Description
You want to develop software to support Investment Clubs. See appendix one,
which give some overall explanation of the concept, as well as a use-case
survey.
You want to develop this software with some friends from UBC (Comp. eng.,
Comp. Sci., Sauder), starting shortly after graduation in May 2014. You have
approached some venture capital firm in downtown Vancouver (Yaletown
Ventures), which seems tempted to finance your endeavour, but they are now
asking for more detailed information: business strategy, CVs of key players,
more detailed requirements, and a draft software development plan.
Your assignment is to develop this tentative software development plan (SDP)
for this project.
The plan has to be as realistic and credible as you can, but you may
have to make many assumptions as you develop it. The plan has to
demonstrate to the venture firm that you know what you are up to in term of
managing this project to a successful conclusion. They are busy people, dealing
with dozens of start-up enterprises, and will need to be convinced in few pages,
well-structured, and to the point, meaning: not too fancy, and with no endless
philosophical blah-blah, or obvious statements.
In a previous stage, you had already done some rough estimates in usecase points, ending up in the range of 135 to 150 adjusted use-case points, or
2700 to 3000 person-hours (see earlier assignments).
Steps:
1) Identify what are the key elements the plan should contain. You may get
some inspiration from standards, or templates, but this is not a “fill-the-form”
assignment. Use your brain. Keep the target in mind.
Hints: schedule, resources (people, finance, other), risks, assumptions,
processes, management processes, tools, etc..
See standards and templates in the “Other resources” section on Piazza.
Look up for other guidance on the web (look for: project plan, software
project plan, software development plan, project charter…)
2) Develop your own outline for the plan (which should be visible, so a reader
can quickly access some key information)
3) Develop the plan; do not be too verbose, this is not an exercise in literature.
Deliver only the result of step 3. (Step 1 and 2, we should be able to figure it out
by reading your plan).
We’ll be reading your assignment from the perspective of the person in charge
of your file at Yaletown Venture. And that person (me) has dealt with dozens of
new software ventures before. This is not a “buzzword” bingo.
Note: this assignment has three times the weight of the others (12%).