want to seek help from the English
Unit
This Module
o Assessed in two parts
o Coursework – 70%
o Test – 30%

o Last year
o Average mark 42.61%
o Due to poor English and poor critical writing skills
o Lack of reading and using literature
o 20 people made to do it again
Software Project Management
o What do we mean by “Software Project Management”?
o First we need to explore what a project is
o Then to explore how Software affects the dynamics

o Consider if there is anything special about Software

Projects
o A challenging landscape
o No magic recipe – no algorithm to follow
o Is a heuristic activity
o Smart, adaptive, fluid, thinking outside of the box to achieve
goals
o Many types of project require many types of project
management
o Bringing order to chaos
What is a project?
o “A specific plan or design”
o “A planned undertaking”
o “A sequence of unique, complex, and connected activities that
have one goal or purpose and that must be completed by a
specific time, within budget and according to specification”

Activity
Activity
B E
Activity
Activity
D
A Activity
C
Sequence
o We define an activity as a chunk of work

o Sequence of these chunks of work should be based on the

technical requirements

o Input for one activity is usually formulated on the output from

the previous activity

o When determining the sequence of activities, you do not rely on

who can do it – that type of planning needs to come later
Activities
o Unique, complex and connected…
o Something in a project is usually different each time the project
is repeated
o There will be random variations – power failure, sickness – the
project manager has to deal with these
o Complex activities are not simple, repetitive acts
o Activities will have some form of connection – a logical or
technical relationship
o Connections are based on inputs and outputs
o e.g. software needs requirements analysis before you can
start the design
Goals
o A project has one goal
o Large projects will have sub-projects

o Division into sections helps manage the complexity

Specified Time
o Projects are finite

o They have specific completion date

o Needs a start date

o Senior management will want to know when it will be completed

Within budget
o There is a limited amount of money, people, machines, that can
be allocated to the project

o These are known as “resources” and are likely to have external

controls
o E.g. if you only have one software engineer – unless the
management hire another you have a fixed resource
According to specification
o A client will have expectations of what they are getting

o These expectations need to be managed as part of the project

o Could be when it will be completed
o What functionality will be delivered

o Often the client will not really “know” what they want and so
requirements will evolve during the project
o AGILE!
Project Characteristics
o Non-routine
o Planned
o Aiming at a specific target
o Carried out for a customer
o Carried out by a temporary work group
o Involves several specialisms
o Made up of several different phases
o Constrained by time and resources
o Large and/or complex
 Activity – Exercise 1
o Order the following as most likely to be a project

Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Producing an edition of a newspaper
Putting a robot vehicle on Mars
Getting married
Research into HCI
Investigating user problem
2nd year programming module
Writing an operating system
Installing a new version of a word processor
Software
o How does “software” make a difference?
o Invisible – progress is not always immediate. Project
management therefore has to make the “invisible” visible.
o Complex – the more useful the software, the more complex it
gets
o Conformity – not everybody has the same expectations about
software. Individuals can be inconsistent – clients AND
developers!
o Flexible – software systems are particularly subject to change
o A client usually does not know what they want
Software Development
• Problem Definition (Identify & • Coding and debugging
define) • Unit testing
• Requirements Development • Integration testing
(what do people want?) • Integration
• Construction planning (how • System testing
are we going to build this?)
• Corrective maintenance
• Software architecture (high
level design)
• Detailed design
Software Development
• Problem Definition (Identify & • Coding and debugging
define) • Unit testing
• Requirements Development • Integration testing
(what do people want?)
Tendency
• Integration
is to spend too much
time on this….
• Construction planning
And not enough (how • System testing
time on the other
are we going to build this?)things
Depends on size of project •– Corrective maintenance
• Software architecture (high
expect between 30-80% of time
level design) So it affects the success of the
project
• Detailed design
When it goes wrong
Software Project Management
Activities
o Does not just mean the actual writing of software
o Could include the tailoring of open source or off-the-shelf software
o Feasibility study – is this worth doing?
o Sometimes a project in it’s own right
o Information gathered about the project
o Plan – how are we going to do it?
o If feasibility indicates that the project is viable, create an outline plan for
making it happen
o Project execution – now do it
o Contains design and implementation of sub-phases
o Design – make decisions about the form of what should be created
o Implementation to make it
International Standards
o Attempts to bring order to the chaos
o ISO/IEC/IEEE 16326:2009 (E) Systems and Software
Engineering – Life cycle processes – Project Management
o Specifies what should be in the project plan

o ISO/IEC 12207:2008 Systems and Software Engineering –

Software Life Cycle Processes
o Elements of the process to follow for a software project

o ACTIVITY FOR BEFORE SEMINAR: Read through the two

standards provided in DLE folder
Plans, methods and methodologies
Methodology = set of methods

Context
Methods

Plan

A way of working Plan takes one or more methods, converts

them into real activities showing start and
end dates for each activity, staffing, tools
and materials
Activity – Exercise 2
o Create a plan of how to create a one page guide for a new visiting
lecturer to NSBM. The lecturer needs to know the following:
o Location of main entrance
o Location of toilets
o Location of main teaching area
o Location of where to get a drink of water
o Location of where to sit and think

o List the actions you would carry out to get the information
o Create a guide and time how long it takes you
Iron Triangle
o A model for the traditional constraints of a project
o Considered as “iron” because you cannot change one without
affecting the others! (Dr Martin Barnes, 1969)

Time Cost

Scope
Scope Triangle
o “Iron” Triangle originally based on Waterfall methodologies

o Agile methodologies – where scope varies but the resources

(people) are fixed and so is time
o Agile uses sprints of approximately 2 weeks
o More later…
Fixed

Estimated
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/agile-iron-triangle
Project Constraints
o Every project has the following constraints
o Scope (owned by client)
o Quality (owned by client)
o Cost (owned by the client and senior management)
o Time (owned by the client and senior management)
o Resources (owned by the client and senior management(
o Risk

o All but risk are inter-dependent

o All are important to the success or failure of the project
Scope
o Defines the boundaries of the project

o Determines what will be done and what will NOT be done

o Referred to as Functional Specification Information systems

industry

o Presented in a Project Initiation Document (PID)

o Scope does change (Agile)

Quality
o Two types of quality are part of every project
o Product quality: the quality of the deliverable. Includes
tangible artefacts such as software as well as the business
processes
o Process quality: the quality of the project management
process itself. How well this project management works, how it
can be improved, how it is monitored continuously for quality

o Quality management is important as it helps organisations

use their resources more effectively
Cost
o Best thought of as the budget established for the project

o It is a major consideration throughout the project lifetime

o Clients will often have in mind what they want to spend

o Which might not match what it costs to deliver it
o So you do what you can with the budget you have!

o Costs are estimated at the beginning of a project which will form

the basis of the “go ahead” from the client
Time
o Client will often specify a time frame or a deadline date by which
the project must be completed
o Time a project can be completed can be reduced, but usually
incurs extra costs as a result
o Time cannot be listed per se, it goes past whether you use it
effectively or not
o The project manager must use future time in the most effective
and efficient fashion possible
o Future time (not happened yet) can be traded, but you cannot get
it back once it has gone!
Resources
o Assets such as:
o People
o Equipment
o Physical facilities

o Some resources are fixed – others only variable in the long term

o People are the major resource for software development projects

Risk
o Always present, spans all parts of the project but is not an integral
part of the scope triangle

o Should be managed effectively

Activity – Exercise 3
o Discuss which of the variables in the scope triangle come first
Variability / Priority Critical (1) (2) (3) (4) Flexible (5)

Scope

Quality

Time

Cost

Resource Availability
Formative feedback
o During these sessions

o Asked to write sections and paragraphs and hand in for feedback

o If you do not use this opportunity you are likely to end up with a
lower mark

o There is NO opportunity to send it later

What is a project?
o Write in one or two paragraphs:
o “What is a project”

o Use library resources if you need

o You will get feedback on your writing during the final session

o Do not use the same words as your friends

o WRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS If you’re struggling to put it into

your own words, it means you
have not understood it. You
should revisit the slides.
 Thank you
Are there any questions?