Principles of Software Engineering Essays

Running head: HOW TO NOT DO A PROJECT- THE SEVEN CLASSIC MISTAKES How to not do a Project The Seven Classic Mistakes Menaka Katapadi Kamath The University of Texas at Dallas Author Note Menaka Katapadi Kamath, Naveen Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas Menaka Katapadi Kamath is now at Naveen Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080. Correspondence concerning this journal should be addressed to Menaka Katapadi Kamath, 7760 McCallum Blvd Apt 18104, Dallas, TX 75252. contact: mxk165230@utdallas.edu Abstract This assessment summarizes the failures and classic mistakes that occur during the life cycle of a project and best practices to prevent and overcome mistakes. Every project basically centers around mistakes that are either people or process related. Seldom are the chances that mistakes have anything to do with technology or the product itself. There are seven classic mistakes that are found to occur very commonly in nearly one third of projects. They include poor estimation and scheduling, ineffective management of stakeholders, insufficient management of risks, planning insufficiently, giving less importance to quality assurance, weak work force issues and insufficient sponsorship of project. Proactively identifying problems and taking corrective measures to alleviate the hiccups can prove to be very helpful in handling these mistakes prematurely. How to not do a project The Seven classic mistakes Every

• Not suitable for the projects where requirements are at a moderate to high risk of changing.[11]

Projects can be affected by a wide range of issues that may cause it to fail from not meeting project scope, timeframe, budgetary constraints to lack of management support or bad customer service. Failures of a project can affect morale, employment, and waste time and money. For a project to be started without adequate organization may end as a failure.

The research on project management has been studied for decades. Many scholars and managers put great efforts into finding out what can influence project success. Through their continuing work and precious experiences, what factors dominate the success of projects is well documented in literature. The use of these guide texts can help project managers to deal with difficult tasks. Moreover, it is unanimous consensus that project critical success factors are necessary for management team to achieve project objectives and ensure success. If they are well considered and addressed, then it is more likely that a project would have more successful outcomes. On the other hand, if these factors are not rigorously taken into account,

Software Development has evolved immensely over the past few decades and especially in the past few years. We have seen an increase in the demand for software across all platforms. Electronic device usage is growing worldwide and every one of those devices requires software whether it has a user interface or not. Think about the transportation industry, semi-autonomous vehicles are offered by many different auto makers with more and more of them announcing their plans to automate driving each year. The software that runs this aspect of the vehicle only has a small user interface footprint but the requirement for software development perfection has exponential consequences. This is becoming the norm in our everyday lives. More and more

Read the following case and provide a minimum of three reasons why problems occurred on this project, and what should have been done to prevent these occurrences.

real projects often do not follow all of the guidelines found in this or other

Moreover, during the project kick off meeting ground rules should have been established within the project to make it more effective. An example list would include:

The first reason of project failure is poor planning. This is a very common reason because project managers do not take the time to understand the clients and stakeholder needs. They just dive right into the project without any thought or consideration of the direction the project is going. According to

Waterfall does have its issues: the process is generally “uni-directional” meaning that once the project hits a certain stage, there’s no mechanism to go back to a previous stage. This prohibits this method from being responsive to changing environments and/or requirements. The extensive documentation required at each stage (requirements, specification, design documentation, test plans and status) requires a great deal of time to complete. Additionally if it is discovered that there was a major issue with a missing requirement or the coding (and it’s uncovered in time) it is extremely expensive to make an adjustment.

From the list above, it is easy to comprehend the failure points in a project. Factors like changing objectives, technology change, and top management change, when not handled appropriately, could lead to new issues in the project which could then hinder the progress already made by the team. Factors like poor planning, inadequate project management, and unrealistic deadlines can provide false expectations to team members. Proper planning is of prime importance as it is the first step towards successful completion of any project. Having multiple vendors and stakeholders needs a team skilled in people management and engagement to ensure that all vendors and stakeholders are informed of all changes.

Project management is divided into five interrelated but, distinctive phases. These phases are: Project initiation; Project planning; Project execution; Project Monitoring and controlling and, Project Termination. In project management, time, money and scope are the three principal components considered to have a bearing on the success of the project. These are interrelated and, a balance between them is needful in order to ensure efficient and

There is a triple constraint basically demonstrates in pictorial fashion, the key attributes that must be handled effectively for successful completion and closure of any project. For thoroughness, the key attributes of the Triple Constraint are itemized as follows:

There are various methods of developing software models which depends on the projects objective and outcomes . There are multiple methodologies that are made in order to attain the goal. Software development models defines the different steps of the model and the way they are executed.

As mentioned above an example of project management failure that occurred at the Pike River Coal Mine was not being able to complete objectives by a certain deadline. This is shown by having an initial prediction of the mine having an annual coal production of more than one million tonnes to be produced