Essay Collection 2011

Abstract:When you hear the term quality control, without a deeper reflection, many people will understand the quality control of finished product. Software is also a kind of product and the question is: Is it enough just to verify and check the properties of the product to meet client requirements in the final version of the product? As you surely guess, this approach is not correct and there are many methods of quality assurance during the software product development, which we will aim at and we will talk about the necessity and benefits of some of these methods. We will focus on approaches based on peer reviews and support the view that quality assurance is not only about testing, but it is a complex issue essential to the success of software projects.

Abstract:Planning is an essential part of every bigger projects. It is helpful to better estimation of resources used in project and make a time schedule. This essay describing planning in software projects. There are depict some common methodologies used in software planning. The event chain methodology will be described closer. Just plans are not enough. It is also important to know how to extend or modify existing plans. This techniques will be also depict. At the end I will sum up meaning of presented methodologies in software planning.

Abstract:As John C. Maxwell said, big goals can be achieved only when many people are working together. In this statement the most important words are „working together“. If any group of people discover anything amazing or groundbreaking, it would have no benefit, if blind man will be writing and speechless dictating. Nowadays knowledge and experience are most valued by both employee and employer. Nevertheless, what affects us in team work is our personality. Some people are born as leaders, while others are the happiest when they can be led. When setting up a team of people who will work together it is necessary to examine their psychological fitness for the role. This essay deals with two major directions in the identification of personality, but does not describe in detail differences. It provides a reflection on how the individual personality types are suited for different roles in team and the direction in which the identification of personality should prevail.

Abstract:When monitoring the development of software systems we are facing a number of problems. Besides the obvious problems such as complexity and uncertainty of requirements, major problem is software invisibility. For the smooth course of the project it is very important to estimate the amount of effort that is needed for development in various stages. It is in an issue on which the software metrics are aiming. Software metrics are quantitative methods measuring certain characteristics of software and can be particularly helpful in monitoring the project development. However, there are many metrics that can be used but they might often produce contradictory results. It is necessary to consider which of these metrics can offer reliable results so that we can plan further course of the project. This essay focuses on the reliability metrics as one of the important properties of software.

Abstract:The impact of even more widespread trend of globalization is, that we encounter more often virtual teams. However these teams bring their positives in software development, the fact, that members of such teams have to work virtually over distance of time, space and culture, cannot be overlooked. Can we ignore this fact or should we carefully consider, under what circumstances will be this team appropriate for our project? In this essay, we introduce reader into a area of virtual teams and we also focus on problems, which are specific for this type of team. Further we try to find an answer, if actual management tools are sufficient for distributed groups of people and also we try to find out, what are these systems still missing.

Abstract:Creating software systems from identification of system requirements to final deployment and monitoring is very complicated process. Currently a large number of projects ends unsuccessfully, what is related to tendency of increasing demands for system complexity. This fact depends on the demands and burdens on the people working on the system. One way how to successfully manage the process of software development is using the risk management throughout the whole product development. In this essay I will focus on a detailed overview of risk management, including the description of the most frequent risks in software projects. I plan to aim at the more detailed description of each step occuring in risk management, as well. In addition, I also add a simple calculation or estimation of potential risks danger.

Abstract:With the expanding globalization (not only) of the labor market there is more and more companies made up of employees from all over the world. This phenomenon is caused mainly by transnational companies, but also by a lack of skilled workers in local labor markets. Mentioned trend is understandably not avoiding the IT industry, quite the contrary - today is in large firms many teams whose members have diverse origins. Given this fact raises several questions. What impact on the effectiveness of the team's work has its multicultural composition? Is there a reliable way to create a mixed team so national characteristics of its members were more beneficial than negative factor? In discussing this issue quickly threatens to get on thin ice, because with taking different cultures into consideration, the generalization is tricky. Although there are studies that deal with quantifiable aspects specific to the population of each country in terms of their work in a team. They are designed primarily to detect cultural strengths and weaknesses and ways to avoid them or use them in favor of the team. The essay wants to think about these options and outline the basic principles on which the manager establishing and managing a mixed team should remember.

Abstract:Risk management is an essential part of any project belonging under wings of serious engineer discipline. Without thorough analysis and precise planning of risks it is impossible to finish a project in desired time and expected quality. According to Murphy's laws such obstacles will appear, which can't be solved in a given time. This makes work more complicated, more expensive and eventually it resolves into collapse and often also into premature end of the whole project. Michelangelo Buonarroti knew this in year 1546, when he accepted title of head architect of basilica of St. Peter. Managers - daily responsible for multimillion projects in sectors of finance, building industry and medicine, know this, too. Surprisingly, managers and people responsible for projects in one of most risky sectors of business enterprise - software development - are not interested in this question. Many small and medium, but sometimes also large projects have to fight these problems and find solutions for them, even though optimal solutions exist for a long time already.

Abstract:Software product metrics constitute basis for the process of software creation. It is important to consider every software metric in software development, because the final quality of software is given by achieving the measure of desired metrics. One of the most important software metric is also its portability, the ability to operate on several devices(platforms). This metric is the key factor of software ability to reach the largest part of software market. Software for mobile devices became a special set of software, which nowadays reaches big expansion and its development aheads rapidly. In this essay, I deal with software portability destined for mobile devices. I survey on effect of portability to team software development and on importance of this metric in mobile applications development. In the conclusion of the essay, I try to forecast the future changes of software portability for mobile applications or whether if something will ever change.

Abstract:We encounter the term quality every day in all areas of life. This term has strategic importance even in software engineering. However, achieving quality in software is a difficult process. Currently, there are many ways to do so. One of them is the improvement of source code. In the essay, we focus on the ways developers can improve the source code and thus improve software quality. Sometimes we encounter the attitudes that the principles that enhance the source code, are a guarantee for quality software. Such a consideration can be misleading. The life cycle of software development involve several phases and one of them is testing. In the essay we deliver our opinion, whether it is possible to achieve good software quality without testing.

Abstract:Whether we are dealing with big or small project, there is still a need for management, monitoring of assignments and an effective use of human resources. It is not possible to keep all information related to these needs in a human memory. Therefore this takes us to an idea of using supporting systems, which will keep the necessary information for us. After that, it is a question of our abilities what are we going to do with this information and how can we use it for directing our team. However, before we use any supporting system we should really think about it. At first, we have to choose a system with the most convenient functionality, which is sufficient but does not extend our demand. How much are we going to formally use this system and how much communication stays between team members? Can it be an advantage to use more of these systems during one project?

Abstract:To what extent we are able to successfully realize a software project according to the customer's specifications depends predominantly on the fact how well the project has been prepared, i.e. how well work, resources and time have been divided during its development. The key factor is planning, which is an essential part of not only big but also small projects. There is a broad spectrum of methods for formulation and supervision of software development plans, however, none of them can prevent unforeseeable events. For this reason, it is advisable to show an agile approach by the plan formation and to be capable of a prompt reaction when the customers change their requirements. Why an agile approach to planning? Every development team that wants to bring the project to a successful end pays attention to the issue of planning and project changes. Modern agile methods such as SCRUM are becoming more and more popular. Is it possible to plan the mentioned way of software development and thus make the software development more effective? How can we estimate how demanding and time consuming it will be to successfully solve a task? This essay tries to answer these questions and to offer some ideas and recommendations on how to plan an agile software development.