Software Extension to the PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition

• Editorial: Project Management Institute
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781628250411
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Project Management

Designed to be used in tandem with the latest edition of the PMBOK® Guide, this comprehensive volume closely follows the PMBOK® Guide's approach to style, structure and naming, while providing readers a balanced view of methods, tools, and techniques for managing software projects across the life cycle continuum from highly predictive life cycles to highly adaptive life cycles. Software Extension To the PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition provides readers with knowledge and practices that will not only improve their efficiency and effectiveness but that of their management teams and project members as well.

1

INTRODUCTION

This Software Extension to the PMBOK^® Guide Fifth Edition describes commonly accepted practices for managing software projects; it addresses those practices applicable for managing projects to develop new software and to modify existing software. The objective of this Software Extension is to expand and elaborate on the project management processes, tools, and techniques and the vocabulary found in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) – Fifth Edition [1],¹ and to provide more specific and precise terms, processes, and methods for managing software projects.

Many project managers, including those certified by PMI, can improve their ability to manage projects that involve development or modification of software by increasing their knowledge and skills concerning the processes, methods, tools, and techniques used to manage software projects, as covered in this extension to the PMBOK^® Guide. Conversely, software project managers can improve their knowledge and skills to manage their projects by understanding the practices that are documented in the PMBOK^® Guide.

Software project managers and their project teams develop and modify application software, system software, and the software elements of software-intensive systems. Application software is constructed using interfaces to system software, communication protocols, and software development tools. Application software provides capabilities for computer users, such as word processing, spreadsheets, accounting software, and multimedia players.

System software is the infrastructure software that provides the platform on which application software is developed and executed. It includes operating system components such as a scheduler, memory manager, and input/output software.

A software-intensive system is a collection of hardware, software, and, in some cases, manual procedures performed by operational personnel who are elements of the total system. In these systems, software is the primary component that integrates and coordinates the operation of the system. Software-intensive systems sometimes incorporate special purpose hardware and may require tailoring of the operating system, communication protocols, and other infrastructure components. The scope of the product to be developed for a software-intensive system includes components to be developed or modified in addition to the software, which is not the case for application software.

Application software, system software, and software-intensive systems support all aspects of modern society, ranging from information technology support for organizations, to large ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems for running business operations, to network communication protocols, to operating systems, to embedded software in home appliances, automobiles, mobile phones, spacecraft, consumer products, and aviation; as well as software for fields such as defense, life sciences, transportation, energy sector, finance, banking and insurance, research and development, simulation and training, recreational games, and software tools used to develop software (software editors, language compilers, database tools, etc.). Development and modification of software often affect and are affected by operational policies and business practices.

Managers of software projects face increasing challenges as software projects grow larger and more complex at an increasing rate, with increasing expectations of customers and users; with the need for compliance with government, industry, and organizational policies; with the technological challenges of frequently updated hardware and software platforms; with increasing interplay between hardware development, firmware development, and software development; and the considerations related to the ergonomics of the human elements of these systems. In addition, software projects often involve issues of safety, security, reliability, and other quality requirements. Expanding global markets provide software products to a wider variety of cultures, languages, and ways of life, thus increasing the scope and complexity of software to be developed and modified.

1.1 Purpose of the Software Extension to the PMBOK^® Guide

The primary purpose of the PMBOK^® Guide is to identify and document that subset of the Project Management Body of Knowledge generally recognized as good practice on most projects, most of the time. The purpose of this Software Extension to the PMBOK^® Guide Fifth Edition is to supplement the PMBOK^® Guide with knowledge and practices that can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of software project managers, their management teams, and their project members.

As stated in Section 1.1 of the PMBOK^® Guide “good practice for most projects, most of the time” does not mean the knowledge described should always be applied uniformly to all projects; the organization and/or project management team is responsible for determining what is appropriate for any given project or situation. A similar statement applies to this Software Extension.

While this extension focuses on management of software development projects, it will also be useful to organizations that engage in IT projects. First, these organizations need to manage solutions that involve development or modification of IT software. These projects may require in-house development of application software or software-intensive systems; this extension applies directly to those projects. Second, organizations may outsource IT software development to external third-party organizations. In these cases, this extension provides helpful information to those responsible for monitoring the external effort. The information can be used to review a third-party's project plans, analyze project status, identify and confront risks, and understand issues that may arise during the course of the contract. Third, most of the organizational and team considerations explained in this document apply equally to IT technology development. Similar considerations apply to engineering projects.

The PMBOK^® Guide also provides and promotes a common vocabulary within the project management profession for discussing, writing about, and applying project management terminology and concepts. Like all professional disciplines, the software domain has a specialized vocabulary for discussing, writing about, and applying software terminology and concepts. Software project terminology is documented in the glossary to this Software Extension and in ISO/IEC/IEEE Standard 24765 (SEVOCAB) [2], which provides terminology for software, hardware, and systems. In cases of conflicting terminology for project management, the Glossary in the PMBOK^® Guide and the PMI Lexicon of Project Management Terms [3] shall prevail.

The PMBOK^® Guide also references and explains the purpose of the Project Management Institute Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct [4] (see www.PMI.org). For information on software engineering ethics, consult the IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice [5], which was developed as a resource for teaching and practicing software engineering and was adopted by the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery. In addition, the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) has developed a code of ethics [6]. See also the American Society for Information Science and Technology (AIS&T) Professional Guidelines [7].

1.1.1 Audience for the Software Extension to the PMBOK^® Guide

The audience for this Software Extension includes, but is not limited to:

• Project managers;
• Software project managers;
• Functional managers;
• System analysts;
• System designers;
• Software architects;
• Software team leaders;
• Software systems engineers;
• System software developers;
• Application software developers;
• Test engineers;
• Verification and validation (V&V) personnel;
• Information systems and software security specialists;
• Project infrastructure personnel;
• IT infrastructure personnel;
• Web developers;
• IT project managers;
• Software process engineers;
• Business analysts, enterprise architects, business continuity planners, and those in related disciplines;
• IT CIOs, strategists, directors, analysts, solution designers, solution providers, IT security engineers, and service personnel;
• Program managers;
• Portfolio managers;
• Product managers;
• Customers;
• Acquirers;
• System integrators; and
• Other stakeholders who affect, or are affected by, a software project.

1.2 What is a Project?

According to Section 1.2 of the PMBOK^® Guide, a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. Attributes of projects, including software projects, are described in Section 1.2 of the PMBOK^® Guide. Software projects, like all projects, are undertaken to achieve a specific objective. In addition to creating new products, software projects are often undertaken to modify an existing software product, to integrate a set of existing software components, to extend the capabilities of software products, or to modify the software infrastructure of an organization.

Software projects may also be undertaken to satisfy service requests, maintenance needs, or to provide operations support. These activities may occur as level-of-effort (LOE) activities; they are considered projects when they are specified as temporary endeavors to provide deliverables and outcomes. Software product life cycles, in contrast to project life cycles, typically involve maintenance and support activities that include both projects and level of effort activities. IT projects, such as design of an enterprise information system, IT service transition to another vendor, or deploying a solution to end users are not software projects in the traditional sense, but many of the concepts and practices described in this extension can prove useful in IT organizations. Similarly, projects in the traditional engineering disciplines and knowledge-based projects will find this Software Extension to be useful.

1.2.1 The Relationships Among Portfolios, Programs, and Projects

Section 1.2.1 of the PMBOK^® Guide describes the relationships that exist among portfolios, programs, and projects; see also Figure 1-1 of the PMBOK^® Guide. Specifics that apply to management of portfolios, programs, and software projects are illustrated in Figure 1-1 and discussed in Section 1.4 of this Software Extension.

1.3 What is Project Management?

According to Section 1.3 of the PMBOK^® Guide, project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques for project activities to meet the project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the appropriate application and integration of the 47 logically grouped project management processes comprising five Process Groups. These five Process Groups are:

• Initiating,
• Planning,
• Executing,
• Monitoring and Controlling, and
• Closing.

The unique nature of software, as described in Section 1.2.1 of this extension, allows the elements of the 47 processes within the 5 Process Groups of the PMBOK^® Guide to be overlapped, interleaved, and iterated in various ways, which results in modifications of and extension to the methods, tools, and techniques in the PMBOK^® Guide that are used to manage software projects.

According to Section 1.3 of the PMBOK^® Guide, project management involves balancing competing constraints, which include but are not limited to:

• Scope,
• Quality,
• Schedule,
• Budget,
• Resources, and
• Risk.

Technological factors that can place constraints on software projects and software products include:

• State of hardware and software technology;
• Hardware platforms, software platforms, operating systems, and communication protocols;
• IT architecture integrity, limitations, and protocols;
• Software development tools;
• Software architecture;
• Backward and forward compatibility requirements;
• Reuse of software components from a library;
• Use of open source versus closed source software components;
• Use of customer-supplied software components;
• Interfaces to hardware and other software; and
• Creation and use of intellectual property.

Other factors that can place constraints on software projects include but are not limited to requirements for system safety, security compliance, reliability, availability, scalability, performance, testability, information assurance, localization, maintainability, supportability, regulations, customers’ policies, infrastructure support, team member availability and skills, software development environment and methods, and organizational maturity and capability.

1.3.1 Why Software Project Management Is Challenging

Every discipline has unique aspects that differentiate it from other disciplines. Within those disciplines, the general principles of project management are adapted to account for the special aspects of the projects in those disciplines. Many factors make software projects and management of software projects challenging. Some of those factors are:

• Software projects are challenging because software is an intangible and malleable product; source code for software is written text. In most cases, teams of software developers generate and revise shared documents (e.g., requirements, design specifications, code, and test plans). Software development is often characterized as a learning process in which knowledge is gained and information is generated during the project.
• Key attributes that make software projects challenging are complexity of the project and the product, nonlinear scaling of resources, measurement of project and product, initial uncertainty in project and product scope, and knowledge gained as a project evolves.
• Software requirements often change during a software project as knowledge is gained and the scope of the project and the product emerge.
• Requirements for new and modified software often influence, and are influenced by, an organization's business processes and the workflow processes of employees.
• Intellectual capital of software personnel is the primary cap...