Frameworks in project management

1.Waterfall – linear, non-iterative2.Spiral design process -- iterative

i. Agile developmenta. Scrumb. Product backlog

Waterfall •Constant “downstream” flow•Solves problem of “requirements churn” by freezing them•Creates problem of momentum—cannot backtrack when we find problem in

original requirements or design concept

Waterfall fails at iterationRequirement specifications change as functional analysis reveals new information: “now I see the user needs to specify colors of beads, so we designers need a color chooser”

Design Functional Analysis changes as design reveals new information:“now that we have a color chooser, we see “Black” which is a bad luck color for Ute native americans, and a good color for the Shoshone.”

Waterfall fails at iterationNew Requirement specifications “Use a color palette so that users have the option of choosing without “naming” the existence of black beads.

How to deliberately incorporate iteration?

Requirement specifications change as functional analysis reveals new information: “now I see the user needs to specify colors of beads, so we need a color chooser”

Functional analysis changes as design reveals new information:“now that we have a color chooser, we created a problem with cultural fit”

Spiral Design Process

Minimizing project risk by breaking a project into smaller segmentsPerform same cycle each time: •Analysis of goals and constraints•Evaluation of options•Development and feedback on deliverables•Plan for next iteration

SWOT analysisCan be used during spiral design process at any point, often useful just to ask

“what needs to be on our radar screen”?

Google Charrette

Jan 2014, Mountain View CA: Designing Google’s diversity computing initiative.

Google Charrette

Context: what different situations might we imagine as the context?

Scenarios/use cases: note division between “pull” (their interest) and “push” (our efforts)?

Functionality: requirements follow from use cases.

Google Charrette

Review: What formative evaluations will be needed to keep the design process moving forward?

Parking lot: stuff we can’t deal with at the moment but will clearly need to be revisited.

Agile methods

• Break tasks into small increments with minimal planning• Iterations are “time boxes” or “sprints” -- typically one to four weeks. • Cross functional teams: planning, requirements, design, implementation, testing• Team has responsibility of self-organizing – not controlled by hierarchy

Daily Scrum:

•Sprint is long cycle, scrum happens short cycle•If multiple teams, one representative from each attends scrum•In addition to teams:

Scrum master – “servant leader” to remove obstaclesProduct owner – voice of customer or stakeholders

Product Backlog

Features, functional requirements, bug fixes, etc. - whatever needs to be done

Typically the Product Owner organizes – often use concept of “stories”

Story from one stakeholder“As a user I want to beable to search for my clients by either first or last name; I don't always know both.”

Different story from different stakeholder“As an admin I want to be ableto look at client searches byusers, but I don’t want clients to be able to do that.”

Product Backlog

A product backlog can help us reflect on sources of requirement mismatch: didwe fail to specify this properly, or did the technology fail on what we correctly specified?

Product Backlog

Prioritize by attributes such as value to customer and development effort – if something has a small development effort requirement, then higher the ROI (Return on Investment). In some cases this can be intuitive: