Please do Question 1

A small but very experienced safety critical software development company (not unlike QVSS in the teaching material: the company favours agile working where possible, within the requirements of safety assurance) has been commissioned to create a high-quality software component by an external client. The contract and duration have been agreed, drawing on the companys previous experience in developing similar safety critical software components. Specific tasks have been identified, and a pool of appropriately qualified company staff who can undertake the work has been identified. Project tasks, timing and staff The formal milestones which must be met by the project are: Code Increments (all active development modules): Wednesday, weeks 6, 8 and 9 Full delivery of software to client: Thursday, week 11 End of project wrap: Friday, week 12 Table 1 describes the tasks that have been identified. Note that T3 has subtasks which depend on identification of development modules in T1 and T2: you can make any sensible assumption about these subtasks (Scrums): you can assume more than three Scrums; you can schedule Scrums to be concurrent, consecutive or overlapping, so long as you clearly state your assumptions and justify your schedule. However, it is company practice that every Scrum development has a minimum of 3 programmers (people) in that Scrums development team. Table 1: project tasks id Person weeks needed Task notes Due (end of week) T1 6 pw Analysis: Develop high-level requirements catalogue, success criteria. Describe deliverables and dependency details. 3 T2 10 pw Design: Modelling to create an abstract solution that meets requirements, deliverables etc. Analysis showing that it would meet success criteria. Planning of development modules and interfaces. 5 T3 15-18 pw Test Driven Development: Minimum of three Scrums, each focusing on different development modules, and requiring around 5 to 7 person weeks each. Activities to include in each development module include e.g. creation of tests, development of code, code reviews, completion and review of code documentation. NB. Milestone code delivery (all active Development Module Scrums) Wednesday, weeks 6, 8 and 9 9 T4 6 pw Testing: Full integration and acceptance testing. Evaluate against requirements and success criteria. 11 Sign off software deliverables. T5 4 pw Project Wrap: Review of project management and delivery: - Sprint and Scrum Retrospectives revisited. - Continuous improvement activities, identifying potential better practice, tools, etc. 12 In setting up the project, the company has identified a client liaison lead, Xie. Xie is, in Scrum terms, the Product Owner (you should ensure that Xies schedule is consistent with the role of Product Owner throughout the project, not just in the T3 Scrums). Xie is allocated 15 person days on the project, and is, essentially, available when needed. However, Xie is not formally part of the team, and cannot contribute to development activities. Table 2 introduces and describes the staff who are available for part or all of the 12-week project. All staff are experienced industrial software engineers. They have the skills to take on any role in the project: all staff, including the trainee, have the necessary programming and TDD skills, and experience in using the languages and tools chosen for the project (e.g. the Eclipse development environment; git-based repositories and version control). Table 2 records areas of significant strength or expertise, not just skillsets. The trainee, Col, has been working in the company, on software development projects like this, for 5 months, and will soon complete his training. His background is given in Table 2. Please take careful note of availability: some staff have limited availability, and some can be employed elsewhere in the company if not fully needed on this project. Please remember that teams work better if staff are able to form a team bond, and do not have too much fragmentation in their working schedules. Table 2. Project staff Additional skills/expertise Availability and comments Abe Requirements analysis, including tools. Project management and planning. Scrum. Has two consecutive weeks leave to take during the 12 project weeks but otherwise available as needed. Can be employed on other projects if not required. Bea Requirements analysis. Software design in the area of the product. Scrum. Working half-time as a programmer on another project in weeks 1 through 6 inclusive. Col Trainee, been in company for 6 months. MEng in Soft Eng, with a year in IBM using Scrum and toolsets that will be used in this project. Strong academic background in TDD and testing, which has been developed in previous projects with the company. Company pairs trainees with experienced staff on the project to maximise learning. Has a training course in weeks 3 and 4. Assigned to another project from start of week 10 onwards Dee TDD Testing Scrum. Leadership. Available throughout. Can be employed on other projects if not required. Ed TDD Excellent pair programmer, strong work ethic and attention to detail, but reluctant to lead. Can be allocated to other projects, but works best on one project at a time. Has had issues working closely with Fi in the past. Fi TDD All relevant forms of testing Not available until week 6 Gee Significant strength and experience in all relevant software engineering areas Available for max 50% FTE in all weeks. Hal Significant strength and experience in all relevant software engineering areas Available for max 50% FTE in all weeks. Needs strong leadership to maximise effectiveness. Note that TDD stands for Test Driven Development. The assignment For Questions 1 and 2, assume that the company has asked you to prepare a staff schedule for the software development aspects of the project to present to the Companys Project Board for approval, before the start of the project. Your schedule should ignore Question 3! For Question 3, assume that you have been brought back, in week 7 of the project, to advise on the response to an unforeseen situation. Your answer should acknowledge and build from the schedule, devised in Questions 1 and 2, that has been in place up to this point. Questions 2 and 3 have a total word limit of 500 words, which does not include any diagrams or references/citations. Shorter answers are very welcome: do not add words just to get closer to the limit. Be aware that Q2 has twice as many marks as Q3. Question 1 Present a diagrammatic staff schedule for the project (Questions 1 and 2), showing, for each member of the team, and Xie, the Product Owner, the weekly schedule of staff working on each task. The schedule needs to show the weekly proportion of full time (assume a week has 5 days, so half time is 0.5 FTE; 2 days a week is 0.4 FTE, etc.) for each person. [one Schedule diagram: 40 marks] Your schedule needs to achieve the required staff input (person-weeks: Table 1) within the task schedule and milestones. Use the format given in the example in the teaching materials). Remember that if you worked on the schedule diagram in a group, you must list the names of all the people who worked with you, even if you modified your diagram before submission. Note: You should be able to arrive creatively at a schedule, but if you find that you cannot find a schedule that works with the given resources, summarise what additional resource (person skills, time ) is needed to schedule the project. The goal is to create a schedule that provides efficiency and effectiveness, not to minimise hours. You should pay attention to critical aspects in software engineering project management such as core skill requirements, avoidance of single points of failure, continuity between tasks, and appropriate use of skills. You should also show awareness of good personnel management, producing a good schedule for individuals, as well as for the project and the company.