1. Review the concepts in this chapter related to improving the quality of software. Write a one-page paper describing how you could apply these concepts to software development projects.
Question No-6, Page No-331, Chapter No-8
Ans) Improving the quality of the project is the main challenging task of any company in the process of developing a software project. This is possible only with strong leadership in the organization. The leadership should understand the cost of quality and provide a good work place to enhance quality. It should work to improve the organizations overall maturity level in the development of the software and project management all assist in improving the quality of the software.
The top management should be quality minded and should take responsibility in creating, promoting quality programs. The top management should adhere to the company’s philosophy and commitment implementing training sessions to the project team members and need to emphasize on improving quality among all the employees and help them taking responsibility towards customer satisfaction. Good leadership provides an environment which is conductive for producing quality. Top management should follow company’s philosophy and should be committed towards implementing training programs to the team members about the concepts of quality and their principles and explain the quality importance.
Top management should work towards developing quality standards and provide the resources like training the staff and taking inputs from customers towards improving the quality.
Question No-1, Page No-331, Chapter No-8
2. Assume your organization wants to hire new instructors for your project management course. Develop a list of quality standards that you could use in making this hiring decision.
Question No-1, Page No-330, Chapter No-8
Ans) The list of quality standards we use in the selection process of the instructor includes the persons academic qualifications which includes the degrees he’s been awarded and the major subjects in them and also from which university. Also the languages he knows and the frequency with which he can speak, read, and write those languages. Does he hold any Scholastic Honours like scholarships, fellowships, honorary, or Fraternities-Graduate and Undergraduate. Has he hold any Post-doctoral fellowships, exchange positions or any civilian government service.
The other quality standards include whether he holds any memberships in any of the learned professional societies and also if he had any articles, books, papers etc published or any other work by him. All these qualities of the instructors will help in improving the organization’s standards and improving efficiency of the people in the organization and help them perform well.
3. Research the criteria of Malcolm Baldrige National Award or a similar quality award provided by another organization. Investigate a company that has received this award. What steps did the company take to earn this quality award? What are benefits of earning a quality award?
Question No-4, Page No-331, Chapter No-8
Ans) This award is given in honour of Malcolm Baldrige who was a proponent of quality management and is given to various businesses which are outstanding in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and results.
This award was established as a standard of excellence that would help organizations to achieve world-class quality. The criteria of this Award is to deliver customers ever improving value and improving the performance of the organization.
The seven categories are explained which make up the award criteria:
Leadership - The leadership examines how the top management guides the organization in addressing the responsibilities towards the public and maintains good relationships.
Strategic Planning - The Srategic planning defines how the organization sets strategic goals and directions and how it determines those plans.
Customer and market focus – This determines how the organization determine its requirements and work towards the expectations of the customers and built good relationships among each other.
Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management – This focuses on effective use of data, analysis and improve the information to support the processes of the organization and improve the performance of management system.
Human resource focus – This examines how the organization is helping its work force to get the best out of them in accordance with the organizations objectives.
Process management – This examines how the processes like production, support, delivery are designed and improved.
Results – This examines the performance in various areas like company’s market performance, financial performance, human relations, customer satisfaction, financial and performance, and performance against competitors.
In 2002, Motorola Inc. Commercial has received this award. To receive this award the company has excelled in all the seven categories. They try to improve their strengths and try to improve in each area.
This Award helps all the company to self-assess their performance, improve better relations among employees and also with public and practising good citizenship. Helps in training and training and develop performance.
4. Read Douglas Ross article “Applying Covey’s Seven Habits to a Project Management career “ ( see the sixth suggested reading in this chapter ) or another article that describes the seven habits. Summarize three of Covey’s habits in your own words and give examples of how these habits would apply to project management.
Question No-3, Page No-380, Chapter No-9
Ans) Be Proactive – This habit means attacking the risks actively and reach out the stakeholders of the project if they don’t come to you. Every project may overcome with many risks like design flaws, high requirements, lack of people who are experienced, advent of new technology, less user involvement, inadequate of development environment. It is impossible to recognize all of them in one day.
In the scope of all these risks we should adopt a proactive attitude in tackling with these risks. when the scope turns out to be too large in iteration, we should reduce the scope and deliver the smaller solution. We should reach the customer if it is not possible for him to reach us. We develop a prototype if the customer is not able to express his ideas.
Begin with the End in Mind – This means we need to structure the iterations according to the goals of the project lifecycle. The team starts the project with much enthusiastically but may get lost somewhere in the end. In the scope of such pitfalls like in the case of iterative development these projects should be structured around the goals of the project.
We should mark the milestones for each phase. The project manager first develop a product acceptance plan and this helps define the end of the project clearly according to which the project is rolled out.
Think Win/Win – This emphasizes on satisfying the maximum number of business needs with minimum of effort.
We need to prioritize the business needs and their use cases. We need a traceable development order based on risk and also customer priority. The use cases should be developed according to the increasing order of risk and priority and need to be proactive and negotiate on alternatives of less risk. This gives an edge to the project team and the customer when delivering the project in time matters.
5. How many different communications channels does a project team with six people have? How many more communications channels would there be if the team grew to ten people?
Question No-3, Page No-420, Chapter No-10
Ans) The number involved in a project is the important aspect of information distribution and as the number of people increases the communication becomes complex because of more communication channels. The formula for number of communication channels is mentioned below:
The number of communications channels for a project team with n people is
No of communication channels = n ( n-1 ) / 2
The number of communications channels for a project team with 6 people is
No of communication channels = 6 ( 6-1 ) / 2 = 15
The number of communications channels for a project team with 10 people is
No of communication channels = 10 ( 10-1 ) / 2 = 45
The communication become complex as the team size increases.
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