Project Management for Software Development
Tutorials and tools for managing, estimating, planning and tracking software development projects: PMP, Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
Corey Ladas wrote a classic essay on Scrum-ban where he discusses Scrum and Kanban hybrids. He presents the concept of index card and explains that Kanban is more than just a work request on a card and putting sticky notes on a whiteboard is not enough to implement a pull...
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...
In this blog post, Steve Andrews discusses the usage of team velocity to plan the next Scrum sprints and how can we use it to make more informed management decisions. Using a quantitative management approach and Agile methods allows us to actually measure the impact of management decisions on the...
In this blog post, Johanna Rothman shows some of the common problem of teams that think they start using Scrum but stick to traditional project management planning. Some of the smells of this situation could be the fact that the ScrumMaster keep preparing Gantt charts for the iteration or that...
In this article, Brian Tarbox and Heather Mardis try to answer the classical question: “how long is this going to take?” They discuss the notion of velocity in Scrum and how to use it to estimate future sprints. But not all projects use the Scrum framework and people rarely record...
This article share some key points for project managers that are starting out on Agile projects. These key points are process knowledge and coaching, effective communication, work transparency, acceptance of change and continuous planning, encouragement of a self-managing team. He concludes that Agile processes usually succeed when a PM and...
Do project managers in software development use software to manage their projects? Or does the shoemaker’s son always go barefoot as the famous proverb says? A recent Methods & Tools poll asked the following question: “Does your project use a software tool to plan, estimate and track project activities?”
David Martin had a problem as a project manager: his projects never came out on time or on budget. He tried to apply all PMBOK best-practice guidelines: taking care of schedules, tracking progress carefully, making sure that the team estimate correctly and ensure requirements stability. It still didn’t work and...