Andries Barnard

Accommodating Soft Skills in Software Project Management

Introduction Information Technology (IT) project management (software project management) is a sector that has arguably witnessed the highest rate of project failure in the world. Dorsey (2000) pointed out that large information systems projects have been reported to be subject to failure rates between 50-80% and Bupa (2005) stated that according to a recent report by the Standish Group, only one in three IT projects were delivered on time, within budget and according to specification. This is also confirmed by the CHAOS report (The Standish Group, 2001), which is published annually. This is generally not the case with project management concerned with other disciplines due to better management of inherent strengths and weaknesses. IT projects, particularly those of a software nature, have different strengths and weaknesses as compared to traditional engineering projects (Sukhoo, Barnard, Eloff & Van der Poll, 2004a). For instance, some strengths associated with software projects include flexibility, ease of creating backups, scalability, replication and reusability of components while some weaknesses include invisibility, complexity, difficulty to add people to delayed projects and the need for regular upgrades. However, hard skills remain the traditional main focus of most IT project management methodologies. Hard skills, often described as a science (Belzer, 2004), comprise processes, tools and techniques applied to projects. In managing software projects, tools and techniques related to hard skills are given much attention in an attempt to drive projects towards success. Unfortunately, we find that many software projects do not live up to expectations. Soft skills, often described as an art (Belzer, 2004), have been identified as critical for project success. They are often concerned with managing and working with people (Kirsch, 2004). These skills are typically acquired through experience (Belzer, 2004). Companies, like Mastek, Polaris and Sun Microsystems, being conscious of the importance of soft skills, have incorporated such skills into their training agenda (Arora, 2003). This paper presents the soft skills that can possibly lead to an improvement of the success rate of software projects. These software projects, if not managed properly can lead to an escalation of budget and time schedules beyond expectations. Deterioration of quality may be inevitable while deploying efforts to deal with cost overruns and schedule extensions. Motivation for this Research Every year, the CHAOS chronicle (see for example The Standish Group, 2001) reports on the failure rate of IT projects in the USA. Although there was an observed decline in the percentage of failed projects in the USA since 1994 as summarized by Sonnekus and Labuschagne (2004), the same trend may not have been observed in other countries, especially those with a developing economy. Developed countries like the UK and USA are facing an advantageous situation with the use of welladapted methodologies, tools and techniques through rigorous research and development initiatives both from academia as well as from professional bodies like the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Office of Government Commerce (OGC). According to a survey carried out by Sonnekus and Labuschagne (2004), the failure rate of IT projects in South Africa was found to be 22%, which can be observed to be comparable to that of the CHAOS chronicle released in 2000 (see Table 1). Following a survey carried out in 2003 in Mauritius (Sukhoo, Barnard, Eloff & Van der Poll, 2004b), at least 50% of software projects that suffered due to deadline problem, budget overruns and quality problems were found to be 50%, 30% and 10% respectively. In contrast, traditional engineering projects generally achieve much higher success rates. This is due to exploitation of inherent strengths and prudent management of weaknesses associated with engineering projects that are different from those of software projects (Sukhoo, Barnard, Eloff & Van der Poll, 2004a). …

A functional semantic web architecture

A layered architecture for the Semantic Web that adheres to software engineering principles and the fundamental aspects of layered architectures will assist in the development of Semantic Web specifications and applications. The most well-known versions of the layered architecture that exist within literature have been proposed by Berners-Lee. It is possible to indicate inconsistencies and discrepancies in the different versions of the architecture, leading to confusion, as well as conflicting proposals and adoptions by the Semantic Web community. A more recent version of a Semantic Web layered architecture, namely the CFL architecture, was proposed in 2007 by Gerber, van der Merwe and Barnard [23], which adheres to software engineering principles and addresses several of the concerns evident from previous versions of the architecture. In this paper we evaluate this recent architecture, both by scrutinising the shortcomings of previous architectures and evaluating the approach used for the development of the latest architecture. Furthermore, the architecture is applied to usage scenarios to evaluate the usefulness thereof.

An Evolutionary Software Project Management Maturity Model for Mauritius

Software project management is a relatively recent discipline that emerged during the second half of the 20 century (Kwak, 2003). Many of the software project management methodologies available today were developed in Western/European countries and research showed that there was a need to formalise a software project management framework for developing countries, in particular Africa (Muriithi & Crawford, 2003). Based on surveys and discussions with software professionals, a methodology for software project management is being proposed. The methodology is based on a maturity model as Mauritius is faced with a shortage in skilled professionals. So far, few organisations in Mauritius have been found to be using software project management methodologies developed in Western/European countries. Most maturity models, for example Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Kerzner’s maturity model, have five maturity levels. The trend is towards the development of maturity models that have fewer maturity levels. For example, the Organisational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) and Prince 2 Maturity Model have been developed with three maturity levels. Similarly, the proposed Evolutionary Software Project Management Maturity Model (ESPM) has three maturity levels and a continuous process improvement group of key process areas (KPAs). ISO 9001:2000 is chosen as the quality management system and each KPA is mapped onto the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle. The model is conceptually represented as a conical structure to better display the evolutionary development of KPAs. KPAs, which are focus areas to be considered for project management, are developed until they attain maturity at a certain level. As organisations have to be responsive to their environments, these KPAs may require further changes even after they have reached maturity. A continuous process group of KPAs helps in adapting to changes in environment. In order to test the proposed methodology, one case study has been included. The application of the methodology to the project could not be discussed in detail in this paper. The development of KPAs in an organisation takes time and the case study was only a snapshot of the application of the methodology. Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. Software Project Management Maturity Model 100

A Generic Agent Framework to Support the Various Software Project Management Processes

Despite various research efforts originating from both academia and industry, software projects have a high rate of failure, more specific, software projects often do not comply with the traditional standard measurements of success, namely time, cost and requirements specification. Thus, there is a need for new methods and measures to support the software project management process. Globalisation and advances in computing technologies has changed the software project management environment. Currently software projects are developed and deployed in distributed, pervasive and collaborative environments and traditional project management methods cannot, and do not, address the added complexities inherent to this environment. In this paper the utilisation of stationary and mobile software agents is investigated as a potential tool to assist with the improvement of software project management processes. In particular we propose and discuss a software agent framework to support software project management. Although still in its initial phases, this research shows promise of significant results in enabling software developers to meet market expectations, and produce projects on time, within budget and to users’ satisfaction.

Integrating Computer Ethics into the Computing Curriculum: A Framework for Implementation

The advent of the Information Age and global connectivity has placed ethics center stage in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). As the drive towards the establishment of a socalled IT profession gains momentum, ethical conduct and codes of ethics have recently been formulated and introduced formally. Initiatives in this regard can be attributed to, among others, the ACM and the IEEE. Of particular significance is the ImpactCS Project commissioned by the joint taskforce of the ACM and IEEE, and funded by the USA’s National Science Foundation. The increased globalization and inherent nature of ICT transcend physical and cultural borders, making it increasingly difficult to enforce accepted laws, regulations, and codes of conduct. It is thus the responsibility of Computer Science and Information Systems instructors to teach and instill professional values and ethical analysis skills in each and every student. Therefore, we investigate some issues pertaining to the teaching of computer ethics. We conclude this paper by presenting a possible framework to be used in the teaching of computer ethics, and apply this framework to our own institution.

Software Quality Management Supported by Software Agent Technology

Introduction Information Systems (IS) play a major role in todays daily business activities, ranging from small business operations to enterprise-wide operations throughout the worldwide business community. With the advent of the Internet and related global networking capabilities becoming more pervasive, cost-effective computing resources will continue to play a major role in improving organizational operations. Yet, over the past two decades, software projects frequently failed to live up to user expectations, were commonly delivered late, and mostly ran over the set budget. The Standish Group (2000) studied 13,522 projects in a survey named EXTREME CHAOS. This study determined that 23 percent of the surveyed projects failed, 49 percent did not meet the requirements and only 28 percent succeeded. In March 2003 the group reported that success rates increased to a third of all projects, but time overruns increased to 82 percent, whilst only 52 percent of required and specified functions and features were included in the final product. Software developers and managers are alerted to the fact that these issues have to be addressed in concrete terms. In particular Brooks (1987) listed the invisibility, complexity, conformity, and inflexibility of software as complicating factors in managing software projects. Initially, techniques utilized in traditional Project Management (PM) practices were applied to the development of software projects. However, standard PM methods seemed to lack the capacity to address the unique characteristics of the software development arena (Hughes & Cotterell, 2002). This led to the development of Software Project Management (SPM) as an independent application area and field of study. SPM includes, amongst other things, the management of all issues involved in the development of a software project, namely scope and objective identification, planning, evaluation, project development approaches, software effort and cost estimation, activity planning, monitoring and control, risk management, resource allocation, as well as managing contracts, teams of people and quality. The SPM environment is continuously changing as a result of globalization and advances in computing technology. This implies that the traditional single project, commonly executed at a single location, has evolved into distributed, collaborative projects. A number of emerging capabilities, e.g. agent technology and automation, network-centric operations (Durham & Torrez, 2004) and grid/distributed computing are providing a novel infrastructure for connecting otherwise isolated computing resources, and supporting the development and management of distributed software projects. The focus in SPM processes has thus clearly shifted from the position that it held two decades ago. Consequently, the size, complexity and strategic importance of information systems currently being developed require stringent measures to determine why projects might fail. Project or software quality management concerns itself with the prevention of failure and discrepancies. The purpose of quality management is to ensure that the product satisfies the needs of the stakeholders. As organizations continue to invest time and resources in strategically important software projects, software quality management becomes a critical area of concern. Software agent technology offers a promising solution to addressing software quality management problems in a distributed environment. According to this technology, software agents are used to support the development of SPM systems in which data, control, expertise, or resources are distributed. Software agent technology provides a natural metaphor for support in a distributed team environment, where software agents can help the project manager and team members to monitor and coordinate tasks, to apply quality control measures, to validate and verify, as well as to ensure proper change control. …

Design Issues in Ethical Agent Computing

Agent computing, and in particular intelligent mobile agentcomputing, is at present awarded increasing prominence in theliterature. This is partly due to the pervasive nature of availableInternet technologies such as search engines and booking agents. Itis within this context that the importance of investigating variouscharacteristics demonstrated by mobile agent computing is becomingapparent. In order to perform specialized tasks on behalf of theirowners, a certain amount of intelligence in mobile agents is oftenassumed or expected. The attribute intelligent brings with it aconcomitant human characteristic that is assigned to an inanimatetechnological object. In mobile agent systems, communities ofagents (some with embedded intelligence, and some without) alreadyinhabit areas of cyberspace and interact with other agents, humanusers and hosts. Depending on the expected interaction with otherentities, it is plausible to think that such a community canexhibit a social life of its own. This raises issues concerninginformation security as well as the ethical and social behaviour ofmobile agents. In this paper we discuss a framework for dealingwith the security and ethical design issues of this technology.

Structure graphs and structure graph grammars

Abstract In this paper we give the formal definition of a structure graph and formalize the concepts of structure parameters and graph theoretical properties of structure graphs. Structure graphs are a formal descriptive method that can model three-dimensional objects. We introduce various extensions of structure graph grammars, a class of graph grammars that generates structure graphs, and compare the classes of languages of the structure graph grammar extensions.