Essay Collection 2011

Abstract:We live in a busy world where we all seek to best exploit the potential of everything and everyone with what works best. Each of us would like to achieve the best results by making the least possible effort. From this simple, but very tempting reason in the world of information technology began to carry out monitoring software life cycle. Thanks to that we can eliminate errors much better or completely removed and thus reduce costs thus increase profits. Each project is unique and each will be built a little differently. Nothing, however, should not be overstated and therefore to monitor the case that the more we monitor the better the results we achieve. What to look for? Can we provide the right granularity?

Abstract:When we look at the statistics of software projects’ success rate, we’ll see not a very encouraging picture. Approximately every fifth project ends as a total failure, while almost every other project has problems with overrunning the planned budget, schedule or the final product doesn’t fully meet customer’s requirements. Amongst the most severe risks belongs use of inappropriate methodology, lack of customer involvement or requirements volatility. However, project failure is always a result of a combination of multiple reasons. How can we prevent the risks? One possible approach is to use the agile development methodology Scrum, which in my opinion eliminates some of the risks by its nature or at least significantly minimizes them. However, every coin has two sides and Scrum isn’t a magical cure, on the contrary, it carries some specific risks we have to take into account.

Abstract:The methods of development, which we choose in a software projects, play a important role in the project life cycle. Scrum as a development strategy significantly affects the way of the project planning, allocating task to he individual members of the team and updating changes into the project plan. However Scrum itself is divided into the sprints, for which are created the more specific plans for a predetermined short period of two to four weeks, and also project planning have to adapt to this strategy. Tasks are divided between the team members with regard to the previous sprints. The plan of the running sprint can not be change, only some of the task can be unfinished at the end of the sprint. The result is a short-term planning and frequent review of the plan at the time of the end of one of the sprints. This new approach to software development asks following questions. How best could we adapt planning to the Scrum? Does Scrum bring more advantages or disadvantages into the planning and the project management software? Can we make better distribution of the tasks between the team members by using Scrum?

Abstract:The aim of every customer is to get software at the required quality, he/she will accept. The software itself can be developed in several ways. Like it or not, the chosen method of development is reflected in the overall quality of the finished product. Currently, the usage of agile development methods raise and are expanding at the expense of traditional approaches. Thanks to them we produce software faster, but we need to know how to ensure the required quality level in each stage. I will show how the software quality depends on the chosen method of development, based on a comparison of agile development approach with a classical development, and what affects it. What are the consequences of this result for us? How to use them in our benefit and maximum customer satisfaction?

Abstract:Nowadays we notice a great influence of business and market globalization on many industries. Area of information technologies is not exception. The advantages of information technologies allow creation of geographic distributed and virtual teams. In spite of many positives this trend brings also many technical, social and cultural problems which are not so typical for co-located projects. The result is that traditional support systems are not sufficient for effective management of tasks and human resources because they do not consider the differences in management between co-located and traditional projects. One of the most important difference is tracing of assigned tasks and capacity of human resources. Therefore it is important to pay the appropriate attention to choose the support system. In the present there are a lot of these support systems. How we know which of them is suitable for our project?

Abstract:In these days, development of softvare applications goes primarly thanks to team and team work. Times, when single person was resposible for whole application and for development of softvare applications are slowly disappearing. Management of single person was quite simple, there was no need to solve many different advanced solutions of work evidence or project status One single person has summary about everything within project. But what if we have a team? How to watch their work? How to figure out with watching their work? How to find, where we stand with work? What are the opportunities about correct dividing of work between team members and not wasting the time and abilities of member of team?

Abstract:Communication can be defined as exchanging information, ideas and views between the parties. At first glance, too elementary thing that not everyone pays sufficient attention. Its effective use is an essential building block for successful software development project. The question is who needs to communicate with whom? What information needs? How do they get? These questions are among the key elements of effective communication. My goal is to highlight the importance of resources to support communication, their advantages and disadvantages. Particular attention will be devoted to supporting the use of communication tools in the software team. Finally, I will describe the problems associated with absence of communication and offers advice to make work more effective on projects.

Abstract:Every kind of software used by people in their daily life, whether it is a small personal application, or large accounting information system, is identified by its version number. This often ridiculously complicated looking numbers hides huge amount of information, however, most of which is unknown to less computer-skilled users. Regular user is restricted by the established truth: "The more, the better!" Therefore, any higher version is considered to have less errors, more features, in one word better, but is it really so? What does this number tell us? Is it necessary to manage multiple versions? I hope I will at least manage to uncover some secrets hiding behind this issue.

Abstract:The answer to more essential question: “Why to plan?” is very simple, because otherwise it is not possible. In my opinion, it is the reason why to step forward a little bit and to start thinking about much more important problem such as how to do it. Forasmuch as students are used as cheap man power, of course it depends on their ability to sell themselves, they rarely have an opportunity to be involved in planning of software project on a higher level than self-management. Even this is usually managed by their manager without questioning. Sooner or later, everybody will meet this activity and because of that it is necessary to know about this process something more. We will take a look on what is planning in this essay, we will analyze the processes of planning in software project, we will find a critical factors and we will go threw some techniques of planning. We will try to answer the question asked on the beginning and than answer some sub questions followed on from this introduction. To make every process of software project creation represent effectivity in using of expended costs, it is important not to deal with question how to plan a project for a long time but to be fully focused on a quality.

Abstract:Every human activity, from the simplest to the most complex one, carries a certain amount of risk. With the growth of its importance and the possibility of suffering losses in its execution, the need to eliminate factors that could possibly lead to unpredictable disasters and large losses is increasing. Importance and need for risk management in software engineering exalts the fact that failure in this area is nothing unusual. Risk management is a systematic method for identifying, analyzing, planning and management of risks. This essay discusses the most frequent risks in software projects and university projects. Mutually confronting them, and provides an overview of methods for their identification and effective elimination in student projects, with the Riskit method.

Abstract:The word quality is bound with the software development from its beginning. We know that quality has several definitions, but independently from it, the quality of project is necessary. At present, agile methods are promoted in software development. These methods are mainly used in small or medium-sized software developing teams and allow relatively quickly handle unstable requirements. The question that still remains open is, if the agile methods are suitable for projects of all sizes and which parts of management of quality are critical in a project. How to ensure the quality in agile software development? What pitfalls should be a small team aware in terms of quality? Is quality assurance in agile software development environmentally depended? Although these questions are not restricted in the literature view, it is necessary to think about them. Ignoring these important questions could have a negative impact on a project success.

Abstract:Each member of a project from any field is just a human being. The same applies to software projects, although the company`s assumption is, that a software project member is just someone with technical knowledge. The product of such software project is a software, which is a result of a collective long-term cooperation. The word cooperation is very important because none of the members is perfect at everything. Everyone has skills and knowledge from different fields, not just from a technical one, but also the knowledge from psychological field, such as communication skills, teamwork skills and lots of others. In such group there is a big diversity of personality characteristics. But the question that still remains open is to tell what the right proportion of individual skills for certain roles in the software project is.

Abstract:Success of a new project does not only depend on its detailed elaboration. Its fate is also dependent on the team that will be responsible for its creation. The team constitution could be compared to house-building. If we build it on firm foundations, the house will hold out, waters will do no harm to it but if we build it on sand, the first storm or shake will ruin it. The selection of the right group of people is a very demanding and important process. They have to be selected not only on grounds of their knowledge, skills or professional experience but the right combination of personality types is an integral part of it. Relationships between the team members have to be unconfrontational; they have to be on the same wavelength and the result of their work has to be on the high level as well. The aim of this essay is to show the right way of team creation for a software project, to show strengths and weaknesses, to specify personality types for particular project assignments.