Zagotavljanje kakovosti projektov razvoja programske opreme pri zunanjih dobaviteljih

Alenka Kolar (2006) Zagotavljanje kakovosti projektov razvoja programske opreme pri zunanjih dobaviteljih. PhD thesis.

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Abstract

This thesis is about software development in enterprises such as the public company Elektro-Slovenija d.o.o. whose core business is not software development. What is also common to these enterprises is that they are publicly owned and that they must follow public procurement laws. These enterprises have usually a department or a sector dedicated to information technology (IT). IT departments provide to other departments IT support, both computer hardware and software. User applications for the business information system are today the nerve system of every modern enterprise. Enterprises cope with this support in different ways. In this thesis, the following case is analyzed. The IT department has their own developers but not enough to cope if big software development projects are at stake. Computer applications are in general a result of software development projects. A project is a process where a certain goal must be reached in a certain amount of time using limited resources. Project management has its roots in civil and mechanical engineering. The project management methodology is therefore not entirely suitable for software engineering projects. The results of software engineering projects are computer applications which are far more intangible that the results of other engineering projects. The quality of the end product is in the case of software engineering projects hard to predict and is often regarded as the fourth crucial factor, besides time, resources and cost, influencing the success of a project. Quality assurance should be predetermined and built into the software development process itself. In this way, user demanded late changes of software can be prevented. Different standards and best practice approaches in software development can help in achieving quality. Adaptive Software Development (ASD) method is only one of agile approaches to software development which are since 2000 becoming very popular. The ASD method can help project managers to organize the work and assign the prescribed roles in the project team. Since changes are a constant in today's business, ASD anticipates the importance of the people on the project, because they are the one that can adapt to ever present changes. This thesis is built upon this presumption and tries to prove the following hypothesis that relationships between project team members are capable of adaptation to change. Outsourcing part of the software development to sub-contractors is studied in detail. The biggest problem arises because the subcontractor cannot be selected based on the purely subjective choice of the project manager, but through some objective technical and economic criteria, price being one of the most important. In a project team that is composed of in-house programmers and analysts, and programmers that come from a subcontractor, the relationships established between team members gain on their importance. This thesis tries to prove that relationships between people influence the quality of the finished product but this factor is hard to predict and is of personal nature. In this thesis the methodology of assessing the quality of organization in an enterprise (MUKOZ) is used. MUKOZ was developed by Slovenian experts in the Slovenian chamber of commerce in 1988. This methodology established five basic relationships and combinations of pairs of them that influence the quality of organizations. Some of these relationships (of personnel nature) are in software development more important than others and can even surmount other quality factors of more technical nature. Relationships of personnel nature are founded on personal and professional characteristics of project team members on the environment in which the project is carried out, and on the software applications itself. The purpose of this thesis is to combine the knowledge of everyday business practice in a Slovenian publicly owned enterprise with theory of project management and quality assurance. The goal of this thesis is to single out the factors that are the most influential for the personnel relationships in the project team during software development. A survey among sub-contracting software developers was carried out to determine these factors. A project manager must exploit not only the technical knowledge of his team members but also their other characteristics. Personal characteristics of team members enable the synergy and development of a project team. In the thesis twenty such characteristics are identified that team managers must take into consideration. The characteristics are weighted according to their influence on building the project team. An ideal combination of characteristics assures relationships where trust and self-initiative prevail. In such circumstances the organization as a structure of relationships turns toward a more friendly organization. A friendly organization produces solutions of best quality. Beside proper use of documentation and standards we propose for quality results also the use of positive personal and professional characteristics of project team members. This is even more important in heterogeneous groups where team members come from different environments. For the success of a software development project, relationships in the project team play a vital role.

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