1.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
- (We are nto there yet – Milestones and metrics for test suites are as close as we have come so far.)

Scheduling

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

X axis is % of total time that will ever be spent at a point about one week before program due date.

Y axis is score.

Historical Data 2

Results were significant:

For CS3114/5040 projects, those who spend at least half their
eventual project time prior to one week before project is due will
perform far better on average.
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

Historical Data 3

Correlations:

Strong correlation between early time and high score

(People who start early tend to do better.)

No correlation between total time spent and score

(Some people just program faster than others, which is not directly tied to quality. There is more difference in time required by non-novice programmers than in almost anything else that people do!)

No correlation between % early time and total time

(Starting early does NOT lead to spending more total time.)

What is the Mechanism?

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)
Milestones empirically lift the middle third of the
class by a letter grade

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)

How to fail at implementing your project:

Step 1: Write the project

Step 2: Debug the project

How to succeed at implementing

Write the smallest possible kernel
Debug that 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

How to Survive

Keys to success:

Keeping Track of all the details

You can’t remember it all

Rational Planning (and keeping to the plan)

Spread the work over time

Incremental Development

Interleave writing and debugging

Being Organized 1

Software development has so many details

Spec requirements

Program interactions

So does Life

Assignments and other things to do

Being Organized 2

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)

Memory Can’t Handle It

Externalize

TODO lists (What)
Scheduling (The Plan for How)
Issue trackers
Documenting/Commenting
Be able to update lists at any time,

Repository: GitHub

Spread Work Over Time

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

Incremental Development

Break the project into a small initial core
Implement and TEST and COMMENT the core
Then gradually add functionality
On any given day, write only as much code as you have time to debug
THAT DAY
This works well with Scheduling and Organizing

Milestones

Big positive effect with milestones (S16) vs without (F14)


A	43%	23%
B	16%	22%
C	11%	11%
D/C-	8%	6%
F	4%	5%
Drop	19%	33%

Working with a Partner (1)

Typically, about half to 2/3 of students work with a partner (CS3114).
As a population, we cannot distinguish differences in performance
in terms of score distribution between partnerships and singles.
Data indicate that each member of partnership works about 80% as
much as a person working alone.

Working with a Partner (2)

About 1/3 of partnerships end badly (CS3114).

The common complaint is one blaming the other for “letting me down”.

Two approaches:

Divide and Conquer: Bad

“Extreme” Programming: Good