The book is organized around basic principles of software project management: planning and estimating, measuring and controlling, leading and communicating, and managing risk. Introduces software development methods, from traditional (hacking, requirements to code, and waterfall) to iterative (incremental build, evolutionary, agile, and spiral). Illustrates and emphasizes tailoring the development process to each project, with a foundation in the fundamentals that are true for all development methods. Topics such as the WBS, estimation, schedule networks, organizing the project team, and performance reporting are integrated, rather than being relegating to appendices. Each chapter in the book includes an appendix that covers the relevant topics from CMMI-DEV-v1.2, IEEE/ISO Standards 12207, IEEE Standard 1058, and the PMI® Body of Knowledge. (PMI is a registered mark of Project Management Institute, Inc.)
The book is organized around basic principles of software project management: planning and estimating, measuring and controlling, leading and communicating, and managing risk. Introduces software development methods, from traditional (hacking, requirements to code, and waterfall) to iterative (incremental build, evolutionary, agile, and spiral). Illustrates and emphasizes tailoring the development process to each project, with a foundation in the fundamentals that are true for all development methods. Topics such as the WBS, estimation, schedule networks, organizing the project team, and performance reporting are integrated, rather than being relegating to appendices. Each chapter in the book includes an appendix that covers the relevant topics from CMMI-DEV-v1.2, IEEE/ISO Standards 12207, IEEE Standard 1058, and the PMI Body of Knowledge.
"If you're looking for solid, easy-to-follow advice on estimation, requirements gathering, managing change, and more, you can stop now: this is the book for you."--Scott Berkun, Author of The Art of Project Management What makes software projects succeed? It takes more than a good idea and a team of talented programmers. A project manager needs to know how to guide the team through the entire software project. There are common pitfalls that plague all software projects and rookie mistakes that are made repeatedly--sometimes by the same people! Avoiding these pitfalls is not hard, but it is not necessarily intuitive. Luckily, there are tried and true techniques that can help any project manager. In Applied Software Project Management, Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene provide you with tools, techniques, and practices that you can use on your own projects right away. This book supplies you with the information you need to diagnose your team's situation and presents practical advice to help you achieve your goal of building better software. Topics include: Planning a software project Helping a team estimate its workload Building a schedule Gathering software requirements and creating use cases Improving programming with refactoring, unit testing, and version control Managing an outsourced project Testing software Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman have been building software together since 1998. Andrew comes from a programming background and has managed teams of requirements analysts, designers, and developers. Jennifer has a testing background and has managed teams of architects, developers, and testers. She has led multiple large-scale outsourced projects. Between the two of them, they have managed every aspect of software development. They have worked in a wide range of industries, including finance, telecommunications, media, nonprofit, entertainment, natural-language processing, science, and academia. For more information about them and this book, visit stellman-greene.com
The Practical, Start-to-Finish Guide to Planning and Leading Iterative Software Projects Iterative processes have gained widespread acceptance because they help software developers reduce risk and cost, manage change, improve productivity, and deliver more effective, timely solutions. But conventional project management techniques don’t work well in iterative projects, and newer iterative management techniques have been poorly documented. Managing Iterative Software Development Projects is the solution: a relentlessly practical guide to planning, organizing, estimating, staffing, and managing any iterative project, from start to finish. Leading iterative development experts Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence introduce a proven, scalable approach that improves both agility and control at the same time, satisfying the needs of developers, managers, and the business alike. Their techniques are easy to understand, and easy to use with any iterative methodology, from Rational Unified Process to Extreme Programming to the Microsoft Solutions Framework. Whatever your role–team leader, program manager, project manager, developer, sponsor, or user representative–this book will help you Understand the key drivers of success in iterative projects Leverage “time boxing” to define project lifecycles and measure results Use Unified Process phases to facilitate controlled iterative development Master core concepts of iterative project management, including layering and evolution Create project roadmaps, including release plans Discover key patterns of risk management, estimation, organization, and iteration planning Understand what must be controlled centrally, and what you can safely delegate Transition smoothly to iterative processes Scale iterative project management from the smallest to the largest projects Align software investments with the needs of the business Whether you are interested in software development using RUP, OpenUP, or other agile processes, this book will help you reduce the anxiety and cost associated with software improvement by providing an easy, non-intrusive path toward improved results–without overwhelming you and your team.
No project management training? No problem! In today’s workplace, employees are routinely expected to coordinate and manage projects. Yet, chances are, you aren’t formally trained in managing projects—you’re an unofficial project manager. FranklinCovey experts Kory Kogon and Suzette Blakemore understand the importance of leadership in project completion and explain that people are crucial in the formula for success. This updated and revised edition of Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager offers practical, real-world insights for effective project management and guides you through the essentials of the value, people, and project management process: Scope Plan Engage Track and Adapt Close If you’re struggling to ensure multiple projects are finished with high value and on time, this book is for you. If you manage projects without the benefit of a team, this book is also for you. Change the way you think about project management—"project manager" may not be your official title, but with the right strategies, you can excel in this project economy.
The Second Edition of Leading Project Teams offers an accessible introduction to the important basics of project management while providing key issues and pointers on team leadership. Easy to read, this engaging book assumes little to no knowledge of project management. Leading Project Teams quickly leads the reader through the fundamentals including how to start a project, how to assign tasks, how to write clear project reports, and much, much more! New to the Second Edition: - New chapter on Risk Assessment - New coverage of running effective team meetings - Offers real world scenarios: Each chapter opens with a real-world project problem faced by a project leader. Selected from a wide range of industries--from academia to business to health care--each situation portrays how project work applies to real project problems in a variety of settings. - Identifies key expectations of project leaders: Concrete advice is given on leading project teams across a number of important leadership issues and on how project leaders should develop and guide project team members. - Provides quick-learning project tools: Many accessible tools are provided to help readers understand the basics of project management such as the work breakdown structure and project scheduling. Extensive coverage on team literature is offered to help students learn the basics of team construction and team dynamics.
For organizations to thrive, indeed to survive, in today's global economy, we must find ways to dramatically improve the performance of large-scale projects. Applying the concepts of complexity theory can complement conventional project management approaches and enable us to adapt to the unrelenting change that we ignore at our own peril. Managing Complex Projects: A New Model offers an innovative way of looking at projects and treating them as complex adaptive systems. Applying the principles of complexity thinking will enable project managers and leadership teams to manage large-scale initiatives successfully. • Explore how complexity thinking can be used to find new, creative ways to think about and manage projects • Diagnose complexity on a wide range of projects — from small, independent, short projects to highly complex, longer projects • Understand and manage the complexity of the business problem, opportunity, solution, and other dimensions that come into play when managing large-scale efforts Use the Project Complexity Model to determine the most effective approach to managing all aspects of a project based on the level of complexity involved.
This fifth edition provides a comprehensive resource for project managers. It describes the latest project management systems that use critical path methods.
Very few software projects are completed on time, on budget, and to their original specification causing the global IT software industry to lose billions each year in project overruns and reworking software. Research supports that projects usually fail because of management mistakes rather than technical mistakes. Risk Management in Software Development Projects focuses on what the practitioner needs to know about risk in the pursuit of delivering software projects. Risk Management in Software Development Projects will help all practicing IT Project Managers and IT Managers understand: * Key components of the risk management process * Current processes and best practices for software risk identification * Techniques of risk analysis * Risk Planning * Management processes and be able to develop the process for various organizations
