Introduction: In project management, communication is a soft indicator, and its function is difficult to quantify. The influence of communication on the project is often invisible. The following is the communication management of software projects I brought to you, hoping to help you.
Project communication management is one of the nine knowledge fields in modern project management knowledge system. Project communication management provides a key link between people, ideas and information, which is a necessary condition for success.
Communication is very important for the success of projects, especially IT projects. This paper focuses on the significance of communication, project stakeholders, the impact of communication on efficiency and the key elements of communication. Finally, combined with the project of foreign language teaching and comprehensive evaluation platform in higher vocational colleges, the application of communication in group software development is analyzed.
1. Importance of communication and analysis among project stakeholders
The elements of project management are: scope, time, cost, quality, manpower, risk, procurement and communication, and a successful project is closely related to these elements. However, in the actual participation and operation of the project, it can be found that no matter which factor in the project management, the project stakeholders are the most relevant and participate in the activities, and the project stakeholders generally include some major stakeholders such as end users, project teams and project company management. In project management, time, cost, quality, manpower, risk, procurement, etc. It is largely related to interpersonal communication and interpersonal management. How to manage good people, how to form a successful project team, how to bring all the potential of the team into play in the project, how to improve the relationship with customers and how to satisfy customers are all essential elements in communication management.
In order to communicate all the elements well and realize human management, we should stand in the perspective of these "project stakeholders" and start from their needs and interests to maximize their value through the project. Without these, the project will be difficult to succeed. Before conducting demand research and communicating with customers, the project manager should generally fully consider the demand and feasibility of the project, and then make a demand management plan (including detailed communication plan and communication requirements), and consider the requirements of personnel, resources and time required for demand communication to ensure the accuracy of demand research. In the development process of many software projects, customers suddenly put forward requirements changes, which adversely affected the project schedule. Although this is largely caused by the subjective factors of customers, it also shows that the project team did not fully consider some assumptions or constraints and did not fully list the communication needs when communicating with customers in the early stage.
Similarly, in addition to communication with customers, in the process of project development, the communication mode between the project manager and project members and the team building skills of the project manager are also the keys that directly affect the success or failure of the project. The purpose of communication during the project is to "maintain the progress of the project, find potential problems, and seek suggestions for improving project performance". If there is no good communication in the process of project development and design, unexpected project failures may occur. An equally good cooperative team can make the project get twice the result with half the effort. The following will discuss some specific communication methods and skills.
2. The relationship between communication and efficiency
2. 1 project complexity and implementation efficiency
The workload consumed by the communication path depends on the complexity and disaster of the software project itself. JoelAron, former system technical director of IBM in Gettysburg, Maryland, studied the execution efficiency of programmers on the basis of nine large-scale projects he participated in. He divided these systems according to the interaction between programmers and system components, and got the execution efficiency table.
Generally speaking, the interface complexity of bottom software (operating system, compiler, embedded system and communication software) is much higher than that of application software (MIS, operation and maintenance software and management software).
When estimating the workload of software development projects, we should fully consider the category and complexity of tasks, because the communication consumption of abstract and complex interface system development process is bound to be great. In addition, the software with deep industry background should consider the communication consumption that developers need to pay to get familiar with industry knowledge.
2.2 Team size and execution efficiency
The number of people who need to cooperate and communicate will affect the development cost, because the main components of the cost are mutual communication and communication, as well as correcting the bad results caused by improper communication (system debugging).
People must communicate to solve the interface problem between their tasks. If the project has n employees, there are nx(n- 1)/2 communication paths. Assuming that a person independently develops software, the annual execution efficiency is 1000 lines of code, and the workload consumed by each communication path can be equivalent to 500 lines of code, then the team size has the following relationship with communication consumption and execution efficiency.
2.3 tacit understanding and execution efficiency of the team
The tacit understanding of the team has a great influence on the efficiency of software implementation. After a long period of running-in and mutual trust, a team has a set of tacit working methods and styles, which may save a lot of unnecessary communication, and work together to even surpass the team itself and make some achievements that are usually unimaginable. On the contrary, because of the different backgrounds and styles of project members, the mutual trust between members is low, so the communication consumption should be fully considered.
There are no simple rules and procedures to establish a team with tacit cooperation, but there is an essential factor, that is, all members of the team have all obligations to the team, and members are willing to give up their own interests and ambitions for the whole team, so the whole team must have a strong cohesion. A person is generally in a good mood in a team with a good atmosphere and tacit cooperation. The energy that this good atmosphere can bring is immeasurable.
Therefore, continuous and good communication is the intangible asset of the team, and the natural, stable and tacit development team formed by it is the core competitiveness of software enterprises.
3. Some elements of communication
The role of an excellent team organization and coordination manager often plays a decisive role in the success or failure of the goal, and he must also be an excellent communicator. Ludlow (R R.), a communication research expert, mentioned that senior managers often spend 80% of their time communicating in different forms. Ordinary managers spend about 50% of their time spreading information. The problem of lack of communication cannot be improved by technology. Now science and technology are developing rapidly, but people's demand for communication and harmony has not decreased, but has become more and more important.
The efficiency of communication directly affects the work efficiency of managers. Improving communication among project members will improve morale, productivity and quality, and reduce costs, making the project better. However, if there is a communication problem, it can also be effectively controlled according to the following procedures: find out the cause of the problem; Implement error correction behavior; Strengthen communication activities in the working environment.
4. Case analysis of project communication.
The author fully considered some communication elements in software project management when he was in charge of developing a comprehensive platform for online English teaching and examination in foreign language colleges. The whole project is developed according to the Team Software Development Process (TSP), and each step involves communication.
4. 1 technical investigation
This project is a comprehensive network platform to provide English teaching, examination and evaluation for teachers and students. Students can learn and test English in the whole process through the internet, and teachers can also use this platform to dynamically grasp the students' situation. In the technology adoption scheme, we intend to use ASP. NET+SQLSERVER for development, three-tier architecture. While listening to their ideas, we also expounded our views from the technical level and finally reached a preliminary understanding.
4.2 Demand Analysis
The end users of the project are foreign language teachers and students, so we began to get in touch with teachers in foreign language colleges and get to know the situation of foreign language teaching in higher vocational colleges. In order to prevent or reduce the change of users' needs, many restrictive factors and hypothetical factors are considered in the production and dissemination objectives. After about a week of communication, a complete SRS document is generated, and we use the section number and section number of SRS to determine the source of each description.
4.3 Shape design
After the overall requirements and functions of the software are determined, the project process reaches the stage of outline design, at which time the project development team is fully launched and the project team begins to formulate detailed work objectives and role objectives.
4.4 Detailed design
In the outline design stage, each functional module is defined, and the responsibilities of developers are defined, then the detailed design of the module is started. At this stage, we define the whole platform database. When defining data tables and fields, two members have different ideas. They held their own opinions, blushing and deadlocked. Finally, both sides made a list of their own ideas and reasons, and solicited the opinions of other members of the team and teachers of the Foreign Languages Institute. After analysis, everyone agreed.
4.5 coding design
At every meeting in the coding stage, we should grasp the progress of each member, ask about the arrangement for the next stage, and ask each member to treat the problem openly in the meeting and maintain the transparent style of the group. In this way, we can know what will happen and anticipate the problems so that we can make adjustments quickly.
4.6 Integration and testing
In the later stage of development, the functions of each module are basically completed. After confirming that each module has no independent defects and good quality, it will enter the overall test.
After half a year's production, the project has been completed and passed the test. Now it is running very normally. Summing up some experiences of this project, effective communication with users and good cooperation among developers are the keys to ensure the quality and efficiency of software development. To do this, a team should have at least the following three elements: transparency, listening and negotiation. Transparency enables the whole team to know what will happen, anticipate problems, know when and who needs help most, and maintain the consistency of the whole team's work. The best. The communicator should be a very good listener, and this kind of listening should be wholeheartedly. Only in this way, others will have a deeper communication with you, and you will accurately understand each other's intentions. The most important function of consultation is to solve problems and differences, which can make both sides of the contradiction get a satisfactory result.
Project communication management is an art, which is not only manifested in the communication skills among "project stakeholders", but also universal in any field of project management and can be implemented in combination with some unique elements in their respective fields. In the overall management of the project by the project leader, the eight elements of project management are simple and easy to remember, which require artistic management and skillful operation. Although management rules and regulations are fixed, people can apply them dynamically. But how to flexibly control these elements to make them more convenient to operate and more suitable for practical projects.
Extended content
Importance of communication management of software projects
Communication is not only a necessary means of software project management, but also a necessary tool and working procedure in the process of software project construction.
In the process of doing software project testing services, we often hear the following complaints: what we have developed is not what we want at all; The so-and-so function we requested has not been realized; What makes it difficult for Party A to calm down is that these problems have been verbally told to the members of Party B's project team before, but Party B actually ignored such important needs and feedback during the project implementation. I will also hear the bitterness of Party B's project manager: my programmer described the module architecture he was responsible for during the design review, but after the software was developed, it was found to be quite different from what I understood. ...
Perhaps some situations are more complicated than the above problems, so where is the problem? In fact, many of the above problems are caused by communication, and ineffective communication leads to the final failure of software projects. In the software industry, the success or failure of communication determines the success or failure of the whole project, and the efficiency of communication affects the cost and progress of the whole project. The risk of poor communication is one of the biggest risks of software projects. In the process of software project construction with changeable requirements, strong logicality and high complexity, it is necessary to establish a good communication plan and order, and ensure the smooth implementation of software projects with strict communication attitude and scientific communication methods.
Clear customer needs are born from the interaction and communication with Party A. The determination of customer needs at the beginning of software project construction depends on the continuous communication between Party A and Party B. The soft spot of software project construction lies in grasping customer needs. At the initial stage of project construction, Party B needs to send professional project managers and R&D backbones to communicate with Party B in depth, so as to fully grasp the actual needs of customers. Sometimes, due to the fuzziness of customers' needs at the initial stage of the project or the limitation of project experience and business scope of Party A's project manager, Party A's needs are not fully expressed at the initial stage. This requires Party B to rely on its own project experience or industry experience, give planning suggestions or fully consider the details, and make full and accurate allowance planning for the project requirements. These are based on repeated communication and in-depth investigation of end users. The methods of communication and investigation are not detailed here.
In the process of software project implementation, it is necessary to establish a good communication order (communication plan) within the project team and ensure the effectiveness of communication. We have encountered such a case. A software company is developing a business management software, with perfect customer requirements and clear system analysis. However, in the development stage, the project manager found that the function of one of the middle layers of system analysis was wrong. Because he was responsible for the development of the function module, he directly modified its parameters at that time and did not communicate with other programmers in time. Later, he soon forgot about it. When the project drew to a close, a big Bug suddenly appeared in the system, which affected the operation of the whole system. Finally, it took a lot of effort to query and test, only to find that the parameters changed by the project manager were wrong. If the project manager can communicate with the project team members in time at the beginning, this mistake can be completely avoided. A project team with good communication order can effectively prevent the risk of project failure and achieve twice the result with half the effort.
Project communication plan is a part of the whole project plan, and its role is very important, but it is often ignored. Many projects have not made a complete communication plan, which leads to confusion in communication, inefficiency of the project team and direct failure of the project. There are various forms of communication in the project, which can be roughly divided into two forms: written and oral. Written communication is mostly used for notification, confirmation, demand and other activities, and is suitable for memos used within the project team. The first thing the project manager should do at the beginning is to determine the communication plan of the whole project, because the communication plan describes the structure of project information collection and archiving, the way of information release, the content of information, the progress plan generated by each communication, the agreed communication methods and so on. Only by establishing good communication rules can we grasp communication well, so as to fully understand all aspects of the project and continuously promote the smooth progress of the project.
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