Communication and project management

Communication

Team work requires effective communication between team members. This helps to keep everyone up to date on the status of the project, the current and future direction of the work, and avoids duplication of effort. Email, slack, messenger, GitHub issues, chats over a coffee, or a formal weekly meeting, are all valid ways of keeping the teem together. A formal meeting once a month complimented by a weekly email to status check, and real time slack messaging for immediate questions may be a good solution for a 5 person team working on a year long project. An informal weekly chat over lunch with intermittent emails may be good for a 2 person team working on a project that lasts a few months. The most important thing is that the chosen method is effective and that it includes all team members.

If an informal or ephemeral communication medium is involved when coming to an agreement or making a decision, it is good practice to have a follow up communication to reiterate the decision and reasoning using a medium that can be archived. For example, if the team meets over a coffee, discusses a current issue, and decides on a way forward, it is a good idea for someone to follow this up with an email so that the details of the decision are not lost.

Project management styles

The two main project management styles that are applied to software development are waterfall and agile. Neither of these are a project management methodology but are more like umbrella terms that group a set of methodologies that share a common mindset. In the waterfall mindset there is a very linear approach to the design and execution and delivery of the project with the main focus being on the process. In the agile mindset the main focus is on outcomes and deliverables, with the design and execution and delivery occurring in cycles.

Waterfall

In a waterfall project the whole life cycle of a project is mapped onto distinct, sequential work items, with each item relying on those that occur before, and blocking those that come after. Waterfall project management therefore represents a very rigid and linear approach. The waterfall system is a very traditional method for managing a project with participants being assigned clear roles and expectations.

The name waterfall comes from the fact that each work item will cascade onto the next. In a waterfall project there is a lot of attention paid to defining the entirety of the project up front, and then a close adherence to the project plan and timeline. It is therefore difficult to incorporate changes into the project plan, and therefore it is hard to respond to setbacks, opportunities, or changes in requirements.

The waterfall project management style was initially designed in the 1970’s for use in software development projects. It was taken on by many other industries to great success, but is now seen as an outdated methodology for software projects.

Agile

In 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was published. The agile manifesto can be summed up as:

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

https://agilemanifesto.org/

The agile manifesto is based on the following principles:

1. The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity–the art of maximising the amount of work not done–is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organising teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

The agile mentality is designed to be able to be flexible, respond to change, deliver a working product early and have it improve incrementally over time.

Advantages of the agile mentality include:

• faster deployment of working solutions
• better quality of work
• increased client satisfaction
• reduced risk thanks to frequent testing and deployment
• increased team moral
• a project that finishes early is still able to deliver a working result

Some potential drawbacks include:

• potential for scope creep from continuous client feedback
• workload management can be difficult when duties and requirements are not known far in advance
• short development cycles can mean that skills gaps are not identified early leading to delays in delivery

You will likely see that the Agile development mentality fits much better with research project management including both traditional research work and software development projects. Additionally you may note that your organisation may employ a mix of different management methodologies for different projects, or at different levels of the organisation. Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of each will help you choose a project management style that works best for your project.

Popular Agile methodologies

Scrum

Scrum is mainly focused on the idea of sprints. Sprints are where the bulk of the “work” gets done, although there is a significant amount of effort put into the preparation and planning of each sprint, and then the post-sprint review and retrospective. Sprints are typically 1-2 weeks in duration and will focus on a particular set of goals. During a sprint there is usually a daily scrum at the start of the day in which people talk about what they did the day before, what their plans are for today, and what problems they might foresee. The sprint review is about reviewing the work that was completed, reporting related to said work, and identification of incomplete work. The retrospective is a more meta-level reflection on how the sprint went, meant to identify how the team worked together, what organisation or communication worked well or not, and what changes could be made to make the next sprint more productive.

The scrum methodology is based on team work and has well defined roles. The benefits of scrum include the ability to react to changes in requirements or resourcing, continuous testing/integration is effectively built in, prioritisation of tasks can be adjusted throughout the process. The disadvantages of scrum are that you need very good organisation before each sprint to maximise productivity. Additionally it requires that team members are able to block out a 1-2 week period in which they focus solely on the sprint and maintain a high focus. Clearly, scrum requires a medium to large team (5+) in order to be effective.

Kanban

In the Kanban methodology the main focus is on the visualisation that is used during the development process – the Kanban board. One goal of the board is to identify potential bottlenecks in the process. An example board is shown below with the following features:

• Tasks that are represented as squares. Sticky notes or cards are often used on a physical wall, or their digital representation online.
• Columns that represent the state of each task. A task is expected to migrate from the left most column (Ready/Backlog) through the central columns and into the final (Done/Complete) column, as the related work is being done.
• Work in progress limits. In order to maintain focus and productivity, there are often limits on the number of cards that can be placed into some of the columns. In particular the “in progress” and “testing” columns are limited by the available people time allocated to the project.
• Swim lanes (not shown), are rows that separate tasks based on categories of work such as documentation, testing, or reporting. Alternatively, colour coding of cards can be used to identify these categories.

Even when the Kanban methodology is not being explicitly used, the visualisation process is so powerful that it often used in many other project management strategies. It’s not uncommon to see a Kanban board on the wall during a two week sprint.

The advantage of Kanban is that you have a single place to track the progress of all the tasks, and bottle necks can be quickly identified. One of the main disadvantages of Kanban come from people failing to update the Kanban board as a task is being worked on (poor communication), or updating too often (high overhead). Many project management software tools incorporate a Kanban board and tools like JIRA even have a way of migrating and updating tasks based on activity in a linked GitHub repository so that people can keep the Kanban up to date without having to visit the board itself.

Summary

Communication and effective project management are critical to the success of any collaborative project. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and you will need to consider the project requirements, and the size and expertise of your team when deciding on a communication and management strategy. Thankfully there are many project management tools online that are free that will support whatever choice you make.