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Category Archives: Project Management

IASA / NYCJava – thanks for having us by!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Jenny and I had a great time doing our “Why Projects Fail” talk at a joint meeting between the International Association of Software Architects and NYC Java SIG (a couple of announcements) at the Microsoft office in midtown Manhattan last night. (Fun trivia fact: my first job out of college was in the same building, [...]

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“That estimate seems a little long.”

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Ever spend time working up an accurate estimate with your team, and find that it gets rejected because it doesn’t match a magic number in somebody’s head? You did your homework; talked to the people who’ve done this kind of work before, compared your estimate to past projects, and made sure that your estimates are [...]

Also filed in Software Development, Software Engineering | | Comments (0)

Late projects, man-months and the software crisis

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

I recently got a question recently asking about Fred Brooks’ famous quote: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” The person asking the question took it literally, and was asking about whether this meant that there’s no way any schedule estimation technique could indicate that adding manpower could shorten delivery time. Fred [...]

Also filed in Software Engineering | | Comments (1)

Useful ideas for really large projects.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

How do you manage a large project? There’s a big difference between managing a project team with, say, ten people and a team with a hundred. That shouldn’t be too surprising. But if you’re managing your first large project, it can be really daunting. Luckily, there’s been a lot of good work done on understanding [...]

Also filed in PM Clinic | | Comments (0)

What about Agile?

Friday, April 27, 2007

One of the best things about writing a Head First book is that you get feedback from other Head First authors. Our editor, Brett (who you may know from Head First OOA&D), got some interesting feedback from Bert Bates. Bert was going through Head First PMP, and pointed out — and rightly so — that [...]

Also filed in Agile, Software Development | | Comments (2)