Ch12_Working_in_teams.ppt
- 1. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 1 Software Project Management Fifth Edition Chapter 12 Working in teams
- 2. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 2 Becoming a team Five basic stages of development: Forming Storming Norming Peforming Adjourning Classification associated with Tuckman and Jensen
- 3. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 3 Balanced teams Meredith Belbin studied the performance of top executives carrying out group work at the Hendon Management Centre Tried putting the ‘best’ people together in ‘Apollo’ teams – almost invariably did badly Identified the need for a balance of skills and management roles in a successful team
- 4. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 4 Management team roles The co-ordinator – good at chairing meetings The ‘plant’ – an idea generator The monitor-evaluator – good at evaluating ideas The shaper – helps direct team’s efforts The team worker – skilled at creating a good working environment
- 5. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 5 Belbin management roles - continued The resource investigator – adept at finding resources, including information The completer-finisher – concerned with getting tasks completed The implementer – a good team player who is willing to undertake less attractive tasks if they are needed for team success The specialist – the ‘techie’ who likes to acquire knowledge for its own sake
- 6. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 6 Group performance Some tasks are better carried out collectively while other tasks are better delegated to individuals Additive tasks – the effort of each participant is summed Compensatory tasks – the judgements of individual group members are summed – errors of some compensated for by judgements of others
- 7. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 7 Group performance - continued Disjunctive tasks – there is only one correct answer – someone must: Come up with right answer Persuade the other that they are right Conjunctive – the task is only finished when all components have been completed
- 8. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 8 ‘Social loafing’ Tendency for some team participants to ‘coast’ and let others do the work Also tendency not to assist other team members who have problems Suggested counter-measures: Make individual contributions identifiable Consciously involve group members ( ‘loafer’ could in fact just be shy!) Reward ‘team players’
- 9. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 9 Barriers to good team decisions Inter-personal conflicts – see earlier section on team formation Conflicts tend to be a dampened by emergence of group norms – shared group opinions and attitudes Risky shift – people in groups are more likely to make risky decisions than they would as individuals
- 10. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 10 Delphi approach To avoid dominant personalities intruding the following approach is adopted 1. Enlist co-operation of experts 2. Moderator presents experts with problem 3. Experts send in their recommendations to the moderator 4. Recommendations are collated and circulated to all experts 5. Experts comment on ideas of others and modify their own recommendation if so moved 6. If moderator detects a consensus, stop; else back to 4
- 11. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 11 Team ‘heedfulness’ Where group members are aware of the activities of other members that contribute to overall group success Impression of a ‘collective mind’ Some attempts to promote this: Egoless programming Chief programmer teams XP Scrum
- 12. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 12 Egoless programming Gerry Weinberg noted a tendency for programmers to be protective of their code and to resist perceived criticisms by others of the code Encouraged programmers to read each others code Argued that software should become communal, not personal – hence ‘egoless programming’
- 13. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 13 Organization and Team Structures Two important issues that are critical to the effective functioning of every organization are: Department structure: How is a department organized into teams? Team structure: How are the individual project teams structured?
- 14. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 14 Department Structure Functional format: Each functional group comprises of developers having expertise in some specific task or functional area. Project format: The same team carries out all the project activities.
- 15. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 15 Functional and Project Formats Top Management Project Team 1 Project Team n . . . Top Management Requirements Design Coding Testing Database Networking Project Team 1 Project Team n . . . (a) Project Organization (b) Functional Organization Functional Groups
- 16. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 16 Functional versus project formats Ease of staffing Production of good quality documents Job specialization Efficient handling of the problems associated with manpower turnover Career planning
- 17. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 17 Matrix Format • The pool of functional specialists are assigned to different projects as needed.
- 18. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 18 Team Structure We consider only three team structures: Democratic, Chief programmer, Mixed team
- 19. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 19 Chief programmer teams Fred Brooks was concerned about the need to maintain ‘design consistency’ in large software systems Appointment of key programmers, Chief Programmers, with responsibilities for defining requirements, designing, writing and test software code Assisted by a support team: co-pilot – shared coding, editor who made typed in new or changed code, program clerk who wrote and maintained documentation and tester Problem – finding staff capable of the chief programmer role
- 20. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 20 Democratic Team Does not enforce any formal team hierarchy. Decisions are taken based on discussions, any member is free to discuss with any other member Since a lot of debate and discussions among the team members takes place, for large team sizes significant overhead is incurred
- 21. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 21 Mixed Control Team Structure Incorporates both hierarchical reporting and democratic set up.
- 22. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 22 Extreme programming XP can be seen as an attempt to improve team heedfulness and reduce the length of communication paths (the time between something being recorded and it being used) Software code enhanced to be self-documenting Software regularly refactored to clarify its structure Test cases/expected results created before coding – acts as a supplementary specification Pair programming – a development of the co-pilot concept
- 23. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 23 Scrum Named as an analogy to a rugby scrum – all pushing together Originally designed for new product development where ‘time-to-market’ is important ‘Sprints’ increments of typically one to four weeks Daily ‘scrums’ – daily stand-up meetings of about 15 minutes
- 24. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 24 Scrum - continued Unlike XP, requirements are frozen during a sprint At the beginning of the sprint there is a sprint planning meeting where requirements are prioritized At end of sprint, a review meeting where work is reviewed and requirements may be changed or added to
- 25. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 25 Co-ordination of dependencies The previous discussion on team heedfulness focused (mainly) in communication inside the team What sort of communications are needed between teams and other units Co-ordination theory has identified the following types of coordination: Shared resources. e.g. where several projects need the services of scarce technical experts for certain parts of the project. Producer-customer (‘right time’) relationships. A project activity may depend on a product being delivered first. Task-subtask dependencies. In order to complete a task a sequence of subtasks have to be carried out.
- 26. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 26 Coordination of dependencies - continued Accessibility (‘right place’) dependencies. This type of dependency is of more relevance to activities that require movement over a large geographical area, but arranging the delivery and installation of IT equipment might be identified as such. Usability (‘right thing’) dependencies. Broader concern than the design of user interfaces: relates to the general question of fitness for purpose, e.g. the satisfaction of business requirements. Fit requirements. This is ensuring that different system components work together effectively.
- 27. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 27 Why ‘virtual projects’? The physical needs of software developers (according to an IBM report): 100 square feet of floor space 30 square feet of work surface Dividers at least 6 feet high to muffle noise Demarco and Lister found clear statistical links between noise and coding error rates One answer: send the developers home!
- 28. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 28 Possible advantages Can use staff from developing countries – lower costs Can use short term contracts: Reduction in overheads related to use of premises Reduction in staff costs, training, holidays, pensions etc. Can use specialist staff for specific jobs
- 29. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 29 Further advantages Productivity of home workers can be higher – fewer distractions Can take advantage of time zone differences e.g. overnight system testing
- 30. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 30 Some challenges Work requirements have to be carefully specified Procedures need to be formally documented Co-ordination can be difficult Payment methods need to be modified – piece-rates or fixed price, rather then day-rates
- 31. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 31 More challenges Possible lack of trust when there is no face-to-face contact Assessment of quality of delivered products needs to be rigorous Different time zones can cause communication and co-ordination problems
- 32. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 32 Time/place constraints on communication Same place Different place Same time Meetings, interviews Telephone, Instant messaging Different times Notice boards Pigeon-holes Email Voicemail Documents
- 33. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 33 Other factors influencing communication genres Size and complexity of information – favours documents Familiarity of context e.g. terminology – where low, two-way communication favoured Personally sensitive – it has to be face-to-face communication here
- 34. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 34 Best method of communication depends on stage of project Early stages Need to build trust Establishing context Making important ‘global’ decisions Favours same time/ same place Intermediate stages Often involves the paralled detailed design of components Need for clarification of interfaces etc Favours same time/different place
- 35. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 35 Best method of communication depends on stage of project Implementation stages Design is relatively clear Domain and context familiar Small amounts of operational data need to be exchanged Favours different time/different place communications e.g. e-mail Face to face co-ordination meetings – the ‘heartbeat’ of the project
- 36. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 36 Communications plans As we have seen choosing the right communication methods is crucial in a project Therefore, a good idea to create a communication plan Stages of creating a communication plan Identify all the major stakeholders for the project – see chapter 1 Create a plan for the project – see chapter 3 Identify stakeholder and communication needs for each stage of the project Document in a communication plan
- 37. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 37 Content of a communication plan For each communication event and channel, identify: What. This contains the name of a particular communication event, e.g, ‘kick-off meeting’, or channel, e.g. ‘project intranet site’. Who/target. The target audience for the communication. Purpose. What the communication is to achieve. When/frequency. If the communication is by means of a single event, then a date can be supplied. If the event is a recurring one, such as a progress meeting then the frequency should be indicated. Type/method. The nature of the communication, e.g., a meeting or a distributed document. Responsibility. The person who initiates the communication.
- 38. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 38 Leadership: types of authority Position power Coercive power – able to threaten punishment Connection power – have access to those who do have power Legitimate power – based on a person’s title conferring a special status Reward power – able to reward those who comply
- 39. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 39 Leadership: types of power Personal power Expert power: holder can carry out specialist tasks that are in demand Information power: holder has access to needed information Referent power: based on personal attractiveness or charisma
- 40. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 40 Leadership styles decision-making autocrat democrat implementation directive permissive
- 41. SPM (5e) Working in teams© The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011 41 Leadership styles Task orientation – focus on the work in hand People orientation – focus on relationships Where there is uncertainty about the way job is to be done or staff are inexperienced they welcome task oriented supervision Uncertainty is reduced – people orientation more important Risk that with reduction of uncertainty, managers have time on their hands and become more task oriented (interfering)