This document discusses the ethics of software project management. It outlines eight key ethical principles for software development, including honor, honesty, bias, professional adequacy, due care, fairness, consideration of social cost, and effective action. These principles can help identify ethical issues and "hotspots" in software projects. The document also describes a generic ten-step structured project management approach and analyzes the dominant ethical issues in each step. Finally, it discusses how software development impact statements can be used to address ethical perspectives as an integral part of the software development process.

1. The Ethics of Software
Project Management
Horvath Andreea- Maria
an 4 CTI

2. Introduction
Software project management is the collection of
techniques used to develop and deliver various types of
software products. This developing discipline
traditionally includes technical issues such as: the
choice of software development methodology, how to
estimate project size and schedule, how to ensure
safety, what resources to reuse, and which
programming development environment to use. The
discipline also includes management issues such as:
when to train personnel, what are the risks to the
project success, and how to keep the project on
schedule.
These choices are then embodied in a software
project management plan.
Relevant ethical principles must be established in
order to identify the ethical issues associated with
software project management. Ethics comprises both
practice and reflection.

3. The set of ethical principles:
 Honour Is the action considered beyond reproach?
 Honesty Will the action violate any explicit or implicit
agreement or trust?
 Bias Are there any external considerations that may
bias the action to be taken?
 Professional adequacy Is the action within the limits of
capability?
 Due care Is the action to be exposed to the best
possible quality assurance standards?
 Fairness Are all stakeholder's views considered with
regard to the action?
 Consideration of social cost Is the appropriate
accountability and responsibility accepted with respect to this
action?
 Effective and efficient action Is the action suitable,
given the objectives set, and is it to be completed using the
least expenditure of resources?

4. The set of ethical principles:
These principles can be used to analyse, inform,
and colour practice within computing and software
project management in particular. Within software
development there are numerous activities and
decisions to be made and many of these will have an
ethical dimension.
It is impractical to consider each minute issue in
great detail and still hope to achieve the overall project
goal.
By considering which of the principles apply it is
possible to ascertain which activities and decision
making points are the most ethically charged. The focus
of attention must be on these ethical hotspots because
they are likely to influence the success of the particular
software project and promote ethical sensitivity in a
broader context.

5. Generic Software Project
Management
Whilst it is recognised that the development of a piece of
software might have its own special set of problems and
challenges that have to managed there are many similarities
in all software projects that means it is worth considering a
generic approach which will lay down foundations for the
management of all software projects.
In his book, How to Run Successful Projects, in the British
Computer Society Practitioner Series, [O'Connell, 1994]
provides details of the Structured Project Management (SPM)
approach.
SPM comprises ten steps. The first five steps are
concerned with planning and the remaining five deal with
implementing the plan and achieving the goal. O'Connell
states that most projects succeed or fail because of decisions
made during the planning stage thereby justifying the fact that
half of the effort expended in the SPM approach is on
preparation.

6. The Ten Steps of Structured
Project Management
1. Visualise what the goal is
2. Make a list of the jobs that need to be
done
3. Ensure there is one leader
4. Assign people to jobs
5. Manage expectations, allow a margin of
error and have a fallback position
6. Use an appropriate leadership style
7. Know what is going on
8. Tell people what is going on
9. Repeat Step 1 through 8 until Step 10 can
be achieved
10. Realise the project goal

7. Ethical Management
The eight ethical principles can be used to provide an
insight to how ethical management might be achieved.
The activities within each of the ten steps of SPM have
been analysed in order to identify the dominant ethical
issues of each step [Rogerson, 1997].
The results of this analysis are shown in the figure in
the next slide. It is recognised that most of the eight
ethical principles will have some impact on each step
but it is important to identify those which will have a
significant impact on each particular step. The mapping
in figure shows those relationships which are
considered significant. Those with the highest ethical
significance, indicated by the number of ethical
principles that prevail are, at this level, the ethical
hotspots of a generic approach to software project
management.

8. Ethical Management
Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Principle
1. Honour X X X X X
2. Honesty X XX X
3. Bias XXXX X X
4. Adequacy XX X
5. Due care X X X X X
6. Fairness X X X
7. Social cost X XX X
8. Action XXX XX XX
6 2 4 5 4 4 1 5 2 4

9. Software Development Impact
Statement
There are two types of SoDIS. The first is a Generic
SoDIS which has as its primary function the identification of
stakeholders and related ethical issues. In the light of the
identified issues a preliminary project management plan is
developed. A second more detailed SoDIS is then
employed. This is the Specific SoDIS. There will be a
number of Specific SoDIS within a particular
methodology. Each SoDIS is tied to a particular development
methodology and to each step in that methodology.
Any SoDIS requires a set of instructions which include
information about what data to gather, how to gather it, and
how to document the entire process. The set of instructions
should also include information about monitoring the SoDIS
development process for accuracy, completeness, objectivity,
and enforcement of the results.

10. Conclusion
The project management process for software
development must accommodate an ethical
perspective.
By using ethical principles, identifying of
ethical hotspots and using SoDIS it is possible to
ensure that the key ethical issues are properly
addressed as an integral part of the software
development process.
Quite simply, project management should be
guided by a sense of justice, a sense of equal
distributions of benefits and burdens and a sense
of equal opportunity. In this way software
development project management will become
ethically aligned.

11. Resources
 http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/staff/Sr
og/teaching/sweden.htm