The Software Project Manager's Handbook

Software project managers and their team members work individually towards a common goal. This book guides both, emphasizing basic principles that work at work. Software at work should be pleasant and productive, not just one or the other. The author's unique approach stresses that success on software projects has more to do with how people think individually and in groups than with programming. Visibility and communication are more important than SQL and C. Personal and group techniques outweigh the latest tools. The first part of the text discusses elements of effective software management. It introduces the four themes: (1) balancing people, process, product, (2) making ideas visible, (3) applying configuration management properly, and (4) using Standards. The author summarizes past successful projects and why others failed. The second part describes the requirements, planning, and risk management stages of the development cycle. These contain the hard part of software development and how the four principles help people who love to code work through essential but unpopular tasks. The third part of the book looks at the middle and late stages of development -- design, test and integration, and maintenance. It discusses dealing with customers who want to be designers, avoiding endless test-fix cycles, and working maintenance so no one feels like a second-class citizen. The last part of the book is a cookbook that discusses three projects in light of the basic principles. These projects walk step-by-step through a waterfall, an evolutionary, and a spiral project.