TIE-PROJ, Project Management workshop
16.09.2014
questions from ten groups:
1. members from groups: G6, G7, G9
Q1: ”How to ensure that all group members have understood the requirements and got the idea of the whole project?” A: Be active with customer meetings. Use pair working. Ask questions or ”wrong questions”, also obvious ones. Work with the whole team with requirements gathering. Not all are familiar with the application area or business.
Group's answer: Have a group discussion and try to see if someone doesn't understand. Involving client/customer would also help if whole group hasn't understood
everything.
Q2: ”How to manage project, if requirements are incremental?”
A: Just like ”normally”. Customer usually fine-tunes his/her requirements during the projhect, after you have presented the next demo/proto. But naturally the overall ”big picture” should be known at the start of the project.
Group's answer: Try to collect features unlikely to change and implement them in the next sprint. After the sprint do this again.
Q3: "What should you do if in the project team, there are people that are lazy and/or looking after them and making sure they do their work takes a lot of time and is unnerving? But because it is important for the group to finish the project and it would be difficult or impossible to do it without those members e.g. due to tight schedule, the amount of work, or they have skills others don't have, they can't be left out of the group."
A: At the start, find clearly out everybody's interests, needs, skills, motivation for the project. E.g. working hours may
vary. Usually low motivation is because of busy time with other tasks (work, home, studies, hobbies, family,...). Not all students can put all their free time to the project.
Group's answer: Constructive criticism, organized gathering. Threats as last resort: tell the lazy person that (s)he will be kicked out of the group even if it isn't possible.
Q4: ”I'm slightly concerned about initiating the project with people I have no previous interactions with, especially of foreign origin.”
A. Get together in some unofficial social event. Think
yourself in a similar situation, what would be nice ? In real world, you always have some ”new faces” on your projects.
Group's answer: Get to know the group properly. Overcome shyness with IM services.
Q5: ”Do you have any advice on working in international teams, perhaps with such that introduce language barriers (which, in turn, may lead to silent frustration)?”
A: Misunderstandings cause sometimes frustration (e.g. two people doing same task). Have good written memos.
Group's answer: Social leisure time, try to become comfortable communicating with the group.
Q6: ”How do you appoint and come up with tasks, when those tasks are done with a technology or programming language that the group not familiar with?”
A: You just start with ”educated quesses” or ”academic quesses”. Ask everybody their will to study different technologies. Put somebody to get familiar with strange tools early enough. Find out if customer can give some technical assistance.
Group's answer: Familiarize yourself, appoint experts who can be consulted by the rest.
2. members from groups: G2, G3, G5, G8
Q7: ”If workload is much smalller/larger because of very abstract project subject, how can it be noticed as early as possible? How to solve and continue?”
A: There may be some refinement moments during the project, when you can adjust your work (based from the knowledge you got). Stay alert with the working hours log.
Group's answer: Ask more ! Be specific. POC asap.
Implement early on. Contact customer as often as possible. Be lean.
Q8: ”Project team members might have different schedules because of work or other studies. Team members might not be able to work at the same time or can't allocate the same amount of time for every sprint. What risks can this cause and how to counter them?”
A: No need for everybody to do the same amount of hours (promises are listed in Project Plan). Communication is important, leave no gaps. Groupmembers can be active, informing when their tasks are done, and then they may help others.
Group's answer: Some tasks can't be finished in time without good scheduling. Motivational issues. One task failing leads to another. Communicate (daily) as often as needed. Divide workload and time it so that it suits for everyone.
Q9: ”Our team's members are all working in different
companies and some even in different cities. Because of that we have quite rare possibilities to meet with whole team face to face. Is there any good at least somehow defined practises for remote working? Is there some common problems with remote working that can be avoided if the problem is known?”
A: Gather ”around the same table” whenever possible. The distant members use Skype or something like that. Have
good memos from meetings in some accessible place. A fixed weekly meeting time is very strongly recommended.
Group's answer: Use IRC, Skype, etc. For instant messaging. Also video conference. Make sure messaging tools are
available. Daily IRC/Skype IM meetings and weekly video conferences.
Q10: ”Should one person be responsible for coming up with all the tasks for other group memebers or would it be better to share the responsibility? For example one person is
responsible for the frontend and the other backend.” A: It is good to divide tasks, P.M. looks over the whole
project. In implementation the sw architect handles the big picture.
Group's answer: Share the responsibility because if the project is large enough, only one person can't understand the whole project.
3. members from groups: G1, G4, G10
Q11: ”What are the best project management tools based on your experience?”
A: The best tool is something you CAN use, i.e. know how to get most out of it. ”You don't find a perfect tool...”.
Allright, here is Tensu's list of good P.M. tools: 1. paper and pencil
2. coffee room table 3. sauna party
4. paper calendar (with all deadlines etc. marked).
Group's answer: The best tool is the most suitable one, e.g. JIRA. Depends on the number of users, money (licences), scope of the project etc., project method: waterfall/agile.
Q12: ”Our project is a game. So are there any specific project management topics that should be taken into
account more closely in a game project than in other software projects?”
A: There should be one ”lead designer”, who manages the ”story” of the game. Iterative development is a must.
Group's answer: The definition needs to be done more carefully (technologies etc.). Prototyping is important -> fast feedback.
Q13: ”Jim Highsmith represent a model of agile project management triangle in his book "Agile Project
Management". This triangle contains value, restrictions and functionality and the idea is to maximize value. In what kind of situations we should consider of using this model over the traditional triangle model (timescale, functionality, cost)?” A: well... what is that VALUE ? Consider yourself what might be best for the customer. And, the fourth factor of quality is SERVICE.
Group's answer: Project management triangle; in agile
projects, when there are more tasks in the project than time and people to do them -> choose those that bring most
value.
Q14: ”How to distinguish working hours between
Implementation (IMP) and Studying (STU)? Is there a
method or some kind of general rule to do this? In the case of this course all the hours could be labeled STU... and often things done during studying might end up in the first
versions of the implementation. :) How about between
Documentation and Requirements gathering? And secondly does any of this matter in this course?”
A: Studying is e.g. lectures and self-studying.
Group's answer: The group could decide the methods to
count the hours for themselves. On example: all lectures and planning the implementation is STU and when you start
implementation, all is IMP even if it includes a lot of googling.
