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 RHINO
Project Management
 RHINO
systems has run many projects from conception to producing
top-quality world-class software products. RHINO understands
the importants of solid project management methodology and
processes, therefore, we'd like to share this crucial aspect
of product development with you.
Big
Picture - Draw or outline what is the business domain
and identify what you want to accomplish with the new product.
This is a simple yet important step in defining what kind
of product you want to develop. This can be as brief 1 or
2 paragraphs (or a picture), describing the domain and goals
of the system. Make sure everyone agrees to this simple, yet
profound, statement on your new product.
Functional
Requirements - Typically a marketing survey or a
solid understanding of what you want out the system is known.
From this you should outline in a point-by-point document
each functional requirement you have for the new product.
For example a invoice and billing application might require
the following:
1.1
Daily statements be generated for the customer to view;
1.2
Daily statements must be accessible from the web;
1.3
Monthly Invoices will be created on the 1st of every month.
1.4
Monthly Invoices summarize the daily statements.
2.0
The system must be shared and accessible to all the people
in our billing.
3.0
The web site must be secure - no private information from
the internal database be accessible. ...etc.
The
Functional Requirements detail what the business needs from
the system, which can also include future or potential for
change requirements. It doesn't, however, specify how these
are accomplished or what the product looks like to the customer
(described next).
Functional
Specification - This document describes how the software
will look to the user. For desktop applications and web pages,
you will have sample screen shots or diagrams/pictures detailing
the screens that the user will interact with. If it is a scripting
utility or language that the end-user will use, then syntax
will be described. Reports are explained, along with samples.
Each item in the Functional Requirement must be matched with
a specific item in the Functional Specification. Once you
have reached agreement on how the system looks to the end-user
you can begin the design work.
Functional
Design - Probably the most important aspect of any
product development is designing the system to work right!
You know what the system should look like, and now you must
define how it will work. In this stage, you will identify
the technical details, like programming languages, API's,
Operating systems, database tables, users, permissions, three-tier
or client/server architecture, network protocols, message
routing, algorithms, pseudo-code and prototyping. Here you
specify in a document how all the pieces to the puzzle fit
together and how the interact with each other. There should
be no stone unturned. After this stage is succesfully completed
(can and should take a majority of your product development
life cycle), you will know with a great degree of certainty
how long the product developement will take. Now you can decide
your first real schedule to completion of the product (Schedules
have been in place through out, but you really didn't have
a good time estimate for completion of "development"
until now!).
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Management
- Make sure that the system is covered: design meets functional
spec and functional spec meets requirements. Lot's of changes/updates
have occurred since your original Functional Requirement and
Specification documents. Make sure they are updated. Examine
and prepare a Software Quality Analysis plan. QA will be using
the functional Specification and Design doc to write test
cases. QA should be ready by the time "Coding" and
"Integration" is completed. Prepare groups/developers
for their portions of the software development; and update
your project plan with assignments/tasks, milestones, deadlines,
and checkpoints. Hold weekly meetings and do spot checks to
keep communication open between you and the developers. 
