0.Project Management§

Project management is a skill
- It has to be learned
- It has to be practiced
Any skill-based class will typically grade you on process
- Consider taking a class to learn Tennis
This semester, we will pay a lot of attention to your process
- We are working on ways to grade process

Managing large-scale projects involves scheduling activities
- It is human nature to work better toward intermediate milestones.
The same concepts can/should be applied to mid-sized projects encountered in class.
- For any project needing more than a week to complete, break into parts and design a schedule with milestones and deliverables.
- Find some way to keep track of details.

Historical Data

Results were significant:
- 90% of scores below median were students who did less than 50% of the project prior to the last week.
- Few did poorly who put in > 50% time early
- Some did well who didn’t put in >50% time early, but most who did well put in the early time

Correlations:
- Strong correlation between early time and high score
- No correlation between total time spent and score
- No correlation between % early time and total time

Correlations do not necessarily mean causation
- Do they behave that way because they are good, or does behaving that way make them good?
- But, we have data from students who sometimes spread their work over time (and generally doing better) vs. doing work at the last minute (and generally doing worse)
Why would this matter?
- Spreading projects over time allows the “sleep on it” heuristic to operate
- Avoiding the “zombie” effect makes people more productive (and cuts time requirements)

Write the smallest possible kernel
Debug the kernel thoroughly
Repeat until completion:
- Add a functional unit
- Debug the resulting program
- Have a way to track details
Do mechanics early
Do structural design before implementation
Implement the tricky parts last

Software development has so many details
- Spec requirements
- Program interactions
So does Life
- Assignments and other things to do

You can't turn this on/off
- Either you get in the habit of developing in an organized way, or you can't succeed as a software developer
- Part of it is developing the attitude of "sweating the details"
- Part of it is having the coping mechanisms to handle the details (organizational tactics)

For anything beyond a small software project, you must have a plan/schedule
Explicitly develop a schedule:
- Break into pieces: List of subtasks
- Deadlines for subtasks
- Realistic, enough flexibility built in
- Continuously modify and refine the plan