Page 42 - DCAP304_DCAP515_SOFTWARE_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Software Project Management

Notes Human Resources Management

It is given information that lots of software project manager’s start working without the basic
guidance of how to motivate people to succeed. Software managers tend to manage their software
engineers only in the professional engineering aspects. Though, software engineers are people
too. Learning what motivates them requires time and will from the manager side. No two men
are alike, both in terms of management and motivation.

No Version / Source Control

Astonishing as it may sound, some software projects are not backed up in source control. Sources
get lost; versions cannot be regained; products on customer’s side can not be reconstructed.

No or Bad Risk Management

“A project risk is an unsure event or condition that has consequences for the project? The purpose
of risk management is to identify, analyze, and respond to project risks? “. Given the above
items and the fact that software projects tend to fail, it would be absurd not to manage risks. The
Risk Management Document is the leading design to enforce the software company to think
about what can go wrong. The thinking process itself can solve problems before they even
happened. Examples of risk:
 Unfinished or badly written requirements
 Choosing a technology that is not known by the current developers
 Relying on difficult third party software.

The Risk Management Document needs to be updated throughout project life cycles. It should
not be too general or vague, but address real details of problems that might occur.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
13. The ………………….. is vital and the drive to meet harsh deadlines is massive.

14. Documentation should be measured as a “must have” and not “……………………”.
15. The “Holy Triangle,” as we describe it, describes the important relationships between the
customers, marketing and ……………….



Caselet Software Study in Complexity
he road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. How bad! But that’s a Philip Roth
quote that greets you right at the start of Software Project Management, by Bob
THughes and Mike Cotterell. Now into its third edition, the book from Tata McGraw-
Hill Publishing Co. Ltd. (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) handles “the more agile approaches
to software projects such as Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) and Extreme
Programming (XP)”, apart from giving inputs on Project Management Institute of the US
and Association of Project Management of the UK.
Contd.....

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