Project Management for Software Development
Tutorials and tools for managing, estimating, planning and tracking software development projects: PMP, Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
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?”
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...
Many project tracking taskboards look like they were imposed on the team. They are monochromatic, small and rarely providing too much useful information. A clear and informative taskboard is the heart of a successful team. It keeps everyone focused, radiates loads of information useful on many occasions.
Every organization has to make the decision to replace or make significant business changes to their current legacy system or codebase. Using well-known, core Agile principles, we have found that this transition to software that adapts to rapid business change does not have to be painful, nor expensive, nor technically...
In project management, the measurements and metrics are important activities for successful product development. This article describes a set of metrics successfully used in industrial practice in distributed product development. Based on the experiences, the reasoning for selecting these metrics was that they are easy to capture and can be...
This shares a case study of an organization that needed to re-establish itself as a leader in a transformed financial market. This required the early delivery of business benefit from its new channel website, but when the project was planned using the organization’s standard waterfall approach, it showed the requirements...
Teams are not mentioned in the definition of Kanban. In his blog post, Yuval Yeret discusses the impact on team structure when an organization is trying to adopt Kanban. He proposes a categorization of teams modes and an evolutionary approach on how to use them when you adopt Kanban, starting...
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...
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