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Successful Project Management in the Face of Shifting People and Teams The best project managers know to superbly manage the subtleties of risks, employee turnover, personality clashes, shifting priorities, and other unexpected events. And they know how to motivate even mediocre employees to produce exceptional results. The biggest challenge is facing the fact that no project proceeds predictably and according to plan. Learn practical day-to-day techniques you can use to achieve extraordinary project success in spite of seemingly insurmountable setbacks.
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Angela Gilchrist, CyberOptics Corporation
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Estimating Software Productivity and Quality on Large Systems Estimating productivity (e.g., lines of source code developed per hour) and quality (e.g., code defect rates) are difficult on large software projects that involve several companies or sites, emphasize reuse of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components or adaptation of legacy code, and require open architectures. Using actual metrics from such software development projects, this paper illustrates problems encountered and lessons learned when measuring productivity and quality. These include: how to count different types of code; effects of lengthy development times on productivity/quality; variability
between estimates obtained from different models; and tracking and reporting metrics on productivity/quality for projects based on incremental or evolutionary development.
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Jack Alanen, California State University
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Estimating in the Web World Discover the techniques used by estimators to overcome the challenges they are confronted with in attempting to estimate totally new development environments in the Web/e-commerce world. Typical challenges include how to scope functionality, assess realistic developer efficiency, and tailor the lifecycle processes. Learn how to use these techniques to estimate new project environments and effectively communicate the results of your analysis. Case studies will be provided to illustrate the techniques and their practical application.
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Lawrence Putnam, Jr., QSM, Inc.
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Effort Tracking Made Easy Tracking effort is often a difficult cultural change to implement. Projects working toward Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level two behaviors struggle with effort tracking for many reasons, including tool restrictions, resistance, and complicated processes. Lynn Cole shares insight and techniques that she has both successfully implemented and seen implemented by others. Discover the simple steps that you can take to start capturing and using effort data about a project.
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Lynn Cole, Spherion Technology Architects
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A Disciplined Approach to High Velocity Software Development When faced with the challenge of shortening delivery cycles, the old economy manufacturing companies utilized disciplined quality techniques to reduce scrap and rework and improve productivity. Software developers in the new economy face a similar challenge to accelerate development to meet critical time-to-market business goals brought about by the Internet. Unfortunately, many are abandoning disciplined methods in lieu of a risky "hack and test" approach with potential disastrous consequences for customers and developers. Learn of one company's transformation from ad hoc development to a disciplined and quantitatively managed enterprise. Discover why such a transformation is absolutely essential for high velocity software development.
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Girish Seshagiri, Advanced Information Services, Inc.
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The Ritual of Retrospectives: Your First Best Tool for a Learning Organization You've just finished your software release. You have signed off, and it's been shipped. You're done, right? No! The moment a project ends is the perfect time to reflect on the entire project to see what there is to learn-the unique moment when the project can be viewed in its entirety. You can look at the completion of your project as having "paid your tuition." So, now what are you going to learn from it? In this presentation, Norm Kerth explores the benefits, pitfalls, and experiences with this project management tool. Explore ways to use retrospection to improve future projects in your organization.
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Norm Kerth, Elite Systems
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Program Management vs. Project Management When a company has multiple products that are related in some way, management may choose to group those projects together under a Program Manager. Although Program Management areas are similar to Project Management areas (i.e., scope, time, cost, quality, communication, and risk management), there is a distinct difference between the tasks performed. Learn the differences between these two areas. Explore the keys to become a successful Program Manager.
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Dulcey Branch, Texas Utilities
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When Your Developers Don't Work for You-How I Managed A Band of "Hackers" The future of the development world lies with a bunch of skilled programmers living wherever they want, taking whichever projects they like, naming their price, and disappearing once the project is over. At many firms, that is already the reality. In this presentation, learn how one company effectively managed valuable but volatile people resources. Discover why process and formality are important, and why certain practices are indispensable for minimizing risk and keeping everyone happy.
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Lee Fischman, Galorath, Inc.
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Troubled Times Market analysts say the economy is recovering from the recession. But it seems that every day we read about another company laying off workers and the tough IT job market. All this has Eileen Strider wondering, in this week's column, how you are faring and what kind of support you are both giving and receiving during these tough times.
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The Impact of Team/Personal Software Processes Several years ago, the Naval Oceanographic Office initiated its process improvement effort with Team Software Process (TSP) and Personal Software Process (PSP) as its foundation. Learn about the areas in which TSP/PSP made a significant impact on implementing change relating to the organization's CMM maturity level. Discover how the structure provided by TSP/PSP facilitated the implementation of a Quality Assurance program, and explore the major impact TSP/PSP had on the organization's ability to establish a baseline of historical project data.
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Edward Battle, Naval Oceanographic Office
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