Essay Collection 2009

Abstract:Project management involves planning, monitoring, task control, human resources management and lots of other things. It is well known, that these tasks require a huge amount of managing and coordinating skills. Those are the reasons why software project management is getting more and more important these days. In some cases, monitoring all the aspects of the project can be very difficult. With the help of the support tools, management of the projects – from the design until the finished product can be tracked simpler. The wrong usage of these tools can lead to wrong information, and can cause the fail of the product. This essay deals with some of the issues in the complicated process of a project management. The article also shows some of the advantages and disadvantages of the usage of these support tools in small business and team management.

Abstract:During the all steps of the life – circle monitoring level of the software projects be in progress for the purpose to get information of project activity, extensional issue at the hand of the definitions indicators and also apropos defect detection or complication execution in phase. Monitoring's conclusion can help to property measure, modify project planning, or offer better solution and improvement of next steps, so that can by verify demanded specified at the beginning intension. This essay deal with further information about basic rules, which has to be observed by monitoring software project, consequences the resulting from monitoring analysis and also about monitoring impact on planned project. An inapt monitoring or the bad analysis could contribute furthermore budget in concluding result, or in a worse case could commit work on the software project.

Abstract:The development of a software system is a large task. Creating a really good software system requires to address the issues of quality. Ensuring the quality - new strategies, tools, methodologies and techniques for applying methods of the life cycle of software must be taken into account. This essay deals with the factors influencing the effective quality management, task management and highlights the importance of meeting with standards. The article then analyzes different approaches of achieving software quality through the quality assessment, measurements and standards. A special section is devoted to the comparison of quality assurance in small and large teams.

Abstract:In the highly competitive environment of the software industry firms need permanent innovation. The innovation ability, effectiveness and fruitfulness of the businesses are affected by the inner organization, performance of the software teams and individual workers. The aim of this essay is to analyze the methods and progresses in software team building and forming as well as identification, description and comparison of various characteristics of personality types. In this writing I will focus on the main issue of how should be a team of colleagues built up to multiply its efficiency, and which are those factors that can eventuate in worsening team productivity. In the next section I will describe the practically used main methods and metrics: Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Keirsey Temperament Sorter and Belbin’s roles. The mentioned methods and metrics are used to evaluate individual personality types (defined by Carl G. Jung). Software firms successfully use them all over the world when they create and form software teams to increase their production.

Abstract:Risk is natural part of every software project throughout the entire project lifecycle. Unexpected risks can cause major delays and escalating costs, so the risk management is very important. Preventive risk management can help reduse unpleasant surprises. In this essay we analyze two preventive risk management strategies: the strategy of Rational Unified Process and the strategy of Monte Carlo simulations. We also study advantages and disadvantages of joining these strategies.

Abstract:The document examines the best strategy for software planning, so that the final product satisfies the three main criteria, quality, reasonable budget and completing due time. It grants an overview of the various types of planning, and compares the pros and cons considering the accomplishment of the given criteria. It is also dealing with actualized planning, when the user requirements change during the construction of the project, and it is necessary to use more flexible methods, for instance iterative planning. During the planning process it is essential to properly choose the distribution of the assignments in the team, and looking after that it is fulfilled in time and with accuracy. The author concurrently examines also why, and in what scale is planning necessary in the creating of small scale student projects.

Abstract:When talking about planning of a software project, many people think about a diagram with five or six boxes with captions on them like “Analysis and requirement specification” or “Integration and testing”. Planning is also necessary in a much lower level of granularity. This essay particularly proceeds of planning of processes in the duration of the box implementation in a small team that uses techniques of agile software development and extreme programming. I will try to answer these questions: What has to be planned? How deep should planning go? The emphasis will be put on the principals of scheduling process in extreme programming and also on the needs of a small team where the task of scheduling is commonly marginalized. Extreme programming also invokes a misleading impression that it is an uncontrolled process, where I try to convince you of the opposite.

Abstract:Nowadays, there are many software projects of different sizes. The bigger the project is, the more difficult it is to manage the tasks and human resources. Managers should know about their workers – about their responsibilities, work load, time, and much other information which they have to handle effectively. Many companies are willing to pay and appreciate these people as well as the means which support management and controlling. Therefore it is obvious that these activities are very important but only if they are performed effectively. Poor management can lead to project‘s extension and consequently to financial penalties and the company’s weaker reputation. This thesis deals with the supporting means of human resources management, the advantages and disadvantages of their using. Furthermore, we discuss the suitability of using these means of management within smaller projects and their possible counterproductivity.

Abstract:Testing is one of the most important stages of software development. Its importance is even bigger in iterative development as testing phase of one cycle takes place simultaneously with the implementation phase of the following cycles. Thus, the abilities of testers affect not only speed and quality of testing, but also development of whole speed. Good tester can be of great help for programmer, but on the other hand, bad tester is able to slow down not only testing but also whole development of the system by adding work to other people working with him. Too much knowledge of the system may also lead to lower quality of testing, so it is general rule that the testers shouldn’t know how the core of the system works. In this essay, I will look into the issue of right degree of testers knowledge about tested systems, as well as their ability to effectively various support tools.

Abstract:There are plenty of problems connected with software creation process. Nowadays most of projects are based on team work. This paper describes various aspects of software team creation, mainly MBTI personality model. We focused on connection between roles, personalities, sex and ethnic background of team members. Main goal of the paper is help to create a competent, compact and productive software team.

Abstract:With growth of software projects, requirements for planning are also growing. Good planning and project managing requires flexibility and adapting to current situation. This is not possible without active project monitoring and development tracking. There are many approaches to project monitoring and evaluating of results, which are later used in planning of next project step. One of them is monitoring data in Version Control System (VCS). It is commonly used for warehousing and managing versions of project source codes. By examining of this results, system can give us lot of informations like degree of developer's contribution to the project or relationships between projects or their components. Managers can make decisions based on these results and change course of project before it is too late. This document discusses what type of information we can get from CVS, how we can use it and also when it is appropriate to use them.

Abstract:Risk management is set of processes, that include planning, identification, analysis, mitigation and monitoring of risks. There are many approaches defining management steps. Some of them are strict and some of them are loose. First category is hard to implement due to limited resources. Second category is more casual, but undisciplined and incorrect implementation can lead to quality wise results. However, additional complexity can be reduced by effective application of processes mentioning in this article.