Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Starting the Project
4.1 Overview of Project and Planning
All of the technical and managerial activities required to deliver a software product
to a client are collectively referred to as a software project. A software project has
a specific duration, consumes resources, and produces deliverables. From the
perspective of a developer, a software project consists of project functions,
activities and tasks. Figure
4.1
depicts a project model, as described by Bernd
Bruegge (Bruegge
2004
). A project function is an activity, or set of activities, that
spans the entire duration of the project. Examples of project functions include
configuration management, documentation, quality control, training, and testing.
Each of these activities begins in the early stages of the development process, and
continues through the development life of the software product. An activity is
described as a smaller unit of work. Activities are often small enough for adequate
planning and tracking but also large enough to quickly complicate micro man-
agement. Finally, a task is the smallest unit of management accountability. Tasks
are the building blocks of the development process, and larger units of work are
composed of multiple, complimentary tasks. Tasks, by nature, have a predeter-
mined, finite duration, require specific resources, and produce tangible results,
such as code, documentation, etc.
The decomposition of a software engineering project into units of work allows
for a development team to both focus effort on specific jobs, and to easily classify
and organize the entire project in a useful and understandable way. Such practices
have led developers to define tasks in such a way that all of their characteristics
may be specified in a meaningful way. Bruegge lists the following attributes of a
task that should be specified during planning and development:
• Name and description of work to be done.
• Preconditions for starting, required resources, and task duration.
• Task completion criteria: tangibles to be produced and acceptance criteria for
those tangibles.
• Risk involved.
