Introduction and content

Thousands of books and millions of lectures have been written on project management over the past ten years. What could be the benefit of another lecture course?

The history of this course dates back to the times when I was in charge of software development at CBOSS. One of the tasks that had to be addressed was the introduction of project management into development. When, as part of this implementation, the first project managers underwent external training, they expressed doubts about the effectiveness of this approach, since “detailed planning for Operation Storm in the Desert” has very little to do with the urgent tasks of the program project manager.

It was hard to argue with this, since software development has its own specifics, which do not fit well into classical project management. Therefore, it was decided to prepare its own course on project management in software development. Thus, the first version of this “course of the young fighter” appeared, which was intended for beginner project managers and their superiors. There was no task to replace PMI’s body of knowledge from PMI. Every professional project manager should know and understand the best practices outlined in this guide. The lectures included only 20% of knowledge about the discipline of project management, but this knowledge will be in demand in 80% of the situations that project participants will have to face in real work.

Since then, this course has been read dozens of times in the course of corporate and open trainings for managers of software projects and leaders of development teams from leading Russian software companies. The structure and content of the course has been constantly improved, thanks to the feedback received from the students in the course of active discussions and discussions with colleagues on the projects they have completed. Finally, there was a feeling of a certain stabilization of the current version. Therefore, the “features freeze” mode was announced and the course was decided to be documented.

Well, and to whom is this happiness?

First of all, I would like to hope that the lectures will be useful to students who are going to be professionally engaged in software development. In universities, languages ​​and programming systems, theory of algorithms and relational databases, somewhere even OOP, design patterns and a lot of other things are studied, but I haven’t met any courses that would teach you how to work. Professional software development has little to do with "spiking laboratories." Coming into industrial software development, a young specialist learns through trial and error for a long time what to do at work. And he spends even more time understanding how to do it this way and not otherwise. I would like to fill this gap.

The second category of readers to whom this book is addressed is novice program project leaders and leaders of development teams that have left programmers. People are not software components, so a good programmer does not always become a good leader. I hope that this course will help them not only analyze risks, plan and control project work, but also, and most importantly, will teach people to understand, interact effectively with them, resolve conflicts and provide adequate motivation for productive work.

And finally, the third category of readers are managers who have previously successfully managed projects in other industries and received an appointment to lead software development projects. I would be satisfied if this course helps them understand that software development has its own characteristics, compared with other industries that need to be known and understood in order to communicate more meaningfully with their subordinates.

• Foreword

Lecture 1. Introduction to software engineering

• History and basic concepts
• Differences of software engineering from other industries
• The evolution of approaches to the management of software projects
• Software Development Models
• What should be done for the success of a software project
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 2. Project management. Definitions and Concepts

• The project - the basis of innovation
• Project Success Criteria
• Project and organizational structure of the company
• Organization of the project team
• Project life cycle. Phases and Products
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 3. Project initiation

• Project Priority Management
• Project concept
• Objectives and results of the project
• Assumptions and limitations
• Key actors and stakeholders
• Resources
• Timing
• Risks
• Acceptance criteria
• Project Justification
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 4. Project Planning

• Clarification of the content and scope of work
• Content management planning
• Organizational planning
• Configuration Management Planning
• Quality management planning
• Basic project schedule
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 5. Project Risk Management

• Basic concepts
• Risk management planning
• Risk identification
• Qualitative risk analysis
• Quantitative risk analysis
• Risk response planning
• The main risks of software projects and how to respond
• Risk Reduction Project Management
• Risk monitoring and control
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 6. Evaluation of the complexity and timing of software development

• Estimation - probabilistic statement
• Negative consequences of the "aggressive" schedule
• Pragmatic approach. PERT method
• Function point method overview
• Basics of COCOMO II metopics
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 7. Team building

• Leadership and management
• Right people
• Motivation
• Effective interaction
• findings
• Additional literature and sources

Lecture 8. Project implementation

• Work planning
• Principles of quantitative management
• Completion of the project
• findings
• Additional literature and sources
• Conclusion Grow professionals