Suppose you have been hired to lead a team of four other developers in the redesign of a local company's custom sales, accounting, and inventory system. The project actually began several months ago, but the previous team members quit simultaneously to form a startup. Before leaving, they prepared a large stack of use case notes and drafted an overview of the intended system.

The company owner wants you to get the project back on track. Suggest a preliminary plan, outlining the steps you would take and how you would prioritize your actions for the first few weeks.

SAMPLE SOLUTION This is much like starting a project from scratch, except that there is some preliminary system description and the clients have been involved in some prior discussions regarding the intended content (which might also mean they get frustrated if we have to restart/redo/reask some things...) Preliminary plan (1) Meet with the team (if they have already been recruited) and with management to discuss this preliminary plan (2) Read and review the system overview and use cases, and have all team members do similarly. (3) Meet with team members individually and as a group to assess the team's strengths/weaknesses and to discuss the state of the system description so far. (4) Meet with management to review our evaluation from (3) and to make sure we have an understanding on the nature and the scope of the project. (5) Establish the formal project plan (refining what's shown here) and the team roles/heirarchy. (6) The project leader (me) will plan the project processes (technical and managerial) with feedback from the team members. Meanwhile, the team members will be assigned the task of reviewing the use cases and system overview, looking for notable gaps and questions that need to be answered, and identifying relevant stakeholders to discuss the gaps and questions with. (7) Establish the formal plan for the requirements gathering and modeling phase, and preliminary plans for the remaining project phases. Meet with the team, management, and key stakeholders to ensure the plan and schedule meet with their expectations and requirements. (8) Run with the new plan ....