Effective Software Project Management

From the Perspective of the Project Manager

You want to do whatever you can to not waste time—your time, the time of your team, and even the time of your customer. To do that you will do whatever you can to make sure you and the team understand what the customer needs and that the customer understands what you will deliver. The less certain either party is of what will be delivered, the more your strategy should tend towards the agile approaches (Iterative, Adaptive, or Extreme). Each of these choices minimizes guessing as to future undefined requirements, functions, or features. With guessing minimized, it minimizes wasted time due to incorrect assumptions on the part of anyone. The project environment is characterized by aggressive schedules, tight resources, and limited budgets. Any waste that can be prevented must be prevented. And that means no guessing.

Project managers don’t want any surprises. Surprises can come from the enterprise, the customer, resource managers, or the development team itself.

• Change in the financial position of the enterprise often plays itself out in the form of budget adjustments. Projects are an easy target because they are not part of the operational budget of the enterprise. Budgets can be cut by reducing project scope, extending the time line, or canceling altogether. In anticipation of these developments, the project manager should be prepared. That preparation could simply be a collaborative prioritization of the deliverables with the customer. ...