Project Management for Software Development
Tutorials and tools for managing, estimating, planning and tracking software development projects: PMP, Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
Collaboration is an essential ingredient in healthy Agile project communities, yet in my experience truly effective collaboration is perhaps the hardest thing to do well. We have become so adept at using e-mail, instant messaging, voice mail, and telephones to communicate that we have lost our preference for face-to-face communications.
Agile approaches use relative estimations to size requirements during the planning phase. Instead of the traditional man/days measure, you use story points that follow a Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, … Playing “planning poker” allows the team to attribute story points to each user stories...
As Agile adoption is spreading and more software development teams want to adopt an Agile project management approach like Scrum. In this article, Robert Karlsson ask the question the question “Why should your boss let you implement Scrum in your organization?”. Your boss might be satisfied with the current situation...
Estimation is a touchy topic in software development projects. In this article, Grant Rule proposes a quick and easy guide to accurate early estimating of software project size, costs and viability based on clothing sizes: Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large.
In this blog post, Brian Bozzuto discusses the concept of resiliency in project planning. Resiliency is defined by the capability of a system to recover to a stable, functioning state after failure or adverse events. He believes that resiliency is an interesting concept can be used when planning for a...
In this article, Markus Sprunck explores the benefits of estimating probabilities in project management. He explains that deviations in projects estimations lead to systematic over-or underestimation of the project efforts. Probabilities are seldom used in project management due to the lack of tools that integrate this concept in their computations....
In this blog post, Thomas Cagley discusses the need to size the scope of a software development project during the estimation activity. His opinion is that the main benefit of sizing is the conversation that this effort generates. But as managers and estimators are numbers people, it is not safe...
One very important property in Kanban is called “make process policies explicit”. This includes well-defined interfaces to upstream as well as downstream partners. Kanban tries to define these interfaces on a very abstract level, because Kanban is a change management approach that wants to integrate with several possible project management...
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