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We have different steps in our planning for online webprojects:
1) Information Architecture
Provides user stories
Provides wireframes
2) Design
Use Wireframes to develop a nice design
3) Development
4) Testing
I know that working agile asks for dedicated teams. But it is impossible to have a dedicted IA until the end of the project. Because the projects are small developers are working in different teams. How do you plan resources when you know 50 small projects and 20 new projects are using different resources?
And is there a useful tool that can assist in this?
The situation where an IA (or a UI designer or anyone else for that matter) could not be committed for the whole length of the project is quite common.
However with Agile the problem is easily resolved: commit a resource for the length of the iteration where he is needed. I.e. if you need an architect for a spike or for a particular user story make sure that she could work with your team for the length of that iteration when the user story will be implemented. Later on if you will need her again do the same thing.
If your iteration is too long for that approach try committing the resource for the length of a particular user story or a spike only.
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I am managing a software project that is hot for the company in terms of it being one of the things that is their bread & butter and it is going well. I have another manager at the company interfering with my project and people. How does one get this interference to go away. One thought that he is not creative enough to create work, I mean there is a lot he can do in other aspects of the business that would make a huge impact. The other piece of this is tasking a person that for a lack of a better way to describe it doesn't actually produce or actually make anything. How does one handle or manage people that don't produce anything I guess is the question.
Would anyone have resource suggestions such as:
- Books
- Paid Training
- Others
Maybe this is not a topic for this forum. :) If so, suggestions for other forums would be greatly appreciated.
It happens a lot this kind of interference in the project. Your authority as a project manager depends upon the managerial structure in your company.
Some companies works only as functional teams and the project manager has little power and authority facing the different interests among the stakeholders. The PM is hierarchically under a functional area and reports to a functional manager instead of a program or portfolio manager.
On the other extreme side there is a project organizational structure, the project manager has control and authority on the project as well as on the teams.
The midst of these two structures is the matrix organization structure. In this case the project manager divides the responsibility to a functional manager.
I believe that your first step is to understand the power structure in your company works and how your hole is related to it. The next step is to assure exactly the role of the other manager who interferes in your management activities. Does he a client? Does he the sponsor? Or does he only a partner?
The stakeholder management is a daily activity in the PM job too. It is common to see this kind of interference from the stakeholders but always remember that the project manager is you.
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I came to a successful project with 4 years old, it is already in the production.
The problem is that, the project is not documented anymore, it depends on 2 senior developers only, they know the system, they test, they handle change of requests..
I need to know what is the best practice, or what are the main steps that I have to do in order to document all the modules starting from high level design through component analysis & design, code comments, till the configuration management.
The traditional project management processes don't give me a clear idea of how to take the control back of a an old project.
Thanks.
Senior developers will easilly get bothered if you make them write docummentation all day long so you may lose them at the end.
I would hire a technical writer / junior developer if I were you and give him or her this as a first task. I would also make him or her work closelly with the senior guys, without taking too much from their time (like aggregating questions and have a one hour session dailly or something like that).
It will probably hurt in the beginning but if properly executed should prove a good choice at the end.
Note: The level of cooperation between your senior guys and the new guy that will be doing the documentation may vary depending on some internal "political" things like if the developers feel threatened by the fact that you are trying to make them less critical to the project, how overwhealming the new guy / gal is to them and so on. So answer those questions before going for it.
Once again - it is my personal opinion on the given topic and its success will definatelly depend on various factors. So you should decide if it is a good way to go or not.
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Could anyone please suggest a software process suitable to the work our team?
We are a team of 6 developers (mostly juniors).
We are supporting the ordering system for an online book store (similar to Amazon books).
The system is already online and functioning.
Most of the work is task based. Sometimes there is a bug that needs immediate fixing or a new module that needs to be added to the system.
Most of the time each developer is working on a separate module of bug which it's estimated time could range from few hours to few days.
Our customers (the management department) are located in another country (we are being outsourced) so requirements take a long time to verify or discuss.
You can view us mainly as a team of freelancers each waiting for a task to be handed to him. Sometimes if a big module is required 2 or 3 developers start working together on it, but that's when things starts going bad as we lack a well defined software process to adhere too.
Notes:
The Waterfall model clearly fails in our case as our team is responsible for gathering the requirements, designing, coding and testing everything.
We tried adopting Agile practices, but it was a complete failure mainly because of points 4, 5 & 6. There is no iteration or prototypes in our work.
So We are looking for a software process that can help us organize our work and provide an acceptable output.
You say you're mainly Juniors. So, learn to walk before you try to run. I suggest you try a staged delivery model. And I also suggest you try reading this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Software-Project-Survival-Guide-Practices/dp/1572316217
I suggest using TFS Express, it's free and have Agile management tool, it's still beta, but Microsoft give a "Go Live" Tag so you can work with it and upgrade your work when RTM release
You can download it from here
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#tfs-express
I would Strongly Suggest RUP(Rational Unified Process)
Reason being
Concurrent Phases can go on with part of team doing some phase whereas other developers working on a different thing
You will follow RUP increments where some developer who finds solutions to bugs can move to next increment with a part of team still working on previous increment
its highly adaptive and flexible and will help you a lot with different threads going on within project
Previously it was Closed source although IBM donated it to Open source in 2005 and
here's a great presentation that will surely help you understand it better
http://www.perftestplus.com/resources/rupfordummies_ppt.pdf
Hope it helps!!
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there are a lot of articles/books etc about PM for medium or big projects. All articles which I found describes how to manage a project with at least few people involved.
In my case that is totally different, so this is my specific case:
I have a small team (4-6 developers) and we do small short-term projects. Usually one or sometimes two persons per project. Project's lifetime is about 1-2 month in general (but can be 6 months in case of customer related issues). All projects are customer related, quite often there are some breaks in the projects because of lack documentation from customer or lack of hardware etc, so one person quite often handle 2-3 projects with different priorities at the time.
My question is: can any "popular" modern methodology be tailored to suite this types of tasks? What could you recommend (methodology/pm tools).
May be someone can give a link to an article about this type of software pm?
Cheers!
In my opinion, any project management tool could be adapted to your team and you should first choose what type of project management methodology you want to follow. Personally i think Kanban could be a good fit as there are no specific deadlines or cut off for projects, just tasks. It also allows you to prioritize tasks and carry out several projects at once.
This is the methodology we use and we do have similar uncertainties when it comes to the length of the projects. The tool we have been using is Eylean, it allows us to follow the methodology and have the updated status of the tasks at all times.
I'm a fan of Crystal Clear, which is Cockburn's method focused on smaller team work. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Crystal+Clear+distilled
Any methodology can be scaled, provided you don't fall for the dogma and consider it to be the "Best" or "Only" way, or that you need to follow all the principles completely.
That said, I'm a big fan of Extreme Programming myself.
However, in practice, on our projects, we "officially " use a Waterfall methodology, but within each phase our methods are more in line with Agile methodologies, and our official stance is that each PM will use whatever tools he or she needs, so long as the project is moving along, we are meeting our deadlines, and most importantly, the customer is getting what they need when they expect it.
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I am looking for some kind of solution to take care of development scheduling for web applications. How does the big guys in the industry handle this?
Is it all about SVN and bug trackers for them?
I'm not doing web develoment myself, but I assume that the approach for web development is exactly the same as for other big developments (which my team IS doing). In that case, the following tips might help:
Use version management (SVN, ...)
Be agile (this is also resembled by the following points)
Make a mixed team (developers, testers, designer, functional responsibles, ...) that all work as an integrated team on the same subject. Make sure the whole team communicates.
Make everyone responsible for the whole project. Never blame individuals if things go wrong.
Be sure the whole team knows the status of the project: where are we, what should still be done, ... Make everything visual by sticking graphs and sheets to your office wall.
Keep the time between 'raised questions or raised problems' and the answer or solution short. E.g. if a bug is found, log it immediately and try to solve it as soon as possible.
Develop incrementally. Don't develop for several months and then start testing, but make sure you have a working copy every day.
Split development/design/... tasks in smaller tasks that can be developed incrementally (see previous point) and in a minimal amount of time (a day or a few days).
Automate tests as much as possible.
Use continuous integration (where the tests are run at every commit in the version management system)
As a manager, support your team.
Focus
Shield the people of the team from all kind of problems not directly related to the project (e.g. PC problems, printer problems, ...). Choose a 'scrum manager' that solves all these annoying problems for the team.
Demonstrate the results at regular intervals to your customer, your boss, ...
Give a reception if an important milestone is reached.
There are probably many more tips. Therefore, read a good book about managing software development. There is probably no essential difference between web development and other software develoments.