Project Organization

Hierarchical organizational model

• There are many ways to organize the staff of a project. For a long time the organization of software projects oriented itself to the hierarchical organization common to other industrial branches. Special importance is vested in the decomposition of software development into individual phases. A responsible leader is assigned to each of the phases, which are led and controlled by the project leader and which, depending on the size of the project, are led and controlled either by a single person or by a group leader.
• The project manager normally also has a project management staff with advisory and administrative tasks.
• The larger the project, the greater is the number of hierarchy levels in the organizational schema.

1. The project manager’s tasks and responsibilities encompass
2. personnel selection,
3. assignment and management,
4. planning of and division of labour for the project,
5. project progress checks, and
6. Appropriate measures in case of cost or schedule overruns.

• The project management staff includes personnel who advise the project manager in task-specific questions, provide support in administrative tasks concerning project progress checks, prepare project standards, provide the necessary resources, and carry out training for project team members as needed.
• The managers at the middle management level are responsible for planning, execution and control of phase-related activities of the software life cycle.

The chief programmer team

Baker’s organizational model ([Baker 1972])

• Important characteristics:

1. The lack of a project manager who is not personally involved in system development
2. The use of very good specialists
3. The restriction of team size

• The chief programmer team consists of:

1. The chief programmer
2. The project assistant
3. The project secretary
4. Specialists (language specialists, programmers, test specialists).

• The chief programmer is actively involved in the planning, specification and design process and, ideally, in the implementation process as well.
• The chief programmer controls project progress, decides all important questions, and assumes overall responsibility.
• The qualifications of the chief programmer need to be accordingly high.
• The project assistant is the closest technical coworker of the chief programmer.
• The project assistant supports the chief programmer in all important activities and serves as the chief programmer’s representative in the latter’s absence. This team member’s qualifications need to be as high as those of the chief programmer.
• The project secretary relieves the chief programmer and all other programmers of administrative tasks.
• The project secretary administrates all programs and documents and assists in project progress checks.
• The main task of the project secretary is the administration of the project library.
• The chief programmer determines the number of specialists needed.
• Specialists select the implementation language, implement individual system components, choose and employ software tools, and carry out tests.
• The advantages of the Baker’s organizational model:
• The chief programmer is directly involved in system development and can better exercise the control function.
• Communication difficulties of pure hierarchical organization are ameliorated. Reporting concerning project progress is institutionalized.
• Small teams are generally more productive than large teams.
• The drawbacks of the Baker’s organizational model:
• It is limited to small teams. Not every project can be handled by a small team.
• Personnel requirements can hardly be met. Few software engineers can meet the qualifications of a chief programmer or a project assistant.
• The project secretary has an extremely difficult and responsible job, although it consists primarily of routine tasks, which gives it a subordinate position. This has significant psychological disadvantages. Due to the central position, the project secretary can easily become a bottleneck.
• The organizational model provides no replacement for the project secretary. The loss of the project secretary would have grave consequences for the remaining course of the project.