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Risks and Cost
There are several risks associated with the MTM project. Each of these risks has been analyzed by the team and been assigned priorities; in addition, the team has put in place a mitigation strategy to minimize the effect of each risk on the project.
Priority: High
With the Mobile Trail Mapping System, we have the potential to create the entire system, from start to finish. This gives us, the developers, a lot of freedom, however, this also introduces a very high risk of feature creep. We need to make sure we stay on task with our requrements documents to ensure we complete the features that the clients are expecting us to complete. Since we will be executing an Agile development strategy, any additional features beyond the requirements document will be discussed when the project has met the preliminary requirements.
Mitigation strategy: The team has defined a very strict set of requirements and use cases that clearly proscribe what features will and won't be in MTM releases. As each person has a separate area of responsibliity, the developers can also serve as reviewers for each other and keep all other areas of the project on track.
Priority: Medium
One of the biggest restrictions to users will be the platform. The specifications state that we will be developing an Android and an iPhone application. The team has expierence in both of these areas, but since the client has primarily Android handsets, that will be the primary target platform. The biggest risk here is that any of the code written for the Android platform that does not use the shared server API will not be reusable.
Mitigation strategy: The team has come to terms with writing duplicate code for what's necessary to support each mobile platform. However, we are focusing on bringing as much common functionality into the server as possible. In addition, the architecture documentation specifies a large amount of common design that greatly reduces the number of conceptual decisions that need to be made for each platform.
Priority: High
The Mobile Trail Mapping system will be developed over 300 miles away from the actual client. This severely limits the amount time the development team will be able to perform actual testing on the trails system. In addition, the client may not be able to dedicate sufficient time to the project, especially when the trails system is closed.
Mitigation strategy: The team has decided to use test-driven development. If we can ensure our software is tested properly, this will minimize the headaches when we ship it off to a remote testing team. This has also affected the project positively, by forcing us to use a more dynamic architecture where we can define custom trails at any location to perform performance testing.
Priority: Low
The time constraints for this project are very strict, but with the planning the team has implemented, this has been evaluated as a medium risk. The team plans on having working Android and iPhone versions well before the trails open next year.
Mitigation strategy: The team will adhere strictly to the deadlines set forth by Rose-Hulman faculty and provide deliverables promptly to clients.
Priority: Low
Every company is always trying to outdo another with their latest operating system. One of the problems with developing for such a wide range of devices is that newer operating systems can be released at any time. Over the course of the project, it is anticipated that at least two major revisions to mobile platforms will be released that have the potential to impact the MTM project.
Mitigation strategy: The team has decided to go with a version of the operating system that is covered on a majority of devices so we don't exclude people who don't have the latest operation system (since most operating system versions are controlled by venders and not end users).
Mobile Platforms
Traditionally we would have to acquire funding to purchase Android and iPhone devices to perform our platform testing on. The team had one personal Android device and two personal iPhones. All team members are willing to use their own devices for testing. In addition to the team owned devices, we were provided with two additional Android devices to test with at no cost to the team by our educational institution.
Server
The client has chosen to use HostGator, a popular web hosting company, as their server host. The team is not responsible for any cost incurred by this hosting; as the LCTA was having a web redesign done, they are providing the money to pay for the server, and the team is able to use that resource without compensating either the LCTA or HostGator.
Travel
Current travel costs have been paid for by our educational institution. This is one of the largest costs to the team and this may limit our future on-site testing if funding is not available; however, this is a minor risk at best, as the LCTA has offered to pay our travel costs for future trips.