Software Engineering and Project Management Approaches

Compare and contrast the Scrum approach of project management with conventional plan-based approaches, as discussed in Chapter 23. The comparisons should be based on the effectiveness of each approach for planning the allocation of people to projects, estimating the cost of projects, maintaining team cohesion, and managing changes in project team membership.

Project management involves various tasks in terms of planning and execution, below we focus on these two approaches: Scrum and Plan-based approaches based on the effectiveness of each approach for planning the allocation of people to projects, estimating the cost of projects, maintaining team cohesion, and managing changes in project team membership.

• Scrum Approach
• Plan-Based Approach
• Effectiveness
• Effective for small to medium-size information systems
• Effective for large security and safety- critical systems

Planning The Allocation Of People To Projects

Planning is fairly easy as staff are few and the method allows for each to choose their preferred tasks. Scheduling is done and the staff are given tasks, some may be working on more than one task while others may be working on none.

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Estimating The Cost Of Projects

Cost estimation is likely to be more precise and in case of any changes the customer is informed as per the iterations. This approach to planning has the advantage that the software is always released as planned and there is no schedule slippage. Cost is estimated at the proposal phase but is liable to change according to the requirements per milestone. Management may also decide to stop software development or to make major changes to the project to reflect the changes in the organizational objectives.

Maintaining Team Cohesion

Good in maintaining team cohesion as staff usually discuss on the way forward after every iteration and everyone is aware of what their fellow staff member is up to. Poor in maintaining team cohesion as various staff work on various tasks which may all in all be different and each staff may not be aware of what the other is doing.

Managing Changes In

Project Team Membership

An agile based approach would tend to have a lesser, workable number in its project team compared to plan-driven and if the work cannot be completed in the time allowed, its philosophy is to reduce the scope of the work rather than extend the schedule. A plan-driven software process can support incremental development and delivery as the changes may be made in increments during the design and development phase.