Managing a Programming Project by Marcos Benevides
:ID: da4d5031-66cb-4d1c-b8cf-24d12adf5c17
Introduction
Your ground rules
- Adopt a set of unambiguous definitions and stick with them
- Define your project’s development cycle and related all schedules and work process to that cycle
- Define activities, such as levels of testing, in a consistent way
- Define a system of documents clearly, consistent and early
Your contract
Half the horror stories about programming involve either bad contracts or no contract at all
The fact that you are managing a programming project means that you will be running a business. You will have suppliers, you will have one or more customers. You will have employees, you will have commitments, you will have financial goals, you will have measured results. (…) . Your responsibility is to manage your business so that everyone - your “investors” (the executives that gave you the assignment), your customers (the people who will use your system for a long time to come), your employees (…), and you - will look at your operating results and feel a sense of satisfaction.
Writing your own contract
- Scope of work
- Schedule and deliverables
- Key customer people
- Reviews
- Change management procedures
- Testing constraints
- Acceptance criteria
- Additional constraints
- Price
The nature of the beast
“Why is software hard to build?”
- The System
In order for a system that you are building to be useful, it needs to satisfy the needs of other systems.
- Interactions
- Change