Project Management Approach

Wagachchi,

Your question is very general and because there are many many methodologies and processes is quite impossible to give you advice without more information. So, please elaborate some more on your project. For example, is it a green field, do you have to pursuit for requirements or are they already fixed and signed for? Which technology are you going to use and how big is your team?
With these answers for sure we can direct you towards the best, or less worst :), approach and methodology.

Regards,
Peter

Peter,

Requirements gathering phase is over and fixed. I'm going to use Object Oriented approach for development and the project should be an individual project.

Thanks
Wagachchi    

This sounds like you would benefit the most from a light weighted approach. Since your requirements are fixed already you don't have to worry a lot about stakeholders changing them. This makes life a lot easier, (but less real :) ). And you are going for object oriented, so there will be - or should be - a significant portion of UML design in your engineering process.
From this information I suggest you look into "essUP". essUP stands for Essential Unified Process and is marketed by Ivar Jacobson. essUP is both a project management methodology and an engineering process. You have to tailor it for your situation (especially decide what not to use), and you may skip gathering requirements, but maybe you still need to organize your requirements in e.g. use cases to make them better developable and testable.

Another suggestion would be to look into DSDM. This is also a project management and engineering process combination, but maybe too big or formal for your situation.

DSDM information can be found from it's consortium: http://www.dsdm.org Here you can also download "Project in a box", a project support tool with DSDM Atern and Prince2.

essUP is based on the web on http://www.ivarjacobson.com/products/essup.cfm

If you have any further questions or remarks please post them. We are happy to try to answer all.

Regards,
Peter
 

Hi peter,

Due to the nature of the purpose of the project (this is for my Degree) I thought of using a methodology that has been there for sometime. As for the project management approach I chose phased approach.

I decided to use RAD along with OOP and UML. Please let me know how well I can use those in a project and especially linking RAD with OOP.

Regards
Wagachchi

 

DSDM's Atern product is rather new indeed, but DSDM has been there already for some years. And Ivar Jacobson's essUP is also not from yesterday.

As you are saying you need to select an approach for your degree, I still would suggest you use a named approach rather than a general one as "phased approach". I don't know whether you need to present your project for your degree, but as I have been an examiner already for years, I can tell you that using a named one strengthen your case :)

On your question whether RAD and OOP are linked you have to take into account that RAD is about 'how' you get to build the software, OOP is about how your software is organized. It is the combination of these two that has taken the software development discipline into a next level, amongst others described by Ivar Jacobson, Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh (aka The Three Amigo's) in their Unified Software Development Process approach, which led to RUP (Rational Unified Process), the predecessor of essUP mentioned earlier.
So, in short: YES, use both RAD and OOP. Good choice.

UML is a choice you may decide upon independent of OOP and RAD, but is also a good one. UML is recognized as the #1 modelling language of software development. Did you know that UML was developed by the same Three Amigo's of above as a modelling language to complete the cycle of OO programming in a RAD environment?
So, I stongly suggest you have a good look at essUP. You will see that your choice isn't far from theirs.

Best regards,
Peter

Hi,

I have seen in many articles that RAD itself (and most of software development methodologies) has been considered as a Project management approach, is this correct?

What are the project management approaches compatible with RAD

Regards
Wagachchi