Misunderstandings and Countermeasures in software development management

Document directory

• I. Significance of implementing project management in software development
• Ii. Current misunderstandings in software project management
• Iii. Effective strategies to solve misunderstandings in software project management
• [References]

The software industry is a challenging and creative industry in many industries, reflecting the wisdom and sweat of software developers. At the same time, software development is a complex system engineering, many factors are involved. In actual work, various problems often occur, and even failures may occur. How to summarize and analyze the cause of failure and draw useful lessons is the key for project developers to succeed in future projects.

I. Significance of implementing project management in software development

Project management is to use a series of knowledge, skills, tools, and technologies in project activities to meet or exceed the project requirements of stakeholders. In fact, it is through the cooperation of stakeholders of the project, applying various resources to projects to achieve project objectives and meet the needs of stakeholders is essentially the management of time, quality, and cost.

With the depth of software development, continuous innovation of various technologies, and the formation of the software industry, people are increasingly aware of the importance of software process management. The idea of management is gradually integrated into the software development process, project development management is increasingly valued.

Ii. Current misunderstandings in software project management

Currently, most enterprises have realized the importance of project management, but many enterprises still have such misunderstandings during project management implementation, mainly manifested in:

1. The project manager is not professional enough. In software enterprises, there is a lack of professional project management personnel to implement project management and serve as project managers. Generally, the appointed project managers are mainly because they can be technically independent, however, they lack much knowledge about management, especially project management.
2. The project plan lacks programmatic guidance. The project manager has insufficient understanding of the role of the overall plan and stage plan. Therefore, the overall plan is relatively casual and many things are not carefully considered. The phase plan is often delayed due to busy work and other reasons, this results in a gap between planning and control management, and failure to effectively manage progress control.
3. Lack of effective management awareness. Some project managers cannot grasp the entire project in general, but are immersed in specific technical work, resulting in busy and idle time between project members, poor schedule, uneven tasks, and waste of resources. Some project managers do not have a good management method, so they have to do jobs that are not well arranged, so that project tasks cannot be effectively and reasonably assigned to relevant members to achieve "Load Balancing ".
4. There is a lack of effective communication systems and mechanisms. Some important information in the project is not fully and effectively communicated. Insufficient communication with relevant personnel in planning, feedback, briefing, technical issues or achievements, resulting in various tasks, repetitive work, and even unnecessary losses; some people do not have the habit of receiving emails regularly every day, so they cannot receive the latest information in time.
5. The risk management consciousness is indifferent. Some project managers are not fully aware of the importance of risk management. They simply deal with the risks in the Risk Management chapter in the plan, list a few risks at will, and write some simple countermeasures at will, it does not provide any guidance for subsequent risk prevention.
6. Uncertainty of stakeholders. In the scope identification stage, the project team does not have sufficient understanding of the customer's overall organizational structure, relevant personnel, their relationships, and responsibilities, so as to be unable to obtain complete requirements or requirements ultimately confirmed by authoritative user representatives; or the representatives of multiple users talk about each other and the region is not the present, but at the same time, the project must be delivered as soon as possible. The demand changes at the later stage of the project may cause the spread of the project scope and delay of the progress, increase costs.
7. There is a lack of rational division of labor for the project team. Sometimes, the division of responsibilities between different roles in each stage or different roles in the same stage is unclear, which leads to mutual promotion and shirking of responsibilities; sometimes different roles in different stages or roles in the same stage have a clear division of responsibilities. However, project members only need to complete their own tasks and are unwilling to cooperate with others. These phenomena will cause the loss of resources within the project team, thus affecting the project progress.

Iii. Effective strategies to solve misunderstandings in software project management

To solve the mistakes described above, we should, in the final analysis, start from the management perspective, that is, add process management content to the development process of software projects, in this way, we can control the quality of each process in software development to ensure the quality of software products. To effectively improve management, we should strive:

1. It is necessary for the project manager to receive systematic project management knowledge training. with professional knowledge and practice, in addition, the organic combination of project management knowledge and practice and general management knowledge and experience will greatly improve the project management level of the Project Manager.
2. The plan needs to be developed in the form of progressive details under certain conditions and assumptions. Improve the project manager's planning awareness, use the relevant knowledge, technology, and tools of the project plan, and enhance the evaluation of the effectiveness of the development plan and stage plan before and after the event.
3. Strengthen project management training, and guide the project manager to better manage the project through reasonable setting and publicity of assessment indicators. Before serving as a project manager, the technical backbone should be able to learn systematically about project management, especially human resource management and communication management, in addition, we constantly improve our management quality, enrich our project management experience, and improve our project management awareness.
4. Formulate effective communication systems and mechanisms to improve awareness of communication. adopt multiple communication methods to improve the effectiveness of communication. The system stipulates the responsibility for losses caused by failure to receive emails in a timely manner; especially important (go down to 198th pages) (go up to 196th pages) the content should be effectively communicated in multiple ways to ensure that the communication is in place. For example, in addition to sending emails, you must call reminders and receipts. Important content should also be communicated through various meetings.
5. By studying the project management knowledge, you can master the tools and methods of risk identification, quantification, Countermeasure Research, and response control, and master the necessary knowledge of project risk management. Improve the risk management awareness of the project team by strengthening the Audit of the risk management plan in the Project Plan. Summarize the common risks and Countermeasures of projects in this industry as necessary risk content in the risk management plan, and effectively assess the effectiveness and feasibility of the corresponding countermeasures.
6. The purpose of a project is to fulfill the needs and aspirations of stakeholders. The management of project stakeholders should start from the start of the project. The project manager and its project members should distinguish the stakeholders and organizations and influence them through communication and coordination, drive their support for the project, investigate and clarify their needs and aspirations, reduce their resistance to the project, to ensure that the project is successful.
7. The project manager should rationally allocate and clearly describe the responsibilities of the project members, and emphasize that the members of different division of labor and different links should cooperate with each other for mutual improvement.

Implementing effective project management is not easy. For software enterprises, this is not a small change, but a change. Enterprises need to make painstaking efforts, mature and effective project management will undoubtedly play a vital role in enterprises. The level of project management will be one of the core competitiveness of enterprises.

[References]

[1] Guo Yan. software project management [J]. Logistics technology, 2005, (2 ).
[2] He Guowei on the quality of software project management (I) [J]