Project Management for Software Development
Tutorials and tools for managing, estimating, planning and tracking software development projects: PMP, Agile, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
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...
Continuous delivery is a software development strategy that optimizes your delivery process to get high-quality, valuable software delivered as quickly as possible. A common failure mode of software projects is called the large batch death-spiral, whereby product owners, in an attempt to ensure the success of their product, add more...
Is there a relationship between the dependency of project tasks and the achievement of work close to the estimated date? This is the discussion that Assaf Stone carries in his blog post “Do Agile Estimation Techniques Really Account for Scrum Projects’ Successes?“. His conclusion is that a project with multi-dependent...
PMP certification is only one piece in the puzzle of project management expertise. This articles discusses the three main pillars of successful project management: knowledge, experience and people skills. These three sisters play complementary roles and have a symbiotic relationship.
Many agile implementations start off with good intentions, but do not deliver on the promise of agile. This article discusses three recurring themes of failure related to agile implementations: inexperience, lack of planning and limited executive sponsorship. Before you embark on your agile initiative, or if you are looking to...
This article presents the story of a project that was performed in a Scrum manner without even knowing that the method was Scrum. What initially looked like an impossible project was delivered in six months, with exceptional customer satisfaction and confidence all around. Facing uncertain requirements, the team decided to...
What is the project manager supposed to do when teams are transitioning to Scrum? This question has already been asked and answered many times, but the answers are often different and sometimes contradict each other. This article discusses ways the project manager can fit into the Scrum, based on personal...
Carl Erickson shares in this blog post a study done on 564 information systems projects that seems to indicate that smaller teams are more efficient than larger teams. Small teams were defined with less than 5 people and large teams with more than 20 people. To complete projects of 100,000...