Datasheet

Approaches to Project Management
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The MSF Team Model
MSF uses a well - published team model, shown in Figure 1 - 7. MSF defi nes six roles, all of whom
are peers on the project team. Each of these roles should be fi lled at the beginning of the project,
although full - time involvement will vary during each cycle:
Program
management
Release
management
Product
management
Development
User
experience
Quality
assurance
FIGURE 1 - 7: The MSF team model.
Program management — Program management is responsible for the project plan. Their
central job is to balance the project constraints of time and money against the feature set
to deliver the product on time and on budget. What makes this diffi cult is that the program
manager does not control the resources or the feature set; the other roles control the
resources and feature set. Effective communication and negotiation are hallmarks of this role.
Product management — Product management is responsible for specifying a product that
meets customer expectations. Product managers deeply understand customer needs and
usage patterns. They instinctively know what is good, what is great, and what is awful.
They contribute heavily early in the project, a bit less in the middle, and then signifi cantly
again toward the end.
Development — The development team is responsible for the architecture, design, and
software construction activities. This team works closely with all the other teams to build a
top - quality product. It is organized along functional or technical lines so it can scale well.
QA — The quality assurance team works very closely with the development team and is
responsible for tracking and reporting quality to program management. This team develops
and executes test plans to ensure that the product meets functional specifi cations and user
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