engineering-management

Oh yeah, more anecdotal data tells me silicon valley wants SO MUCH MORE for so much less!

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While reviewing “Unearthing Business Requirements: Elicitation Tools and Techniques”, Rosemary Hossenlopp and Kathleen B. Hass, ManagementConcepts 2008, I discovered the role of ‘Business Analyst’, as a real, important role on projects. Yeah, I know

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If you have not read Shampa’s post below I encourage all of you to read it.  I would like to point out a few newish developments on the software side.  First of all my information on outsourcing prices is from about two years ago.  As most of you know the dollar has taken a significant [...]

Wow, I guess they’ve got a for dummies book on everything now.  Awesome.  There is also of course the 10 minute project manager book in case you find yourself dubbed project manager 10 minutes before the kick off meeting. 

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I thought it would be fun to list some impressions of favorite and least favorite Project management books and methodologies.  I wrote none of these.  You too, can feel free to refute my oppinions or add your own replies or spam us with the latest project managment religion.  Why not?  Everyone else does. 

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I just loved the latest grievance from my students (see Monday/Tuesday/Thursday posts).  When being given more work than schedule to accomplish it, or additional tasks on top of their “primary” assignment, upon replying that they were going to have to slip something, that they couldn’t get it all done on schedule, they were told by [...]

One more complaint from my students (see Monday/Tuesday posts) is: “I’m given other jobs, in addition to my coding, and asked to do them without impacting the main project I’m working on.  Not just occasionally, in a crisis, but all the time.”
Some might say that this trait of trying to squeeze more out of Engineering [...]

A second complaint from my students (see yesterday’s post) is: “Management adds requirements to my project without asking me if I can still make the schedule and without taking anything away.  All the time.”
Of course, what’s “bad” about this behavior is not that requirements change: that’s expected: although there must be a limit.  What’s “bad” [...]

I’m in the middle of teaching my Software Requirements Engineering course at UCSC Extension.  On the first day of class, I always ask my students what problems they’re hoping to solve by coming to this class.  Once again I was struck by the commonality of answers from students in all kinds and sizes of companies [...]

Does this sound familiar?
Project Manager:  I thought I knew where we stood, but turns out we’re further behind than I thought.  This latest slip is going to have a domino effect.  I wish I had known earlier, when we could’ve done something about it!
Task Owner: I don’t want to make a big deal out of [...]

Unintended consequences?
I certainly would agree with anyone who tells me there are appropriate circumstances and projects for outsourcing, whether on or off shore. As Jacky implied in her comment to my first post, when requirements are firm: such as localization or porting of a product that already runs in one language or on one platform: [...]

Managing outsourced work: can that project be saved?
An experienced, well-trained project manager is not enough to guarantee an outsourced development success. It also takes a reliable, trustworthy, competent supplier. Even if the best project management techniques were used to choose a supplier, circumstances can change, turning a reliable supplier into an unreliable one. Some circumstances [...]

Managing outsourced work
Now that you’ve made your decision, picked a supplier, and written a contract, just kick back and let them do the work and deliver a final product. After all, they won’t fail because they promised they wouldn’t. And besides, you won’t pay them any more than they bid.
Not so fast.

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A few more things to do before making the outsourcing decision:
3. Create a Request for Proposal (RFP) that describes, in great detail, the software you want a supplier to create (the software requirements), anything else you want them to deliver (documentation, testing results), the testing they must do, the processes and tools you expect them [...]

So what is the result? Today, usually only one team member has spoken directly with a customer, and this understanding isn’t typically captured in written form anyplace to share with the rest of the product development team members. So when a technical tradeoff needs to be made, there is a 50/50 likelihood that the tradeoff [...]

Agile project team values and their embodiment in actual practice are highly subject to personal interpretation on the parts of practitioners, and thus necessarily suffer criticism for its wide-ranging variety of acceptable variations, all claiming to be agile. So a significant percentage of projects that claim to be agile, yet not adopting all of the [...]

I have a friend (let’s call him Andy) who used to work for me and was a good engineer. He subsequently became VP Engineering at an outsourced software development company overseas. I have another friend (let’s call him Don) who also worked with me at a large software company in the sales group; we went [...]