Software Development Process Management

There are different software development models that govern how to carry out a software development process in ways that fit both the project nature and the working style of the development teams. Although they all have their own specializations, most of them do share a common characteristic - they try to break work down to smaller pieces for development teams to work towards the end product stage by stage, in an organized and disciplined manner.

A3 Platform is a web-based Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform. With A3 Platform, you can manage software development process by dividing a software project and categorizing work into phases, iterations and disciplines. It also supports traceability among Processes and Tasks such that you can manage and monitor development Tasks systematically, and to keep an eye on the development progress periodically.

In this tutorial, we will explain how to use A3 Platform to manage a software development process through a case study. In order to complete this tutorial, you must have A3 Platform installed on your computer. The following project and users will be used throughout this tutorial.

1. Project: Sample Project
2. Users:
   1. Peter (Project Manager)

If you already have a running installation of A3 Platform, you may use your own project and users for this tutorial. Otherwise, please read the tutorial Download and Installation of A3 Platform to learn how to install A3 Platform and set up users and projects needed.

Case Study - An Online Pet Shop

The development team that we are using as an example in this tutorial is going to develop an online store for a pet shop. Peter, the project manager of the development team, has decided to produce the first stable version of the online system by the end of this month. The following chart shows the planned schedule of this month.

The team is going to support three major functions in the first version. It begins with the register function. After completion, the team will move on to the shopping cart function, which is an important and complex one that takes about two weeks of work. The rest of the month will be allocated to supporting the printing function for sales statistic reports.

Each function involves a series of work, taken up by different team members. The following image shows work planned for each function.

Here is a brief description of the work:

1. Business Modeling - Understand the daily business operations of the pet shop.
2. Requirements - The sub-functions end user wants the system to come with.
3. Analysis & Design - Study how to support user's need and perform system designs (e.g. screen layout, page flow design).
4. Implementation - The coding work.
5. Testing - The process to ensure the functions required are supported and working as expected.
6. QA & Maintenance - Report bugs and suggestions for enhancements.

Software Development Process Management in A3 Platform

1. Login as Peter.
   
2. Open the Process view. This is where it shows the formation of the project's software development process in grid form. Each cell reports the progress of Resources (Requirements, Tasks, Issues, Artifacts) within the process. A default process structure has been defined. Let's customize it to support the need of developing an online pet store.
   
3. Click Configure Process to "turn on" the process configuration (Note: It will stay pressed). Make sure Peter is the project manager. Otherwise, you won't see this button.
   
4. At the top of the grid you can see 1.0, which is a Phase. You may treat it as a version. Until now Peter has just planned the development tasks for version 1.0. Therefore, we don't need to add or remove any Phase.
5. Below 1.0 there are four columns I1, I2, I3 and Default. They are the Iterations. Iteration stands for a milestone. Let's rename I1, I2 and I3 to represent the three main functions the team needs to complete within the month. Click on I1, click on the tiny button inside the Iteration box and select Edit from the drop down menu.
   
6. Enter Register to be the name of the Iteration.
7. According to the schedule, the support of the register function is expected to be completed on or before day 7 of the month. Set the From Date to day 1 and the To Date to day 7.
   
8. Click OK.
9. Edit I2. Rename it to Shopping Cart. Set the Iteration period from day 7 to day 22 as planned.
   
10. Edit I3. Rename it to Report Printing. Set the Iteration period from day 22 to day 31.
    
    The three Iterations are all edited as follows:
    
11. The six rows in the grid correspond to the six major disciplines of a project. Each discipline is to group tasks by the kind of work the development team members will involve with. As the default settings match our needs, we don't have to edit any of them.
    
12. Click Configure Process again to "turn off" the configuration. The completed process view should look something like this:
    
    You may click on a cell to read the progress of the development tasks in that cell. You may also click on any task bar inside a cell to open the Tasks view and start creating or reading details of tasks in that cell.