Software Architect roles and responsibilities

Most of the organizations expect the technical role needs to play by project manager. The project manger has to be good in technical concepts to design the application and helping the team on problem solving.

Based on my experience, in this article I have presented the important points to be focused during designing the application by project manager who is expected to play a role of an architect:

Better managing IT Services

IT service management or IT service support management refers to the implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business. IT service management is performed by IT service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology.

Difference between Scrum and Extreme Programming

Scrum	Extreme Programming
Scrum's main goal is to get estimations of how long development will take.	XP is more about helping developers get things done as quickly and maintainable as possible.
Team typically works in iterations (called sprints) that are from two weeks to one month long.	Team typically works in iterations that are one or two weeks long.
Scrum teams do not allow changes into their sprints.	XP teams are much more agreeable to change within their iterations.
Product owner prioritizes the product backlog but the team determines the sequence in which they will develop the backlog items	Work in a strict priority order which is set by Product Owner
Scrum provides agile management mechanisms and doesn’t prescribe any engineering practices	XP prescribes engineering practices like test-driven development, the focus on automated testing, pair programming, simple design, refactoring, and so on.
SCRUM places great responsibility in the Scrum Master, who manages the development team.	In XP, the practice of collective ownership allows any programmer to modify a section of code when it needs to be fixed.
XP requires that the software be validated at all times, to the extent that tests are written prior to the actual software.	In SCRUM, validation of the software is completed at the end of each Sprint during the Sprint Review, not at each step within the Sprint.

How to manage the project without project manager?

There are few points forced to manage the project without Project Manager:
- Project is small in terms of quantity of work and number of people to carry out that work
- The complexity and risk is low
- The sponsor feels that they do more on technical jobs or R&D or performing case study, so that the need of the project management is minimal (this point is opposite to the above points as the technical jobs, R&D and case study have more uncertainties and challenges)
- No budget to cover the cost of Project Management indeed Project Manager

Estimate the agile project's budget using story points

The budget of the project calculated mostly based on the effort. In agile projects the budget can be calculated based on story point also. The project manger needs to have clear input on the velocity of the team to calculate the budget.

Project Budget = Cost per Story Point * Total Story Points

Cost per story point = Cost of resources based on the effort spent / Story points per week

Assume you have team size of 8 with the rate of 80$ per hour.
The total working hours spent by person per week is 40 hours.
Total cost per week = 8 (team size) * 80 (rate in $) * 40 (hours/week) = 25,600$
Assume based on the velocity, you team able to complete 16 user stories.
Cost per story point = 25,600 (Cost of resources based on the effort spent) / 16 (Story points per week)
                                      =  1,600 $
Assume you have 500 story points planned for the project.

Project Budget = 1,600 * 500 = 8,00,000 $

What’s New in PMBOK Guide, 5th Edition

Are you ready for the newest guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge? PMI is poised to release the new version of the PMBOK Guide before the end of 2012.

I have highlighted what’s new in PMBOK5 compare with PMBOK4 below:
Total numbers of process in PMBOK4 are 42.
Total numbers of process in PMBOK5 are 47, the Project Stakeholder Management knowledge area has been added newly.