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74 PART TWO MANAGING SOFTWARE PROJECTS

3.7 CRITICAL PRACTICES

8
The Airlie Council has developed a list of “critical software practices for perform-
ance-based management.” These practices are “consistently used by, and considered
critical by, highly successful software projects and organizations whose ‘bottom line’
performance is consistently much better than industry averages” [AIR99]. In an effort
to enable a software organization to determine whether a specific project has imple-
mented critical practices, the Airlie Council has developed a set of “QuickLook” ques-
tions [AIR99] for a project: 9

Formal risk management. What are the top ten risks for this project? For
each of the risks, what is the chance that the risk will become a problem and
what is the impact if it does?
Empirical cost and schedule estimation. What is the current estimated size
of the application software (excluding system software) that will be delivered
into operation? How was it derived?
Metric-based project management. Do you have in place a metrics pro-
gram to give an early indication of evolving problems? If so, what is the cur-
Airlie Project Quicklook rent requirements volatility?
Earned value tracking. Do you report monthly earned value metrics? If so,
are these metrics computed from an activity network of tasks for the entire
effort to the next delivery?
Defect tracking against quality targets. Do you track and periodically report
the number of defects found by each inspection (formal technical review) and
execution test from program inception and the number of defects currently
closed and open?
People-aware program management. What is the average staff turnover
for the past three months for each of the suppliers/developers involved in the
development of software for this system?
If a software project team cannot answer these questions or answers them inade-
quately, a thorough review of project practices is indicated. Each of the critical prac-
tices just noted is addressed in detail throughout Part Two of this book.

3.8 SUMMARY

Software project management is an umbrella activity within software engineering. It
begins before any technical activity is initiated and continues throughout the defini-
tion, development, and support of computer software.

8 The Airlie Council is a team of software engineering experts chartered by the U.S. Department of
Defense to help develop guidelines for best practices in software project management and soft-
ware engineering.
9 Only those critical practices associated with “project integrity” are noted here. Other best prac-
tices will be discussed in later chapters.