Applied Software Project Management [Paperback]

Andrew Stellman (Author), Jennifer Greene (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0596009488 | ISBN-13: 978-0596009489 | Edition: 1

"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 multiple large-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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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 multiple large-scale outsourced projects. Between the two of them, they have managed every aspect of software development. They formed Stellman & Greene Consulting in 2003, with a focus on project management, software development, management consulting and software process improvement. They have worked in a wide range of industries, including finance, telecommunications, media, non-profit, entertainment, natural language processing, science and academia. For more information about them and this book, visit http://www.stellman-greene.com.

Jennifer Greene has managed quality assurance teams at multiple software organizations. Her project experience spans many domains, including academic research, financial services and analysis, natural language processing and grants management. She has been responsible for leading process improvement efforts as well as implementing best practices in defect prevention. She is currently leading a major software test outsourcing effort for MicroEdge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (November 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009488
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009489
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.7 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #371,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book with real-word experience April 21, 2006

By ueberhund VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I found this to be an excellent book on software project management. Many of the project management books I have picked up have been either too theory-based or not relevant to the day-to-day problems that exist in software development. I found this book both relevant and practical.

This book is divided into two sections. The first section discusses the tools involved in software project management, while the second section discusses how to actually manage a software project effectively.

The first section goes through all the tools required to effective manage a software project. The authors dedicate entire chapters to SOW creation, estimation, scheduling, coding (including a discussion on source control providers), and testing. In each chapter, not only do the authors describe the process, but in certain cases, they provide tips to help things go smoother. For example, in the chapter on estimation, the authors provide several different ways to accurately estimate project tasks. I found many of these additional tips very helpful.

In the second section of the book, the authors discuss how to effectively manage a software development team using the tools discussed in section one. The authors don't specifically use the word "agile", but I found that most of section two became a discussion on agile practices. Again, the word "agile" was never used, however, I found it both interesting and refreshing to hear a book on project management discussing how to be adaptable to change.

I was very pleased with this book. I thought it was a realistic and well-thought out book on software project management. This book goes a long way toward arming someone with the tools they need to effectively manage a software development project.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great process and management tool! December 2, 2005

By O. Fishel

Format:Paperback

I've tried many project management processes and have searched through most of the popular literature over the years trying to find the best way to implement real process change. Much of the literature describes the processes well but ignores the implementation entirely. Applied Software Project Management does a wonderful job both describing the various tools and techniques and giving detailed instructions on how to implement them. The book even goes so far as to describing how to implement processes in an organization that is openly hostile to change and/or process in general.

I find this book to be an invaluable resource for any project manager. It's great for newbies, who will learn all the vocabulary and process theory. Experienced project managers will learn new tools and techniques as well as innovatives ways of getting them implemented.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Improve Team Efficiency May 18, 2006

By Dan McKinnon VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The software engineering process is a complicated one to say the least. Like any other product that gets "created" by the effort of a team, you need great direction and leadership to solve real world problems. You cannot simply throw more people at the problem in order to get things done, and that's where good management can make the difference when it comes to making a software product get out the door fast, efficient, and successfully.

'Applied Software Product Management' by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene tackles this problem and they it's a extremely helpful read for anyone that wants to improve the process of developing software at their company. Relying off of real world experience for many, many years, the authors discuss topics such as: planning, scheduling, hiring, requirements, good coding, and testing like few others have ever done in a written form.

If you are a manager of a team, a group, or an entire company, you would be remiss to not pick up a copy of this book. The amount of great ideas and guidance contained within will no doubt fill in the leaks in your company structure, but most likely take your company to the next level. I found the information contained within to be well-written and easy to follow.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED