Software Engineering

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Software Engineering. DOI: 
© 
2012
 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407768-3.00004-5
Understanding the Software 
Project Environment
4
CHAPTER 
CHAPTER OUTLINE
4.1  Integrated product teams ..................................................................................... 60
4.2  Software architecture .......................................................................................... 61
4.3  Complexity control mechanisms ........................................................................... 63
4.3.1  Work breakdown structure ................................................................. 63
4.3.2  Product breakdown structure............................................................. 64
4.3.3  Specification tree ............................................................................. 65
4.3.4  Documentation tree .......................................................................... 65
4.3.5  Software product baselines ............................................................... 65
4.3.6  Requirements traceability guidelines ................................................. 67
4.3.7  Trade-off analysis ............................................................................. 68
4.3.8  Software complexity measures........................................................... 70
4.4  Software nomenclature registry ........................................................................... 74
4.5  Software integration strategy ............................................................................... 74
4.6  Project and technical planning ............................................................................ 75
4.6.1  Technical organization plans ............................................................. 75
4.6.2  Project plans ................................................................................... 77
The effective and profitable execution of a software engineering project involves an 
understanding of the complex interactions and dependencies inherent in the project 
environment. This knowledge must be fortified with a set of supervisory tools that 
provide information concerning the current status of tasks and work products. This 
information contains obscure symptoms of potential situations that threaten the pro-
ject’s success or software product’s quality and competitiveness in the marketplace. 
Software engineering exploits this information to permit its attentive practitioners 
to recognize disruptive trends and react in a positive manner to neutralize the root 
causes of problematic conditions.
There are three fundamental management tools that are used to guide a project 
toward successful completion. The first is the integrated master plan (IMP), which 
identifies the organizational roles and responsibilities, tasks to be performed, and 
expected outcomes. The second is the integrated master schedule (IMS), which 
provides a timeline of key events, milestones, reviews, and decision points. And 
finally, there is the project budget, which identifies the resources that are allocated to 
each organization to enable the execution of planned tasks. However, these project 

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