Customer Reviews

The Project Manager's Guide to Software Engineering's Best Practices (Practitioners)

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This is a completely updated book that departs from the earlier "Software Engineering Project Management" by Thayer (1997) in that it's more anchored in software engineering standards than in project management. To be sure, this book is about project management, but takes a more holistic view.

The best practices, predicated upon the view that the common thread is software engineering standards and practices, are presented in three sections:

(1)Software Systems Engineering - a critical success factor for any software project.
(2) Process Management and Control - what must be done in order to effectively scope, support and manage the development process itself.
(3) Project Planning and Management - standard fare, including estimation, risk management, and metrics.

Each of these sections contain papers that discuss aspects of the topic area, which include: Software Systems Engineering, Concept of Operations, Software Requirements Specification, Software User Documentation, Software Verification and Validation, Software Life Cycle Process Management, Software Process Improvement, Software Reviews, Software Configuration Management, Software Quality Assurance, Maintenance, Software Engineering Project Management, Software Cost and Schedule, Software Risk Management and Software Metrics.

Personally I completely agree with the book's approach (standards and processes are critical to successful development projects). However, even if taken as individual papers, each chapter presents excellent advice and insights that will benefit not only project managers, but all members of a development team. If you do agree with me that the overall approach is valid you will also find " SWEBOK: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge" by Alain Abran(ISBN 0769510000) will complement this book by providing more foundation material about key areas of the software engineering process.