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.

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.

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

Product Details

Retail Price: $39.95 PMB Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0596009489
Publication Date: 1-Nov-05
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Author: Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages:  308