CIS224 Software Projects: Software Engineering and Research Methods

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CIS224Software Projects Software Engineering
and Research Methods

• Lecture 8
• Process Quality Management, Teams and QA
• (Based on Stevens and Pooley, 2006, Chapter 20)

David Meredith d.meredith_at_gold.ac.uk www.titanmus
ic.com/teaching/cis224-2006-7.html
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Process quality

• Some defects in a product may be due to the
  development process
• Need to evaluate process frequently and improve
  it when necessary
• In this lecture, we consider process quality
• Contribution made to quality of a system by
• Organisation that builds it
• Management
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Quality assurance processes

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Management

• Two types of management important in software
  development
• People management
• Project management
• Each type of management can be seen in two ways
• Management as enabling activity
• Management as (financial) control

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Management as enabling activity

• Manager enables people working on task to get the
  job done
• Minimises obstacles and risks, e.g.,
• Missing information
• Inadequate training
• Equipment lack
• Unrealistic schedules
• Mindless bureaucracy

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Management as (financial) control

• Controls what happens with view to maximising
  organisations financial success
• Primary goal is financial gain
• High quality product, social contribution,
  ensuring satisfaction of employees and customers
  all only matter insofar as they indirectly
  promote financial success

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Project management

• Project manager has overall responsibility for
  success of project
• Responsibilities include
• Analysing and controlling risk
• Liaising with the customer and other parts of the
  organisation
• Defining lines of communication between teams and
  between developers and customer
• Employing and training the right people
• Planning schedule, cost estimate, quality plan
• Assigning tasks
• Measuring progress
• Ensuring appropriate components, tools and
  techniques are used
• Keeping project on schedule
• Ensuring contractual obligations fulfilled
• Ensuring that project implements lessons learned
  in previous projects and feeds back new
  experience into organisations other projects

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Estimating an iterative project

• In waterfall process, clear milestones (end of
  analysis phase, end of design phase, etc.)
• In iterative process, need to define goals for
  each iteration which could be particular subset
  of functionality
• Becks planning game estimate time required to
  realise each use case (including design,
  implementation, testing and documentation)
• Schedule estimation is always very difficult
• Particularly with one-off custom systems that
  satisfy a particular customers needs
• Schedule usually set long before developers have
  a good idea of what is required
• Requirements change throughout a project
• Customers pressure developers to promise delivery
  as early as possible, sometimes unrealistically
  quickly
• Project manager must defend realistic schedule
  against customers impatience

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Managing component-based development

• Project manager should make sure that developers
  make good use of available components
• Authorizing investigation and purchase of
  component libraries
• Liaising with other departments on reuse
• Ensuring effective reuse within project
• If use case driven project, then must identify
  appropriate ltltincludegtgt relationships between use
  cases to minimise duplication of effort
• Development should be architecture-centric
• Implies should be one person who is ultimately
  responsible for architectural decisions in
  project
• Usually not project manager
• Promotes unity of vision within project and
  coherence of system

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People management

• Matrix management
• Each person has a project manager and a personal
  manager
• Personal manager responsible for career
  development, training, performance assessment,
  etc.
• Project manager determines work done on a
  particular project
• Project and personal managers have different
  interests
• Personal manager concerned with employees career
  development
• Project manager concerned with success of project

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Teams

• What makes a successful team?
• Team needs people who are good at
• Seeing the customers point of view
• Coming up with ideas
• Finding flaws in ideas
• Helping the team to stay focused on task
• Making sure everyones voice is heard
• Team should have good balance of skills
• Team should get on with each other
• Organisation should be happy and successful
• Team usually has 3-8 people at lowest level
• Keeps communication under control
• Team should have clearly defined task
• Team has team manager who manages interactions
  with other teams
• Many software project failures arise from lack of
  communication
• Some people think all communication should be
  controlled, passing through well-defined channels
• Others think all communication should be open
  with project meetings to which everyone is
  invited
• Individual roles within a team may or may not be
  well-defined

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Leadership

• Leadership is not the same as management
• A manager is a smoother-down and a leader is a
  shaker-up
• I prefer A leader inspires, a manager
  facilitates
• Leaders
• Know where theyre going
• Have ideas on how to achieve their goals
• Have vision
• Stay focused on goal, sometimes to the exclusion
  of all other considerations
• Leaders not necessarily good managers!
• Leadership important when reforming development
  process (e.g., changing from waterfall to
  iterative, functional to OO, etc.)

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Quality assurance

• Quality assurance is
• Convincing developers and customers that product
  will have high quality
• Providing a basis for continuous improvement
• Involves monitoring and improving development
  process to increase likelihood that high-quality
  software will be produced
• Organisation usually has a Quality Management
  System (QMS)
• Specifies structures and processes within an
  organisation for
• Ensuring each project follows a high quality
  process
• Ensuring process is continually improved using
  experience from previous projects
• QMS may specify that each project should have a
  quality plan and define what should be covered in
  it
• Quality plan prescribes aspects of overall
  project plan that are intended to ensure high
  quality
• e.g., may define what design documents are to be
  produced and how they are reviewed
• QMS also specifies how quality audits are carried
  out to make sure project adheres to quality plan
• QMS specifies how improvements are proposed,
  validated and rolled out

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More on QA

• Organisation may acquire quality certification
  (e.g., ISO9001, BS5750)
• Involves satisfying several external auditors
• In some domains (e.g., defence, government)
  quality certification may be compulsory
• Main point of QA is that documenting and
  measuring process used and how successful it is
  allows for process to be improved
• Many quality management systems work against this
  by making it difficult to implement changes

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Capability Maturity Model

• Company may classify its process as CMM level n
  where n is between 1 and 5
• CMM stands for Capability Maturity Model, a
  framework for process evaluation and improvement
  developed at Carnegie Mellon Universitys
  Software Engineering Institute
• Aims to improve process quality by
• Documenting way work is performed
• Measuring performance
• Using data to control performance
• Planning based on historical performance
• Training people
• CMM level 1 is defined as ad hoc where projects
  succeed through individual heroism
• CMM level 5 indicates that an organisation makes
  quantitative evaluations of its projects and uses
  these to tune the process
• CMM level 3 is about equivalent to ISO9001 and
  indicates that organisation has well-defined
  process but may not carry out quantitative
  evaluations of it

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The case against QA

• If formalized QA is such a good thing, why arent
  all companies aiming for ISO9001 or high CMM
  levels etc.?
• Increasing bureaucracy and cost outweigh benefits
• Documenting project makes it inflexible and less
  responsive
• Less likely to make changes if have to be
  accompanied by lots of documentation
• Formalized QMS discourages people from thinking
  independently about how to ensure high quality
• Demoralizes best staff best developers have to
  spend more time having meetings and writing
  documentation

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Summary

• To ensure high quality of product, should
  consider quality of process as well as that of
  product itself
• Two types of management
• People management
• Project management
• Two views of what management is
• enabling activity - employees' effectiveness
  paramount
• financial control - financial gain is paramount
• Role of project manager
• Estimating an iterative project
• Beck's planning game
• Managing component-based development
• Managing people and matrix management
• separating project management from personal
  management
• Teams
• what makes it successful?
• Importance of communication
• Leadership vs. management
• A manager enables, a leader inspires
• Quality assurance