In Part 1 of this series, adapted from my book Practical Project Initiation, I shared four best practices that can help you lay the foundation for a successful project and two practices that are useful for project planning. This article continues the series by describing additional project planning best practices and several practices for estimating the […]
Managing software projects is difficult under the best circumstances. The project manager must balance competing stakeholder interests against the constraints of limited resources and time, ever-changing technologies, and challenging demands from high-pressure people. Project management is a juggling act, with too many balls in the air at once. Unfortunately, many new project managers receive little […]
[raw] To read the updated version of this article, visit www.jamasoftware.com/blog/defining-project-scope-context-use-case-diagrams/. [/raw] Every software team talks about project scope and team members often complain about unending scope creep. Unfortunately, the software industry lacks uniform definitions of these terms, and the requirements literature is short on clear guidance regarding how to even represent scope. I confront […]
Note: The following is an excerpt from our Forrester Consulting commissioned report, The State of Modern Product Delivery. Read the full report for key insights on the current trends and challenges in product delivery. Diversity of opinion is good, except when it gets in the way. Differing priorities compound the difficulties of product development when they […]
In the previous two articles in this series, adapted from my book Practical Project Initiation, I’ve described fifteen practices the project manager can apply to lay the foundation for a successful project, plan the project, and estimate the work to be done. In this final article I share two additional estimation practices, three good practices for […]
In Part 1 of this series, adapted from my book Practical Project Initiation, I shared four best practices that can help you lay the foundation for a successful project and two practices that are useful for project planning. This article continues the series by describing five additional project planning best practices and several practices for estimating […]
Managing software projects is difficult under the best circumstances. The project manager must balance competing stakeholder interests against the constraints of limited resources and time, ever-changing technologies, and challenging demands from high-pressure people. Project management is a juggling act, with too many balls in the air at once. Unfortunately, many new project managers receive little […]
I conclude this three-part series on the customer–development partnership by elaborating on the Requirements Bill of Responsibilities for Software Customers that I presented in part 1. Responsibility #1: To educate analysts and developers about your business BAs depend on you to educate them about your business concepts and terminology. The intent is not to transform […]
Software projects can derail in many ways. You can avoid making many classic mistakes if you study the many books and articles available on software engineering and project management, as well as the lessons your own teams have learned on previous projects. Sure, everyone’s very busy when you’re launching a new project, and taking the […]
Requirements will change and grow over the course of any software project. This is a natural aspect of software development. In fact, if a project doesn’t experience some requirements evolution, the team likely is ignoring reality and risks releasing an irrelevant product. The prudent project manager anticipates and plans to accommodate some requirements growth. Scope […]
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