Planning and Processes

General

• What does the concepts analyze and synthesis mean?
• What are the major differences between a "hacker" and a software engineer?
• What does COTS mean?
• What does CASE mean?
• What is a de facto standard?

Processes and Life-cycles

• What is a process?
• What is a software life-cycle?
• A software development process consist of activities. List nine of the most important activities.
• What is the difference between a project and a process?
• What is a software life-cycle model?
• What is the V-model?
• What is the pros and cons with the V-model?
• What is the Waterfall-model?
• What is the pros and cons with the Waterfall-model?
• What is the Spiral-model?
• What is the pros and cons with the Spiral-model?
• What is the Prototype-model?
• What is the pros and cons with the Prototype-model?
• How can prototypes be used together with the waterfall model?
• What is iterative development?
• What is incremental development?
• What is time-boxing?
• Describe some ways to do prioritization of functionality.
• Give pros and cons for iterative development
• What is a methodology?
• How should you prioritize requirements?
• What is rational unified process?
• What does diciplines mean in RUP?
• What is an artifact?
• Is RUP focused on artificats?
• Which are the core diciplines in RUP?
• Which are the supporting diciplines in RUP?
• Which are the four phases in RUP?
• Describe these phases. What is the main purpose? What is the output?
• Describe in what way RUP is iterative
• Why is RUP good for project management?
• What is agile approaches?
• Which are the main meaning of the agile manifesto?
• Describe some values and principles in Extreme programming
• Which practices (rules) exist in XP?
• What is scrum?
• Which are the benefits of scrum compared with RUP? Which are the drawbacks?
• What is a sprint in Scrum?
• Which roles exist in Scrum?
• What is the purpose of a sprint planning meeting?
• What is the main role for the scrum master?
• What is the typical iteration length in Scrum?
• Which are the main artifacts produced in Scrum?
• Can Scrum be used in non-software products? Why? Why not?
• What is a daily scrum? What happens there?
• What is the burn-down chart used for?
• Should the scrum task board be digital or paper?
• What does the concept "Done" mean? What is difficult about this?
• What does cross-functional mean?
• What is self-organization?
• What role has the product owner?
• What is the role of a Scrum Master?
• How can you work with multiple scrum teams on the same product?
• Describe what product backlog and product backlog items (PBIs) are.
• What is sprint review?
• What is sprint retrospective?
• Which are the differences and similarities between RUP and OpenUP?
• Which are the differences and similarities between Scrum and OpenUP?
• Which are the differences and similarities between Scrum and RUP?
• Which are the differences and similarities between RUP and XP?
• Which are the differences and similarities between Scrum and XP?

Software Configuration Management

• What is configuration management?
• What is configuration items?
• What does baseline mean?
• What is a change control board (CCB)?
• What is a change request?
• What does configuration control mean?
• Describe the four main parts of configuration management?
• Give some properties a typical configuration manager should possess.
• Give example of some SCM tools:
• What is a diff in a SCM tool?
• What is a bug-tracking system?
• Why is it sometimes hard to say if something is a bug or a feature?
• What is the trunk?
• What is the purpose with a development branch?
• Why should automatic tests be performed?
• What does regression testing mean?
• Why is it hard to perform automatic tests on interfaces and databases?
• What is revision control?
• Why is sending code using email a bad idea?
• Why is sharing source code on a normal file server a bad idea?
• What does the lock-modify-unlock approach mean?
• Which approach for SCM is Perforce and Subversion using?
• What is the difference between centralized and decentralized revision control?
• If you are using Git or SVN and have found a bug on a specific source code line, how do you then track down who changed that line of code?
• What does push, pull, and clone mean in Git?
• What does commit, checkout and revert mean in SVN?
• What does merge, conflict and resolve mean?
• What are tags used for?
• What is continuous integration?
• What is automatic build?
• What is automatic test?
• Why are automatic build and automatic test improving software quality?

Projects

• Which three categories do usually participants in a project fall into?
• It is important to define the boundaries of a project. What does this mean?
• Which member roles can be part of a software development team? What do these roles mean?
• Why are kick-offs important? How can they help in a project?
• Give a number of typical properties of a project. Which are the most significant?
• What does the term stakeholder mean?
• Which are the main stakeholders in a software project? Describe their roles.
• What is a deliverable? Give example of deliverables in a software project.
• What is a milestone? What is a tollgate? What is the difference between them?
• What is an activity? What is the difference compared to a milestone?
• Give another name for an activity.
• Tool support for project management is very important in practice. Give an example of such a tool. Briefly describe what you can do.
• What does task predecessor mean?
• Why should we allocate buffer time? When should we avoid it? What problems can occur if we do it too much?
• Explain the concept of task dependencies.
• What is a milestone? What is a good milestone? Give example of a bad one.
• What is a tollgate? How does it differ from a milestone?
• What is an activity graph?
• What is the critical path method (CPM)?
• What does real time (actual time), available time and slack (float) time mean? How are they related?
• If you are running a project and you have to add new features late in the project. Which other "parameters" can you change to meet this change? How does these parameters affect each other?
• What is a SMART goal? Give examples? What does it mean?
• When can the concept of SMART goals be applicable in a project?
• What is project work break down?
• What is a Gantt chart?
• Which are the main items that should be part of a project plan?
• What is resource planning? Why is it important? How do you "do it"?
• There are different kinds of resources in a project. Give examples. Which are the most critical ones?
• What is the difference between calender time and a time budget?

Effort estimation

• What is effort estimation and why is it challenging?
• What does it mean when a effort estimation method rely on expert judgements?
• What is the Delphi-method?
• What is algorithmic effort estimation methods? Which are their pros and cons?
• What is COCOMO?
• Explain the differences between COCOMO and COCOMO II.

Risk management

• What do the terms probability and severity (impact) mean concerning risks?
• What is a risk?
• Why is risk management particularly important in software projects?
• What is the difference between general and project specific risks? Why favor one of them?
• Which types of risks exist? Give examples of risks in the different types.
• Which three strategies exist for risk planning?
• What does risk mitigation mean? How can you do it? Give examples.
• What is a contingency plan? Give examples.
• Describe the different steps in a risk management process.
• What is the risk factor or a "risk magnitude indicator"?
• Give examples on how we can make risk management more useful.
• Why should you prioritize risks?
• Describe risk identification.
• Describe why we should have a project plan.
• When should a project plan be updated? How often? Argue.
• Describe the main content of a project plan. Which parts are most important?
• What is a status report. Give examples of what it can contain.
• Why should a project manager generate status reports?

Page responsible: Kristian Sandahl
Last updated: 2011-12-02