Process Group, Knowledge Area and responsibilities of Project Management

Project Management skills become necessary once you grow into supervisor role and are useful for the success of the project and keeping things in track. In this series, we will cover on questions and solutions for the questions learned through various resources on the internet and knowledge gained during IT experience and implementing the same in our projects.

Question 1: What are the major areas of responsibility of a project Manager?

Answer: The major areas of responsibilities of a project manager are:

•  Identify the requirements of the project – We figure out what needs to be done to make the project a success. This includes identifying and pulling each and every constraint that needs care to be taken care of.

• Establish objectives that can be achieved – Planning the goals that the team needs to work on to make the project a success.

• Balance scope, time and cost – For a successful project, we need to complete the project within schedule and cost expected with the scope of the project completed.

•  Satisfying everyone’s need – There needs to be proper communication between and with different stakeholders to keep them on the same page.

Question 2: What are the major process groups for project Management?

Answer: The major process groups  for project management are:

• Initiating – In this phase, we identify what are the high level goals of the project?

• Planning – In this phase, we plan for how we will do the things in project and define high level milestones for the project.

• Executing - In this phase, we do the actual work that was planned during initiating and planning phase.

• Monitoring and Controlling – In this phase, we define how to track the work, and in case of deviation in milestones defined and actual progress, we need to perform control activities to bring the project back into track

• Closing – This phase includes completion of activities including deliverables, paperwork and finally getting paid once the exit criteria is completed and agreed.

Question 3: What are the different knowledge areas and their definition?

Answer: The different knowledge areas that need to be taken care during knowledge management are as follows:

• Risk – Planning for things that could happen, which can be either positive or negative, and dealing with them when they happen
• Quality – This is to ensure product build is correct and satisfies the requirement of customer.
• Scope – Defining the work that needs to be done in the project.
• Procurement –Defining contracts with different stakeholder working in the project.
• Communication – Understanding stakeholders and different roles of stakeholders and making proper communication with them to ensure project growth.
• Time – Making estimates of how long it will take the project to complete and make sure the project adhers to the timeline.
• Integration – Making everyone works towards the goal and dealing with the changes if any arising in the scope and schedule of project.
•  Cost – Budgeting project cost and monitoring the money spend in the project.
•  Staffing – This is getting the required staff, infrastructure for getting the work done. 

KNOWLEDGE AREAS

Understanding Agile Methodology and principles

In 2001, At a summit seventeen practitioners of different software methodologies met together and created the agile manifesto. Principles of Agile Manifesto are implemented in various projects for agile development.

The Manifesto for agile development states developing keeping the following values as focus:

·         Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

·         Working software over comprehensive documentation

·         Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

·         Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Methodology thus focuses on close interaction between resources and customers to create working software and responding to changes in software based on feedback between the teams. 

If we go back to Iterative and Incremental model, we can say Agile Methodology as a subset of IID Model. Software Testers works in a collaborative model as a part of Agile teams providing necessary feedback together with reporting defects in the development.

Agile as per dictionary definition means:  able to move quickly and easily and able to think and understand quickly. The Definition defines agile methodology in a nice manner. Using Agile in projects, we can move in quick manner thinking over the problem and understanding it quickly and easily by working in a collaborative manner.

In terms of Software testing, agile methodology is different from previously used methodology, e.g. Waterfall and V-Model, as it allows tester a role early in the development in a collaborative manner, thus uncovering the issues from early analysis phase. Also Testers are integral part of agile teams instead of independent teams. The Collaborative approach separates agile from other SDLC Models, and helps better communication between various stakeholders including customer, managers, developers, testers, and analysts bringing responsiveness to changing requirements and a more efficient product developed since all the stakeholders works as a team with better understanding of the requirements.

Key Principles of Agile Manifesto:

1.  Satisfying the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

2.  Agile processes harness change for the customer competitive advantage.

3.  Delivering working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

4.  Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

5.  Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

6.  The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

7.  Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8.  Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

9.  Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Reference:  http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Where to Use and Where not to use Agile?

• In case, most of the project in the organization is handled through traditional development Model, it is better to start with a smaller project. The reason we cannot predict the success or failure of the agile is the collaborative nature of the project and this includes developers, management, Customers, and testers. The traditional models do not allow regular interactions between the stakeholders. E.g. we get the requirement from the customers, based on requirements the analyst prepares the design, developers code the design and testers test the code. Thus each of the groups works as individual units with collaboration missing which is a must for Agile.

• Since the individual as well as customer had worked in the traditional model for a longer part of their career, it becomes difficult to switch to agile methodologies, where we need to work collaboratively. So to understand the approach and mindset for Agile methodologies before working on larger project with large number of resources and stakeholder.

• Agile Methodologies should be used in project whose business severity is neither too high nor too low, so that proper importance is provided to the project.

• Agile should not be used on Projects where large documentation is required e.g. Legal or Compliance Projects.

Understand Iterative and Incremental Development Model

In Iterative and Incremental Model, the whole requirement is divided into various sub–requirements or builds. Each build in itself follows waterfall model, i.e. each build passes through requirement, design, implementation and coding. The need for incremental and iterative model arise and is very useful in scenario where requirement changes frequently or we are working on an idea and the detailed requirement may not be clear at the start of development but a high level vision of the end product is available to us.

As the name suggest, this model will consider both iterative and incremental development. Before we discuss this in detail, let us know what iterative and incremental means. Various parts of the system are developed at different time and are integrated into the existing developed work once they are completed. And iterative strategy assigns time for rework and improvement in the part of system developed, thus continuously working in iterations to rework and improve the system adding more features in an iterative manner.

IID Model

To start with this model, we divide the project in a number of modules or stories. Each module/story represents functionality or use case in the product. Stories should be created or planned in such a manner that each story covers a feature of product, has set of entry and acceptance criteria and needs to be of shorter span of time, may be few days to few weeks. 

This is the analysis phase where we have analyzed the various stories from the requirement based on the features expected from the product. With each story having its own story means features  which will have a short span of time to complete.

Now once we have analyzed all the stories in the requirement, how do we react to stories, Do we start working on all stories together in a bang bang manner or do we need to priority to the stories, We will start with the story with most risk and complexity, and before this will complete on other smaller stories on which the most complex and risk story is developed. Once the complex piece is selected, we work on following a small waterfall on the story, 

We start with analysis, then design, coding and then testing the code, but with regular feedback at each of the steps.

The first piece will take a longer time compared to next stories but will provide useful immense information on the feasibility of the project, Knowledge to team on the product and possible bottlenecks in the development of project. It is strictly advised not to set deadlines for the initial few pieces as it will act as guidance to rest of stories on how long it will take to develop another story in the project.

Once we develop another story, we add it to existing product thus increment the functionality added to existing product and at the same time, we do iteration to improve and rework to existing developed piece based on defects, feedback from various stakeholder. 

All the pieces are developed, integrated with existing developed functionality, once the piece is fitted with rest of the developed pieces, we can have feedback and testing on the incremented product so that we can do rework and review the product. The development happens in an incremental and iterative manner unless the completed product is developed.

Where to Use IID Model

• Major functionality and goal of development are well defined, but features and enhancement mayevolve with time.

• IID is very useful in case of development with new technologies to validate a prototype filling preparing the complete.

• High Risk features which may change in future.

Positives in the Model

• An initial working product is developed in the early stages quickly.

• Developing the initial product early helps in getting feedback and defect Identification early in the lifecycle.

• We can work on different stories/pieces at the same time.

• Continuously improving the product by rework and review is possible based on iterative nature of development.

• Risks are identified in a better manner and can be implemented in the remaining project development.

Negatives in the model

• The timelines of the project are not fixed and can change drastically based on requirement change.

• Sometimes incorrect implementation of model can lead of frequent requirement change and estimation of project.

• Initial development which helps in identifying risks in the system required experienced risk analysts as incorrect risk analysis during initial phase may lead to failure of development.

• Management complexity is higher.