Software Project Management

Exam Personal-Study Material

This material provides valuable insights to aid in your exam preparation. While it offers useful guidance, it
is not meant to serve as your sole preparation resource. In addition to this material, it's essential to
incorporate all the topics covered in both lectures and tutorials into your exam preparation. The intention
behind this resource is to assist you in navigating through the lecture slides efficiently, preventing the need
to review a large volume of slides aimlessly. Also, remember that you have access to short support videos,
which can be beneficial. We trust that you will find this material helpful.

Included below are a set of questions and exercises designed to assist you as you prepare for the exam.
However, please note that this is just a guide. As mentioned earlier, we encourage proactive studying and
recommend using the slides provided during lectures and tutorials as a fundamental part of your
preparation process."
General
• EXPLAIN WHY the objectives of a software project should be SMART? What does SMART stand for?

• EXPLAIN WHY is software project management important? Why is it needed?

• EXPLAIN WHY is software project management different from other project management
disciplines? PROVIDE three reasons.

• CRITICALLY COMPARE the approaches building versus buying software.

• EXPLAIN EXPLAIN the advantages and disadvantages of off-the-shelf software.

• EXPLAIN the advantages and disadvantages of prototyping.

• EXPLAIN WHAT are the reasons for prototyping?

• EXPLAIN the advantages and disadvantages of incremental development process.

• EXPLAIN WHAT are incremental development process and agile methods?

• EXPLAIN WHAT are the differences between incremental delivery and prototype?

• EXPLAIN WHY apply agile methods?

• EXPLAIN WHAT are the recommendable ‘rules of thumb’ to decide which development process
should be used (How to choose a model)?

• WHAT is Project size estimation?

• NAME and EXPLAIN three techniques to improve estimation in Software Project Management.
Name advantages and disadvantages of each one.
Software Project Planning
• DEFINE the objective of the PLANNING activity and STATE what it enables. GIVE an EXAMPLE per
each item.
• NAME THREE ways in which the ACTIVITY network helps the Software Project Manager.
• DESCRIBE all the approaches that can be used to identify activities?
• CRITICALLY COMPARE PRINCE (i.e. PRINCE 2) and Step Wise.
• Critical path: EXPLAIN WHAT is the critical path of a plan? How is it used? EXPLAIN WHAT is it useful
for? Can there be more than one critical path? Can there be no critical path at all?
• EXPLAIN what a sub-critical path is and WHY it needs to be monitored. WHY is a sub-critical path
important?
• EXPLAIN what objective-based software projects and product-based software projects are and their
differences.
• WHAT is estimation and WHY is done in Software Project Management?
• EXPLAIN HOW is the estimation by analogy approach to obtaining effort estimates done?
• NAME and DESCRIBE the limitations of measuring and/or estimating software size in SLOC? WHY
do we use it anyway? What are the possible alternatives?
• WHAT units can be used to measure the Size of Software? (NAME four).
 • CRITICALLY COMPARE the function-point analysis of software with the analysis done using SLOC.
• EXPLAIN the difference between effort and elapsed time

Risk Management

• EXPLAIN WHAT are the top 10 software development risks according to Barry Boehm? Also, explain
the risk reduction techniques used for each of the 10 risk categories.
• NAME the benefits of risk planning.
• EXPLAIN WHY is risk planning not widely used?
• Briefly DESCRIBE 4 mitigation strategies to get a given software project back on track when the
project has experienced delays due to unexpected events.
• EXPLAIN the steps to follow while planning for risk? What does each step cover?
• EXPLAIN WHAT is risk exposure? What is risk reduction leverage?
• DEFINE risk and risk management in the context of software projects.
• WHAT are the categories of risk?
• WHAT are the approaches to identify risks?
• DESCRIBE the FOUR categories of risk in software projects
• IDENTIFY FOUR risks associated with a final-year undergraduate project whose objective is to
develop a web site for a cricket club. Assess the likely probability level and impact level of EACH of
these risks AND draw up a probability-impact grid showing the risks that you identified.
• IDENTIFY TWO risks in your final year project. How have you deal with them? (THREE lines max per
risk).

Project Monitoring and Control

• WHY are project monitoring and control important?
• DESCRIBE 5 strategies for getting a given software project back on track when the project has
experienced delays due to unexpected events.
• WHAT is exception planning?
• EXPLAIN the role of checkpoints and milestones in a software project. Agile Methodologies: Scrum
and Kanban
• COMPARE “big-design-up-front” methodologies against “agile” methodologies.
• EXPLAIN the core values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.
• DEFINE the high-level structure of the Scrum Framework.
• EXPLAIN the pillars and values of Scrum.
• EXPLAIN the structure of the Scrum Team
• EXPLAIN the Scrum events (sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and sprint
retrospectives).
• COMPARE Product and Sprint Backlogs.
• COMPARE Definition of Ready and Definition of Done in Scrum
• COMPARE epics, stories, and tasks in Scrum
• EXPLAIN how to monitor Scrum sprints.
• EXPLAIN the four high-level steps of Kanban.
• EXPLAIN Disadvantages and Advantages of Scrum.
• EXPLAIN when to use Scrum, Kanban, or StepWise/PRINCE2.
• CRITICALLY COMPARE Scrum vs Kanban vs StepWise/PRINCE2.
• PROVIDE AN EXAMPLE of applying Scrum/Kanban to your FYP SMART goals and objectives
• WRITE a short paragraph (MAX 6-8 lines) describing the goal and context of your Final Year Project.
Then, DESCRIBE at least THREE SMART objectives of this project, being careful to explain each of
the 5 properties denoted by the SMART acronym but paying particular attention to the property
denoted by “M” (in other words how will you check or know that you have succeeded with that
objective?)

Note: In addition to the questions above, do carefully prepare all the tutorials (remember examples of
solution have been published on blackboard). Specifically, take special care while preparing exercise
problems that cover the following:

• Unit 3: Software project planning:

o Effort estimation: Tutorials 1, 2 and 3. You should know the formulas effort estimation
given in class, such as effort = system_size / productivity.
o Activity planning: how to construct and use activity networks.
o Critical path: how to identify it and make analysis based on it (Tutorial 4: planning)
• Unit 4: Risk management:
o Risk analysis and prioritization techniques
o Risk identification
o Calculation of the risk exposure factor
o Application of the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), including the use
of the table with z values.
o Tutorial 5 and 6: Risk management.
• Unit 7 : Agile methodologies:
o Tutorial 7