Applied Software Project Management by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene
Publisher Comments
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 multiplelarge-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 http: //www.stellman-greene.com.
Synopsis: Software project management is the art and science of planning and leading software projects. It requires knowledge of the entire software development lifecycle: defining the vision, planning the tasks, gathering the people who will do the work, estimating the effort, creating the schedule, overseeing the work, gathering the requirements, designing and programming the software, and testing the end product. Throughout the process, there are many team members responsible for these tasks; the project manager needs to have enough knowledge of their work to make sure the project is staying on track.
To be effective, a project manager must have a wide range of expertise. Applied Software Project Management provides an introduction to all of these areas to help you guide the rest of your team on their tasks.
This practical book provides essential project management tools, techniques, and practices--all designed to keep your team focused. Whether you're starting a software project from scratch, or fixing an ailing one, this handy guide is your ticket to success. Key discussion points include how to:
Define the scope of your project
Estimate the effort required to do the work
Gather the right people for the job
Create an effective schedule
Review and inspect projects as they progress
Diagnose and fix design and programming flaws
Provide guidance if your project encounters quality problems
Manage an outsourced project
All of these lessons have been optimized to be as straightforward and easy to implement as possible. The book includes a checklist of major points at the end of every chapter and pragmatic advice for avoiding problems before they occur.
Written by a group of seasoned project managers, Applied Software Project Management will help you build better software. If your organization incorporates all, some, or even one of these practices, chances are you'll see a noticeable improvement in the efficiency of your projects.
Product Details
Retail Price:$39.95PMB Price: $32.00 ISBN: 978-0596009489 Publication Date: 1-Nov-05 Publisher: O'Reilly Media Author: Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene Binding: Paperback Language: English Pages: 308
