Shrinking the cone of uncertainty with continuous assessment for software team dynamics in design and development

2012-07-30Team synchronization and stabilization are essential especially for large software projects. Unfortunately, little is usually done to assess and reduce the uncertainties and knowledge gaps that exist within the project. As the project progresses through its life cycle, the team can gain more information about the project and the team's capabilities. These necessary data can be obtained through performing assessments on the team and the project. However, these assessment procedures are often complex, discouraging, and difficult to analyze; an effective framework and tool support can greatly enhance the process. Hence, with improved assessment methods, software project teams can quickly gather the necessary data, determine the actions needed to improve performance, and achieve an improved project outcome in the end. ❧ Furthermore, uncertainties in projects can significantly impact the cost and schedule estimations, which determine the scopes of the projects and the resources required to complete them. However, developing accurate and realistic estimates requires a high level of experience, expertise, and historical data. Oftentimes, once the resources have been estimated, little is done to reduce the uncertainties in the estimations as the project progresses through its life cycle. With improved software tracking and estimation mechanisms, teams can develop more accurate estimations, allowing the goals of the project outcome to be monitored and achieved with the available resources. ❧ This research investigates the appropriateness of current project tracking and team assessment methodologies, and develops a new assessment framework to effectively improve team synchronization and stabilization as well as project effort tracking and estimation. The COnstructive Team Improvement Process MOdel (COTIPMO) is an assessment framework developed to effectively achieve this by enabling software development teams to quickly track their project progress, continuously assess the team's performance, and make adjustments to the project estimates as necessary, thus shrinking the cone of uncertainty for software projects