Essay Collection 2011

Abstrakt:Nowadays, hardly any manager or owner of a successful software company would claim that project monitoring is not important. However, finding out how to monitor project development and what metrics to choose is not that trivial. Usually, good project monitoring practices are in place In large or middle-sized companies, but what about small companies? Is it really possible for a small company to adopt the same methods? And how much effort is needed to dedicate to monitoring? This essay analyzes the influence of various metrics when used to monitor projects in small companies. It deals with the pros and cons of these methods. Appropriate selection of metrics is proposed and the influence of these metrics on the key decisions in project leadership is described.

Abstrakt:Work on a software project is an activity requiring good mental condition. A manager must not forget one very important thing. Members of his team are human beings. This fact must be considered when planning tasks. No one can be overloaded or left untapped. Tools for supporting software project management are very useful for planning or management. This essay shows how to use these tools to effectively use human resources and avoid, for example, well known burnout syndrome. Manager may not be a psychologist. It turns out that a suitable data analysis of performance of team members (time-tracking, number of completed jobs per time unit) can determine a trend of developing mental condition of each one of them. Essay shows how to create such analysis with those tools and tries to answer the question whether it is possible to automatically generate recommendations for task assignment for team members, or at least display warnings to declining performance.

Abstrakt:Working with people is in general very exhausting. Quality of team collaboration is determined by personal sympathies, temperament, personal and collective goals and the way the goal is achieved. These effects are source for conflicts. Team player is aware of human characteristic diversity and accept it. Team leader must motivate people and lead them to high performance. He should beat barriers and make harmony. Categories of human nature is not the strict defined norm to accomplish team building. It’s only tool to help break barrier and create social understanding. Motivation, planning and task assignment are most important feature for project realization.

Abstrakt:The essay talks about the impact of cooperative games playing on risk management in small team projects. It describes the main steps in the risk management process as well as the main risk management principles. Then, we define required properties for a team which integrates the risk management. Finally, it is shown how team members can be trained in risk management principles via cooperative board games playing, e.g. Pandemic or Red November game.

Abstrakt:Most diverse personalities with various skills and experience meet when a group of people have to form a team and cooperate on a project. Many manager emphasize skills and experience when they pick members of their team. Not always do they emphasize if the team member has the right predisposition for a function he has to assume. According to Belbin team inventory, there are 9 roles and each team member can have predisposition towards some of them. These roles can tell us how the team members will interact. If the synergy between the team members will move the team forward, or conflict between team members will arise and it will hamper the whole team. In this essay I want to explore the interactions between the team roles, their effect on the team effectiveness, I want to propose a scheme of team roles for creation of 6 member software teams and use Belbin team inventory to prevent possible problems between team members and to improve the assignment of functions in existing teams.

Abstrakt:Monitoring of a software project is a very important part of its development. It has influence on the planning and management of the project and at the same time enables early identification of team problems. This essay describes agile approaches and also monitoring of agile projects. The essay explains three primary methods: burn charts, cumulative flow diagrams and line of balance. These methods deliver information about actual project work status by using different approaches. In the next part is described monitoring of work in process, how this metrics express and why they are important in agile projects. The goal of the essay is the comparison of methods mentioned above, their differences and advantages and their practical application.

Abstrakt:The complexity of current software is growing rapidly. Software becomes more complex, sophisticated and refined. Its development and maintenance are no longer trivial actions, therefore it is necessary to put a strong emphasis on the process of development. Quality software and quality software development are no longer rare terms. Developments in this area moved forward and many companies formed a group of specialists who deal with SQA (Software Quality Assurance). The role of SQA is to ensure that all standards and processes used in developing the project are appropriate and correctly implemented. Thus SQA interferes in the process of development and therefore there is a confrontation with the approaches that are also part of the development. Some clashes are very interesting, especially between SQA and agile methods. This essay to reflect on what is beneficial and what is the essence of an entirely new perspective on achieving quality.

Abstrakt:In software engineering we have to follow several steps to bring our project to happy end. Planning those steps is a fundamental activity. A project manager should aim his/her focus on planning at early stage of project (but also later) to meet the needs of all stakeholders. We know that we should not undervalue the planning process, but is it possible to overvalue it? If we plan the whole project in details at the beginning it flows into blind plan, which loses its primary function. If we set deadlines too close, it could disappoint the work of our colleagues, they will work under the stress. The stress is a cause of mistakes and mistakes cost time and other resources. Is it possible to keep your team motivated despite the deadlines and creative despite the plan? In this paper we will try to find the answers to the questions.

Abstrakt:Nowadays is almost impossible to manage team developing some kind of software product without using support tools. There is no question, that it make life easier for managers, but also for employees. But, is there possibility, that this tool will be more embarrassing than useful? Is there always high price warranting, that it is optimal tool for our team? Which human skills won’t be software able to replace or simulate? In this essay i am trying to analyze all those questions with the focus on factors, whose should be checked in a process of choosing support tool. One of the views at problem about effectiveness of support tools is focusing on the fact, how decision making style can influence using of support tools. There is also view pointing out the way of using tool in dynamic environment and how to follow natural changes in our team. In the end of essay there is short conclusion and a few results, those can be useful for everyone.

Abstrakt:Risk management is often underestimated on projects of smaller scale, as management can perceive it as an unnecessary expense. However, opposite may be the truth and investment can be returned in the form of eliminated disaster which would only cause multiple damages. After all it is not only about expenses, platitude is for instance higher probability of successful project and therefore it is also about reputation and other factors. With these, risk management is classified as essential approach to software project management. Aim of the essay is to analyze and compare risks in smaller and bigger scale projects. It focuses on risks that are more frequent in bigger projects and managers are used to work with them, but the attention to them in smaller projects is not necessarily the same. The essay also analyses options of solutions of these risks while comparing them to bigger projects.