Virtual Surgery Project Management Plan

SWEN90016 Software Processes and Management — Assignment

Aura – Virtual Temporal Bone Surgery

Name: Ruobing Leng

LMS login: lengr

Tutorial Time: Friday 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

1. Introduction

The virtual surgery project is aimed at developing a software system which can let surgeons practice surgery in a virtual environment. In the assignment 1, there is a proposition says that the prototype-driven, increment model is the only suitable process for the project. Which I disagreed. Increment model is a good choice but not the only one. In this essay, iteration model is chosen as a more appropriate approach in order to develop this project.

1. Risks

The risks are the most important features that need to be considered when starting a new project. There are several risks in this project.

1. Unstable requirements

The clients are surgeons, which means they may have little understanding in computer science, so they somehow can not offer exact functional or hardware requirements for the project. In this case, the developers may misunderstand the requirements and build the wrong function. This would slow down the process of development or even make the project fail.

1. Human factors

Human is the key to the project. The computer is just a tool. As it is mentioned in the SPMP.pdf, the team members has not learn JAVA and JAVA3D yet, the tutorials takes time. In addition, a novice programmer can barely contribute any efficiency to the project, on the contrary, it would cost more time for a advanced programmer to correct the mistakes caused by a novice. As a result, the efficiency would be effected.

1. Inappropriate estimation of the scale

Even a very excellent project manager can not estimate when the project would be finished. The main reason is that the client might have not figured out the exact requirement is when he is doing estimation. The requirements could change at anytime during the process of development, it is hard for the manager to predict.

1. Difficulties

1. Resources

Team Aura has a limited resources to access, including physical resources and personnel resources. The hardware for development are the computers in the 4th year lab, which may not enough for the whole team to use. The department administrator and staff can only provide general help to the team. In addition, the project is being undertaken as an university subject so the budget is limited by the university funding as well.