Essays 2007

Abstract:Almost every software engineer started his active career with work on various school projects - whether they were projects for individuals or team projects. Although individual work is usually easier because man don't have to coordinate work of all team members, project planning and work time management is essential for both cases. It is important to accurately estimate the project in early stages of development, so that an accurate schedule can be created, because late delivery of the project often means total failure. In this essay I will deal with problems of software project planning and will provide some basic set of recommendations and advices with which the chance to successfully finish the software project will rise.

Abstract:The Project Monitoring is used by project managers and project teams to ensure the team is making satisfactory progress to the project goals. The purpose is to track all major project variables. The monitoring processes are based on the plan, thus the tailoring for monitoring is much like the tailoring for planning. It's important to monitor not only quantity attributes, but also quality attributes and interpersonal relationships.

Abstract:The significance of team management in software engineering increases with growing complexity of software systems. Alhough managers have limited amount of resources, they have to ensure that team will concentrate on the most critical tasks and apply systematical approaches from theory into practice. In this essay we describe selected methods from management of human resources applied to management of software engineering.

Abstract:Goal of this essay is to explore Barry W. Boehm TOP-10 risk list from a beginner software project manager view. The essay deals with application of this risk list on smaller project. Characteristics of this project differs it from common software projects. For this reason project major features are also mentioned. Moreover, essay deals with basics of risk management and his stages. Major works, which contributed development of this software project management branch, are also mentioned.

Abstract:Traditional software development methodologies schedule the unit testing phase after the software implementation phase. That may lead to latter discovering of errors in the program source code and to rise in the error correction costs. Test-driven development is based on creation of (mostly automated) test cases even before writing of the unit's production code. This essay compares advantages and disadvantages of test-driven development and keeps focus on using this methodology in projects of small size. I also compare agile methods in software development with older models of software lifecycle and their quality assurance capability.

Abstract:A large part of the success of any project is given by right choice of people, who will participate on it. Range and goals of the project, as well as exerted methodology of teamwork in a company define the size and structure of the team. Each of roles in the team requires adequate knowledge, skills and character from its representative, the demands on him are high. The human resources budget of company is not unlimited, so company can't effort to hire individualities, which response to demands on filled role, for each new project. The structure of employees of company is relatively stable. For that reason there is need of analysis of personality characteristics of existing employees - the members of team(s) for the purpose of team role assignment. By assigning team members to the suitable roles, we reach effective work of not only individuals but whole team. In addition, the data acquired by analysis could be used for better organization of employee education and training. We will take a closer look at approach in personality analysis and assignment of team roles, which is applicable for needs of smaller teams, such as figures in school team project.

Abstract:The plan creation and their management has very important commission by the solution of software projects. Using these methodologies and technologies we're able to utilize and manage the resources (human, financial, temporal) more effective, what will be showed in quality of the project solution too. This document deal with the planning in the software project and tries to answer the questions, with concern to this project. In details it describes types of planes, which are occured in software projects. It specifies the rules, which divide these tasks between solvers and controls their filling. Further it solves the situations, when some tasks have been delayed.

Abstract:Software projects are being competed behind schedule or over planned budget. There are exaples, where enormous financial resources had been spent on projects that simply did not work. What caused this failure? A bad project management is the very often answer. Nowadays, managers of projects can choose from quite wide range of tools for project management support. This document deals with existing tools for management support and with attitude of managers and other team members to this tools. It concerns chosen techniques offered by this tools and impact of using them on team members. It also concerns usage of complex tools in smaller team and other software used by team for organisation.

Abstract:The effort to develop this software quickly and usefully is difficult task for every team. Continuous monitoring of status and progress of software project helps management to control the growth of the project as well as can remind the different types of problems and helps to avoid them. Purpose of this essay is to introduce the principles of software project monitoring and it's influence on operation and further planning and show the differences in approach of monitoring depended to upon size of the project. I will try to discuss closer some of the techniques and think about their usability.

Abstract:Development of software systems is a complicated task, usually contributed by many people. Therefore quality assurance of this kind of pruducts does not get along without systematic quality management. This essay analyzes existing standards for software quality, contemplates about their usability in small projects and teams and bears also on personal experiences. Essay compare these recommendations and relatively complicated quality management processes with other lightweight methodologies. Further, I have focused on meaning and importance of testing in quality assurance. It's possible to look at software testing from various views. This article tempts to confront theory with real possibilities. These possibilities are generally given by contract conditions and limitations. Again I tempt to compare standard methods of testing and control of test documentation with agile methodology testing and contemplate about some intersection of theses two accesses, which would be suitable for small team.

Abstract:There are many interactions of different personality types in software team projects. Every team member has different personality characteristics. The sum of team members' characteristics forms the personality profile of the team. It is very important to create a team, in which the positive members' connections are being amplified and the negative ones eliminated. The personality analysis in an IT team helps to reveal the sources of conflicts within the team. There are many techniques and methods of personality analysis. The topic of this essay are these techniques and their relation to small software teams.

Abstract:A lot of software projects are not able to produce accepted product in the time schedule and budget. Unsuccessful project involves loss of profit and possibilities and too disappointed customer and lost of goodwill. Analyze of this projects proves that this unsuccessful was caused by wrong or any response to unaccepted events – risks. It’s unreal to predict that any risk will occur in our project, so risk management should be part of every software risk management. Risk management should reduce risk’s occur and minimalism their effects. This essay describe principles of risk management and define their processes, included identification, analyze, plan and control of risks.

Abstract:The goal which interests small development group is often in vast distance, or there is a long way to go until it is fulfilled. The group is small. All developers, who are involved in project of bigger scope, find out, if there is no intervention from outer world, sooner or later, that the development itself is no longer motivating them and therefore it comes to productivity fall. It is better for small team to choose development methodology, which pulls fulfillment of the goal towards the team. Agile methods (also a SCRUM methodology) give this choice. SCRUM methodology splits the goal into the parts which are resulting to functional prototype. If the success of the development would only be dependent on methodology, more managers would be really pleased about that. Software development as majority of problem areas depends on people. That is why there must be given emphasis on their feelings. Their abilities could be more of help to goal fulfillment. This paper aims to explain how agile methodology SCRUM helps in motivation maintaining in team, and how members of the team can contribute to mutual productivity increase.

Abstract:It is without doubt that any project needs proper planning in its management process. Even if general methods of plan creation and management are known, particular method application should always reflect all specific features of the particular project. Plan creation methods seem to be scalable for wide range of project sizes, but in case of software projects, especially specific projects where the problem domain is not fully understood, or it's not possible to specify the product fully in advance, there comes the need for adaptation of the software process as well as the process of plan creation and management itself. In this essay we analyze problems with planning in the context of projects which apply agile development methodologies and we discuss special aspects of planning in projects that can be described as hard to specify, quickly developing and changing software projects. On an example of agile software development methodology "Scrum" we discuss specific aspects to be taken into account when adapting traditional plan management methods in small agile teams.

Abstract:Growing complexity of software projects has raised a demand to manage software project by support tools, which enable to make software development process more effective due to their support of scheduling, task administration, resource allocation, documentation and source code control and enhancement of team communication. Many support tools were created to address complexity issues, which more or less cover the requirements for software project management. Some of them, however, model software development process without use of any specific software development method. It is desirable to have support for selected development method, in case the development team decides to adopt one. This essay deals with effective management of software project developed by using certain specific method, which is directly supported by the software project management support tool.

Abstract:Quality management and testing have long tradition in engineering and engineering approach and since its formal formation, they are strongly connected. Software engineering as one of the youngest disciplines has natural demand to integrate similar principles into its processes, which would ensure quality of its outputs considering some facts, which are unique for this domain. This essay provides definition of both areas their main purpose and principles of their work and their division into smaller processes. In quality management it describes different types of project meetings and code-reviews and in testing it deals with classification of test techniques and the life-cycle of testing process.

Abstract:Software project without proper planning and management will be sooner or later doomed to failure. And that is why this management is necessary to assign and not only by experienced manager of software project, but also by monitoring of the whole project. This monitoring of the project's procedure can draw manager's attention to coming problems and hereby enable them to take a proper measures soon enough. This essay explains the concept of monitoring of the software project. It deals with individual monitoring principles and explain their influance on planning and management of the project.