Project management

DD2419

Video you already watched

Why iterative/agile/etc?

In practice?

What to use?

Your experience?

Our experience?

Some general observations

• Time is a valuable resource!
• Estimate how long something will take is VERY hard!
• The “π factor”
• System integration is damn HARD
• Integration is just as important or more important than any of the components (without it nothing works!)
• Hopefully this course will teach you not underestimate it in the future!
• Robustness is hard to reach
• Testing and verification crucial!
• Takes time

Quotes from DD2425 students

“Occam's razor is essential for each topic as well, you can always get fancier if you have time in the end (which you probably don't).”

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Quotes from DD2425 students

“Seriously, this project is over before you know it. You think you have all the time in the world and all of a sudden it's contest week”

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Quotes from DD2425 students

“By far the most complicated at KTH, have however done similar projects outside KTH.”

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Quotes from DD2425 students

“I had a tougher software project (also a mobile robot) but RAS has been a more complete software project. That means not writing lower level code but creating all higher software modules of the robot (localization, navigation, motion control, vision) and not using any of them ready made.”

Challenges of Group Projects

1. Coordination cost
• “Too many cooks spoil the broth”
• Task interdependence important to understand.
• Group heterogeneity both helps and hinders group performance.
• Unclear roles lead to misunderstanding. Discuss roles in your group. Balance ability and learning.
• Schedule regular meetings, online is fine -- keep everyone in the loop. Video is better than voice, voice is better than text, text is better than nothing.
• Identify conflicts, and resolve them.

Challenges of Group Projects

• Coordination cost
• Motivation cost
• Free riding, coasting or loafing causes group motivation to fall. You only work as hard as your group members. Keep track of contributions, have expectations.
• Conflict erodes motivation like nothing else. Be diplomatic, but not avoidant.

Challenges of Group Projects

• Coordination cost
• Motivation cost
• Intellectual cost
• Groupthink / conformal thinking important but can also stifle innovative thinking.
• Sunken cost behavior worse in groups, costly to replan. Agile process helps, dare to give up on poor ideas.
• Expecting telepathy from your group, thinking that you’ve said and explained things better than you have. Speech is a lossy information medium.
• Common ground is more comfortable, dissemination of information suffers. Play the devil’s advocate, pretend to not understand rather than opposite, repeat what somebody explained back to them, etc.

Task 1: Your project management so far

5min individually: Identify at least 3 things that work well in your group and� 3 that work less well. Put on PostIt

10min in group: Compare notes and post PostIt on whiteboard in clusters

Task 2: Sprint planning

20min

Create your a small backlog for milestone 2 (or 3 days towards milestone 3 if you are already done)

Prioritise and estimate time

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Task 2: Sprint planning

20min

Create your a small backlog for milestone 2 (or 3 days towards milestone 3 if you are already done)

Prioritise and estimate time

Talk to your peer group, discuss priorities. What, why, when?

Iterative development

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Iterative_development_model.svg