Software Engineering for Students A Programming Approach

378 Chapter 30 ■ Project management
There are approaches that can help in a situation like this. They use a process model
that involves small steps. These tasks are typically as small as an hour or a day. If something
goes wrong with a small task, it can easily be rectified, but if something goes
wrong during a task that takes months, it is hard to fix.
Second scenario: a task takes longer than expected or will take longer than expected.
This is similar to the above case, but here the developer is still around. If the activity is
on the critical path, the deadline has already been missed. There is a huge temptation
either to put additional people on the project or to ask the current people to work extra
hours or to ask everyone to work faster. It is dangerous to give into any of these tactics.
The likelihood is that, later, another task will overrun, compounding the problem.
Here, again, if the tasks are small, the damage is small.
Third scenario: the client asks for changes. The scale of changes must, of course, be
assessed. However, it is unlikely that the effect is to reduce work. More likely, additional
work is needed to provide additional functionality. Worse, significant changes are needed
to existing design and code. Now it is natural to want to please the client, and it
may be that the new work is full of interest and challenge, but the only answer here is
to confront the client with the effects on cost and deadlines. The client can then decide
whether to pursue the change, and incur the penalties or perhaps substitute the new
request for an old.
SELF-TEST QUESTION
30.5 A meal is in preparation. It looks as if it will be late. What do you do?
30.7 ● Managing people
Software is created by living, breathing people. However splendid the tools and techniques,
software development relies on human creativity. There have been many
attempts to analyze the problems of software projects and suggest informal ways of creating
a successful project team. However well organized the team, there are always
informal processes at work – both individual and group. A project manager needs an
awareness of these processes and needs to know what can be done to avoid weakening
a team and what can be done to improve a team.
One extreme school of management sees people as inherently lazy and needing to
be controlled. They need to be told clearly what to do, given frequent deadlines and
threatened with the consequences of poor performance. The opposite is the belief that
people are motivated by rewards such as respect, praise and money.
Any project faces the dilemma of control versus autonomy. Can the team members
be trusted to do a good job with the minimum of supervision? Are mechanisms required
to ensure that team members are performing? In a factory production plant, such as
a car assembly line, the task that each team member performs is rigorously specified
and timed to a fraction of a second. The degree of control is total and high levels of