CA305 COURSE MATERIALS (2009-2010)

N.B.: These notes will be completed as delivery of the module progresses.

General Notes:

1. While much of course material is/will be on the web, some notes will be distributed in hard copy at lectures.

2. Also, additions and adjustments of the on-line material may be made during lectures.

Course notes:

Some reference & Supporting material:

Slides based on “Successful IT Projects”, Dalcher & Brodie, Chapters 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

A. Introduction TO SW PROCESSES & PROJECT MANAGEMENT:

Indicative list of topics

An overview of software processes

A sample software development plan template (MS Word version) + an example plan based on this template

(As illustrated in class, there are some sample diagrams relevant to Chapter 5 of the development plan template at Yeates & Cadle (8), notably

Figures 8.12, 8.13, 10.3, 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8; later lectures will present these ideas more systematically).

B. PROJECT PLANNING AND SCHEDULING:

Commentary & Explanations

Commentary & Explanations (A)

Commentary & Explanations (B)

Yeates & Cadle

C. AN ASIDE ON USE OF MS PROJECT (here, pdf)

D. SIZE & COST ESTIMATION (here, some related example calculations 1, 2, 3)

Note: The above are essentially introductory notes on size & cost estimation. Time permitting, this material will be extended later in the

course.

Outline of Function Point approach for OO

E. RISK MANAGEMENT (here)

Sample project specification to illustrate risk management ideas

F. Performance, Tracking & Reporting (here, baseline example, simple tracking example)

G. QUALITY AND ITS COSTS (here ; example coding standards & code inspection procedure to illustrate & distinguish different quality costs)

Following reference provides more background and a case study

H. QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: EXAMPLE OF CMM [in outline (here) and an evaluation of (here)]

I. TEAM MANAGEMENT CONSIDERATIONS (here) including sketch of P-CMM

Continuous Assessment:

a) General

In this module there are 75 marks for the final examination and 25 marks for the continuous assessment.

Most students will pass both parts individually and so will automatically pass the complete module (i.e. achieve the pass mark of 40 or more). (Of course, usually, a lot of students achieve honours!).

However, for whatever reason, a student may fail one part and so the question arises whether that student can still pass overall. The rules for this situation in CA314 are those of the current DCU’s “Marks & Standards” namely that the module mark is a simple weighted average of the continuous assessment mark and the final examination mark. There are NO thresholds in either continuous assessment or examination that a student has to achieve other than an overall module mark of 40.

b) Details of the continuous assessment assignments:

b.1 Preliminary assignment (for presentation at lecture of October 7, 2009) (4% of total)

This is quite a short assignment intended to become familiar with some of the important issues in software project management through study of the well known PPARS case (here). A hard copy of a summary report on this case was distributed at the lecture of September 30^th, 2009. The assignment is simply to study the report carefully and to produce and present (in class) a short summary covering

- What went wrong?

- What would be the most important things to fix?

- What relevance has the problems of, and lessons from this large project have for small projects including larger student projects?

For time reasons mainly, students should work in groups of (say) three or four people in preparing and presenting their summaries.

Note: A printed copy of each presentation should be submitted (in addition to the oral presentation).

Provisional marks for this preliminary assignment may be viewed here.

b.1 Main assignment (for submission to project box in L1.14 by 17.00 on December 11, 2009) (21% of total)

This consists, in fact, of three separate parts. The detailed specification of the work is linked from here.

The work will be done, normally, in teams of two. If necessary, because of the class size (an odd number!), there may be one team of three for which a larger amount of work is specified. Please notify me of your team members by Friday November 6^th (2009).

A major element of the work will involve studying various documents (though not every team will need to study every document). The documents apply to the different parts of the assignment as follows:

Part 1: Chen, Collyer, Dalcher2003, Korzaan, Mahaney, Procaccino, Stamelos

Part 2: Dalcher2002, Oz

Part 3: ITT(b)

Time permitting, lecture period time in December will be allocated for teams to present and discuss their work, especially relating to Parts 1 and 2 of the assignment.