Project Management for Software Development
Tutorials and tools for managing, estimating, planning and tracking software development projects: PMP, Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
If you’re worrying about how you’re doing, you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing. When you’re panicking, you’re not improving. This lightning talk explores the value of focusing on process rather than progress in order to deliver quality while staying sane.
“Honesty is the best policy. Truth will out. In vino, veritas.” We have many quotations and sayings which call out honesty and truthfulness to be strong, always winning out over lies and politics. Could it be the same in project management?
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.
We spend a large portion of our time thinking about code and technical project issues. What about the people side of things? The majority of project failures occur because of people, not technology. What we need are guides that help us navigate the waters between the people around us.
The article “Familiar Metric Management – Small is Beautiful Once Again” (PDF) by Lawrence H. Putnam and Ware Myers discusses the fact that in software development projects, small teams are more efficient than larger one. They provides metrics showing that the concept of using small teams in software development is...
In this interesting blog post, Glen Alleman discusses the concept of competency models for project managers. He lists a set of elements that should be used to assess project managers in the following areas of competence: performance measurement, status reporting, organizational processes, team building, staff development, perspective, negotiation, risk management,...
In this article, Christophe Le Coent discusses shared responsibilities and clear accountability in software development projects. He proposes a RACI+F matrix where the letters have the following meaning: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed, Facilitate. This allows to create RACI+F matrix for the Scrum project activities for each Scrum roles. This matrix...
Estimation in software project management is often an issue. This blog post discusses some psychological aspects of estimating in software development. It explains the following effect that impact our estimation activity: The “halo” effect, framing effects, overconfidence, attribute Substitution, base-rate neglect and anchoring. It defines what they are and give...