gu & maher ning@design-ning.net university of sydney, october 2004 deco2005 process management...

Gu & Maherning@design-ning.net

University of Sydney, October 2004

DECO2005

Process Management in CSCW

Life-Cycle of Design Projects

• Description of the events that occur between the beginning and the end of a project inclusively.

Life-Cycle of Design Projects

Requirements Analysis

Design

Implementation

Review

Purpose of Each Phase

• Requirements analysis: Understand the design brief. Establish functional requirements, constrains and goals. Defined in a manner which is understandable by both

users and the development team.• Design:

Develop a design solution that meets the requirements. Defined and described in a way that is understandable by

the implementer/builders.• Implementation:

To realise the design.• Review:

Critically access the product to see if it meets the requirements.

Make any necessary revision.

Business Reality in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• Rapidly changing technology.• Shortened time to market.• Changing and unknown requirements.• Products meet functional requirements do not meet the

requirements of the market .• Unwillingness to invest in large projects.• Frozen or shrinking budget and human resources.• Disbelief that products developed using CSCW will

provide value.

Industry: Development of Design Projects Using CSCW

• Large single projects fading away.• Cultural shift to teams of <10 people.• Increased user involvement.

Emphasis on requirements analysis and review.

• Increased process focus. Sub-divided tasks.

• Self-managed project teams. Require team members to competent in terms of the

technical aspect as well as the administrative aspect.

Clients’ Needs in Design Projects

• Reality: most clients want products that are Cheap. Fast enough: short life-cycle. Functional enough. Built soon enough to occupy the market.

Key Elements in Design Projects

• Time: total human resources involved.• Quality:

Difficult to define. Meet the requirements, innovation, leading industry.

• Cost: Financial investment, management time, opportunity cost,

monetary valued expended or created.

Business Strategies in Developing Design Projects

• User centered analysis and design.• Experienced team and management.• High performance team.• High productivity tools.• Prototyping.• Time boxed development.• 80/20 rule: trivial many and vital few rules.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Analyser Understand and define the goals, objectives, to reflect the

clients needs.• Strategy builder

Define strategy, plan the process, resources, project growth areas.

• Designer Provide design solutions.

• Builder Implement the design.

• Project manager Control progress of the project against any detrimental

influences on the time, cost, and quality in regard to the client, the place of work, market forces, other external influences and the design team.

Project Manager’s Roles

• Knowledge: Understand the industry and the team’s capabilities. Understand business disciplines and skills and how they

could enhance the project.

• Communication: Liaison with the management of any external agencies,

contracted parties. Effective briefing of resources, management meeting and

team leadership. Communication of project progress to client, actions taken,

change control, monitoring of factors affecting the progress of the project, risk management.

Management and compliance with deadlines and milestones for the development team and the client.

Project review to asses whether the project was conducted well and how the progress can be improved.

Project Manager’s Roles

• Documentation Consultation with the client to produce a mutually

acceptable project specification. Ensure parameters of team’s involvement are clear Success criteria are defined. Documentation of project progress (storing emails,

contact reports, all versions of documents, ensuring product is signed off.

Archive of project, including documentation, assets and other resources.

• Quality control Ensure product is tested, review, agreed before release. Ensure each component of the project is produced to

agreed technical and functional specification.• Development

Develop personal skills. Build team knowledge and skills.

Project Manager’s Roles – Where do they begin and end?

• Involvement begins usually from the very beginning of the project, sometimes also from the early planning stage.

• Responsibilities begin and end as defined and agreed upon with the client and the organization.

Project Management Principles

• Depends on goals: Assembly line: consistency achieved through repetition.

Easy control, predictable, very manageable. Organic: not exactly follow the convention, grow

organically. More difficult to control, predict, manage, stifle the energy

and dynamics.

Project Management Principles

• Parallel development: Multi-disciplinary teams work in parallel. Embrace changes that occur inevitably. Project manager orchestrate like a conductor. Sequential dependencies : tasks cannot begin before

another task is complete Clear awareness of what can be developed in parallel and

what must remain sequential. Save time for creativity by running tasks in parallel.

Strategies in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

• To use CSCW as the mean for supporting design projects or even to perform parts of the project manager’s roles.

• Methodology is a project management issue, not a technology issue , and business success is typically not a technology either.

• Good strategies: have a specific method. A framework for making decisions about the project. Formal system for observing, analysing and monitor the

process.

Life-Cycle of Design Projects Using CSCW

• Life cycle: methods + tools + procedures. Methods: establish principles, describe typical activities,

imply a sequencing & frequency of activities, provide guidelines and rules of thump.

Tools: technology, automation, administration. Procedures: manage different phases.

• Life cycle: Waterfall. Incremental. Spiral. Evolutionary. Rapid Evolutionary. Extreme.

Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Waterfall: Typical engineering

process Classic life-cycle in

which each activity is completed once for the entire set of requirements.

Simple: activities are completed in sequential order.

Top-down development.

Independent phases done sequentially.

Should understand each phase well.

An entry and exit point of each phase.

Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Incremental Waterfall in overlapping

sections. Evolutionary delivery. Project delivered in pieces,

highest priority first An iterative life-cycle is based

on successive enlargement and refinement of a project through multiple sub-cycles.

The project grows by adding new functions within each sub-cycles.

Each sub-cycle tackles a relatively small set of requirements, proceeding through analysis, design, construction and review. The project grows incrementally as each cycle is completed.

Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Spiral Project process is

represented as a spiral. Identify sub-problems which

has the highest associated risk.

Find a solution for that problem.

No fixed phases. Spiral size corresponds to

project size. Distance between coils

indicates resources.

Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Prototyping Building a replica of design. Equivalent of a mock-up. Start with informal

requirements, and use a working model to transform the requirements.

Show the product to client to get feedback, repeat the cycle.

Road Map in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Extreme Listening, designing, coding, testing. Lightweight, evolutionary development process. Rapid feedback Incremental change Embrace change

Road Maps in Developing Design Projects Using CSCW

Factor Waterfall Incremental Spiral Prototype Extreme

Project experience

Low Low High High High

Volatile Require-ments

No No Yes Yes Yes

Project Risks

Low Medium High High High

Project Size Small-medium

Medium Small – Large

Small-Large

Small

User involvement

Low Low Medium High High

Reminder

• Group presentation: Time: Oct. 15 (3pm to 5pm). 10 minutes each group, in front of the class. Presentation content.

Introduce the group. Highlight the design brief. Present your synthesis of design components (both

hardware and software) using images, 3D models, movies and any other relevant materials you have developed so far.

Address how the design satisfies your brief. Preparation:

Make sure the presentation files can run on a PC and are suitable for projection.

Copy all the files to a CD or a USB.