What is a project?

• A large-scale task to complete
• Definite time of delivery (start and finish date)
• Capitalised set budget
• An end product (Solution presentation)
• Benefit realisation (Value Creation)

• Most projects fail

Factors in Project Management

time + quality + resources = scope

• What happens if we...
  • Decrease/increase time?
  • Decrease/increase resources?
  • Decrease/increase quality?

Speed vs Quality

• A foundational problem in software engineering
• We care more about quality than quantity in this course

The Waterfall Approach

• Sequential approach to developing software
• Ensure the current step is perfect before moving onto the next one
• Projects take months - years to complete

Problems with Waterfall

• The game changes
  • Changing market
  • Changing client expectations
  • Changing technical world
• The Evolution of Requirements
• We can't predict everything up-front
  • Known unknowns
  • Unknown unknowns

"Agile"

• There is no golden solution to project management
• Agile philosophies and methodologies are an improvement, but still have flaws
• Different companies, systems and projects have different requirements - and hence ways of management

Agile Philosophy

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Projects are all about people - put people at the centre of how they are planned
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Making the customer part of the team
  • Keeping the customer in the loop and engaged
• Responding to change over following a plan
  • Being prepared for changes and unknowns

Agile Characteristics

• Short release cycles
• Iteration and incremental improvement
• Frequent communication
• Making the team part of the decision-making - a democratic approach to leadership

Agile Variations

• Scrum
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Kanban
• Crystal
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
• Agile Unified Process
• Feature-Driven Development
• Adaptive Software Development

Scrum

Team Lead / Scrum Master

• Responsible for enacting Scrum Values & Practices
• Ensures that the team is fully functional and productive
  • Removes impediments / blockers
• Ensure close co-operation across the team
• Manager Leader of People
• In software
  • Usually the most (or one of) technically capable member in the team
  • Responsible for engineering decisions ("How")
  • Oversees planning, implementation, incident response

Product Owner

• An expert on the domain
• Visionary - CEO as Product Owner (Steve Jobs)
• Link between the team and broader community
  • Market
  • External stakeholders (can be one of them!)
• Take strategic / revenue responsibility
• Requirements Engineering
• Usability and customer acceptance
• Does not need to be technically proficient - but this helps significantly
• Good with people, requirements, HCI, UX

Delivery Manager

• AKA Iteration Manager
• Arrange and organise work to make engineers' jobs as simple as possible
• Keep engineers productive:
  • Removing blockers
  • Facilitating communication between teams
  • Organising / administrating backlog
• Co-ordinating meetings / standups
• End goal is delivery - throughput

Product Backlog

• A list of all work that needs to be done at some point in future
• Ordered by priority 
• Maintained by Product Owner
• Regularly updated
• Can contain
  • User Stories / General Requirements
  • Technical Stories
  • Spikes 
  • Research stories

Sprint Planning Meeting

• Team selects items from the backlog they can commit to completing
• Sprint backlog created
  • Tasks are identified and estimated (Story Points)
  • A collaborative process
• Often occurs at the beginning of a sprint
• Preparation for sprint planning:
  • Ticket Grooming
  • Ticket Prioritising
• Set sprint goal

Sprints

• 1 - 4 weeks
• Small chunks of work are completed and checked-in
• Have something to show by the end of the sprint
  • Demo or die
• Iterative development - each ticket is its own SDLC
  • Economies of scale

Measuring Progress

• Measurements are a core part of management
  • Many measurements in management don't mean anything
• Burndown: a measure of throughput in a sprint
• Y-Axis - Work to complete (Story Points)
• X-Axis - Time of the Sprint

Standups

• "Communication saturation" - frequency
• Communication is central to teamwork
• Daily at work
• 3 times a week for the project
• Each member says
  • What they have completed
  • Any blockers / issues they encountered
  • What they are going to do next
• Short & sharp
• Synchronous or asynchronous

Sprint Review & Retrospective

• Review
  • Team demos & presents what it accomplished
  • No slides
  • Whole team participates
  • Invite everyone
• Retrospective
  • Whole team participates
  • What went well? What can we do better?

Prototyping

• An Agile approach involving building a Proof of Concept
• Illustrates the proposed product to stakeholders
• "Minimum Viable Product"  

Further Viewing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZXe9iczGok

Task Tracking & Management

• Kanban
• Columns
  • Backlog
  • In Progress
  • Review
  • On Dev / Test / Prod
  • Done
  • Blocked

What's in a ticket

• Description - needs detail / link to documentation
• Assignee
• Reporter / Reviewer
• Story Points
  • Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...)
• Priority
• Definition of done

Constraints

• What are the potential limitations / factors that prevent us from achieving the goal? 
• What are things that will slow throughput?
• In real life?
  • Time, budget, resources, expert knowledge...
• In this course?
  • Time, knowledge, communication overhead

Theory of Constraints

• Every process has a constraint, and the process can only be improved when the constraint is improved
• "As fast as the slowest person"
• https://www.leanproduction.com/theory-of-constraints/
• The Goal

Theory of Constraints

• Identify - what is the constraint?
• Exploit - make quick improvements through existing resources
• Subordinate - ensure all other links in the chain support the constraint
• Elevate - further actions