Agile Excellence for Product Managers: A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams Review

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(More customer reviews)This excellent book provides practical information for Product Management strategies for Agile product development.The ideas within will help you improve the role of PM in your organization and make you more effective.It guides the reader through all phases of product development with clear tactics for maximizing communication and impact.I have incorporated the technique into my work and have seen positive results already.

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Product Description:
Organizations are constantly struggling with complex development projects and are in search for a few, straightforward, and easy to learn methods to help deal with their problems.For this reason, more and more software companies are rapidly turning to Agile development to cope with fast changing markets, unknown or changing product requirements, borderless competition, andto solve complex problems.Yet little has been written to guide product managers through the transition in working with Agile teams and the numerous benefits that it affords.
'Agile Excellence for Product Managers' is a plain speaking guide on how to work with Agile development teams to achieve phenomenal product success. It covers the why and how of agile development (including Scrum, XP, and Lean,) the role of product management, release planning, release management, road mapping, creating and prioritizing a product backlog, documentation, product launches, organizational implications and more.It is a must read for product managers making the switch to Agile development as well as product owners and project managers looking for better ways to organize and lead in their companies.

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Managing Enterprise Projects Using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, Second Edition (Epm Learning) Review

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(More customer reviews)After having been spoiled by Mr. Chefetz's Project Server 2002 book, I was disappointed in this work. My primary complaint with this book is that it is much less complete than the earlier book. As another reviewer mentioned, this edition does not even have an index. In addition, the coverage of enterprise outline codes, enterprise fields, Project Web Access views, built-in functions and the differences between Project Center and Project views was all less than stellar.The other gripe I have is that what was deliverd in one book before (Chefetz's 2002 book), is now separated into two $50+ books.Is this a conspiracy by the publisher to sell more books?

That being said, the basics of MS Project Server were covered, and this book should serve well as an introductory treatment on the subject.

I'm still looking for a solid reference manual for the 2003 product.

James T. Heires, PMP
President
James Heires Consulting, Inc.
Home of EZ-Metrix code counting tool
(...)

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Product Description:
The only book devoted to Project Server for Project Managers, Managing Enterprise Projects using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, Second Edition guides you through the layers of new functions and features you must know to manage projects effectively using Microsoft's innovative enterprise project management software. This second edition covers updates to the software made through service packs one and two and includes new topics and a rich index. Award winning technologists Gary Chefetz and Dale Howard put years of field experience into your hands through a structured learning approach including hands-on exercises to reinforce each learning module. This book is perfect for users who already use a Microsoft Project version as a stand-alone tool, and want to acquire Microsoft EPM skills.

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Practical Software Estimation: Function Point Methods for Insourced and Outsourced Projects Review

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(More customer reviews)Much of the book is devoted to explaining the Function Point method for estimating the size of a software package that has yet to be written. The basic problem is that software is so intangible compared to designing hardware. Which makes it hard to define objective metrics. But the author suggests that finding the function points of a software package is the best approach. He also points out a key distinction between the size and the effort needed to write the package. The effort is essentially the number of person months. If you can get a reliable estimate of the size, then estimating the effort should be easier.

While the book gives detailed explanations of how to find the function points, there is still an inherent subjectivity. Minimised mainly through experience. You need to work on several projects and apply the method. The strongest point in favour of function points could be that it is independent of how the software is written.

To an American reader, a major interesting aspect of the book is its take on insourcing versus outsourcing. The author is a top executive at Infosys, one of the largest Indian outsourcing firms. You should look at chapter 11, which debates this issue. A commendably balanced treatment, giving tables that clearly lay out the pros and cons of either approach. There is no bias towards going with outsourcing.

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"A clearly written book that is a useful primer for a very complicated set of topics." --Capers Jones, Chief Scientist Emeritus, Software Productivity Research LLCPractical Software Estimationbrings together today's most valuable tips, techniques, and bestpractices for accurately estimating software project efforts, costs,and schedules. Written by a leading expert in the field, it addressesthe full spectrum of real-world challenges faced by those who mustdevelop reliable estimates. M. A.Parthasarathy draws on the immense experience of Infosys, one of theworld's largest and most respected providers of IT-enabled businesssolutions, to bring you the only book with detailed guidance onestimating insourced and outsourced software projects, as well asprojects that blend both approaches. He demonstrates how tosuccessfully utilize Function Point (FP) methods, the industry'sleading estimation model. Then, using real case studies, hesystematically identifies pitfalls that can lead to inaccurateestimates--and offers proven solutions. Coverage includes

How to estimate all types of software projects, including "fresh" development, reengineering, and maintenance
How to incorporate the impact of core project elements on estimates: scope, environment, experience, and tools
FP analysis from start to finish: data and transaction functions, general system characteristics, and more
FP methods for any platform or business function
Innovative re-estimation methods to track progress
How to quote RFPs and prepare contracts: fixed price, time/material, and project execution lifecycle models
Alternatives to FP: Delphi, COCOMO II, and COSMIC-FFP
How to choose the right estimation tools

Practical Software Estimationis the definitive reference for anyone who must estimate softwareprojects accurately: project and IT managers, individual developers,system designers, architects, executives, consultants, and outsourcersalike.






List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Role of Estimation in Software Projects
Chapter 3: A Study of Function Point Analysis
Chapter 4: Data Functions
Chapter 5: Transactional Functions
Chapter 6: General System Characteristics
Chapter 7: Size, Effort, and Scheduling of Projects
Chapter 8: Estimation Flavors
Chapter 9: A Sense of Where You Are
Chapter 10: Tips, Tricks, and Traps
Chapter 11: Insourcing versus Outsourcing
Chapter 12: Key Factors in Software Contracts
Chapter 13: Project Estimation and Costing
Chapter 14: Other Estimation Methods
Chapter 15: Estimation Tools
Chapter 16: Estimation Case Study
Appendix A: Reference Tables: Transaction Function Counts
Appendix B: Reference Tables: Data Function Points
Bibliography
Index

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Evaluating Project Decisions: Case Studies in Software Engineering Review

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(More customer reviews)Carl L. Hoover, Mel Rosso-Llopart and Gil Taran's EVALUATING PROJECT DECISIONS is a powerful survey of software project managers introducing an innovative design model to help evaluate decisions. From project stages and objectives to proper product definition and business decision impacts on stakeholders and global development, this is a key for both software and business libraries alike.

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Effective decisions are crucial to the success of any software project, but to make better decisions you need a better decision-making process. In Evaluating Project Decisions, leading project management experts introduce an innovative decision model that helps you tailor your decision-making process to systematically evaluate all of your decisions and avoid the bad choices that lead to project failure.Using a real-world, case study approach, the authors show how to evaluate software project problems and situations more effectively, thoughtfully assess your alternatives, and improve the decisions you make. Drawing on their own extensive research and experience, the authors bridge software engineering theory and practice, offering guidance that is both well-grounded and actionable. They present dozens of detailed examples from both successful and unsuccessful projects, illustrating what to do and what not to do.Evaluating Project Decisions will help you to analyze your options and ultimately make better decisions at every stage in your project, including:

Requirements–Elicitation, description, verification, validation, negotiation, contracting, and management over the software life cycle
Estimates–Conceptual solution design, decomposition, resource and overhead allocation, estimate construction, and change management
Planning–Defining objectives, policies, and scope; planning tasks, milestones, schedules, budgets, staff and other resources; and managing projects against plans
Product–Proper product definition, development process management, QA, configuration management, delivery, installation, training, and field service
Process–Defining, selecting, understanding, teaching, and measuring processes; evaluating process performance; and process improvement or optimization

In addition, you will see how to evaluate decisions related to risk, people, stakeholder expectations, and global development. Simply put, you'll use what you learn here on every project, in any industry, whatever your goals, and for projects of any duration, size, or type.

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Agile Portfolio Management Review

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(More customer reviews)I was looking forward to this book! An important hole in the current agile literature and a book only on this subject. Finally... but ... I'm extremely disappointed.

Jochen Krebs' Agile Portfolio Management consists of 3 parts. Part one is called "Agile for Managers", part two is the things about portfolio management and part three is *other* called organization and environment.

The first part consists of three chapters. The first chapter consists a general motivation for agile development and responding to change. The second chapter is a short introduction to Agile development and the last chapter an introduction to project management. This takes up 1/4th of the book. The explanations are poorly written and full with misunderstandings. To give a concrete example, on page 27 Jochen is suggesting that in Scrum you can not have any other meetings except for the daily Scrum. A recommendation which I've never heard before and I'm pretty sure he didn't actually mean that!

Part two consists of about 125 pages and is the main subject of the book, though it starts with three somewhat introduction chapters called Foundation, Metrics and Return of Investment. These chapters don't show too much experience from the author. The suggestion that TDD and Continuous Integration finds defects early so that one of the main quality metrics is open defect count is absurd and goes directly against advise of great agile literature like "Art of Agile development" or "Sustainable Software Development". It gives the feeling the author simply forgot to learn about agile development before he wrote the book. The explanation of story points was vague, the explanation of Use Case points unnecessary. The talk about return of investment forgot to give actual tools for doing so.

After the first 100 pages, I almost threw away the book and was pretty sure I would rate it 1 start. Though, luckily it started to improve. If you buy this book, I recommend to skip the first 100 pages :)

Chapter 7, 8, and 9 cover three portfolios: Project, resource and asset. The project portfolio covered some good ideas like increasing the portfolio decision frequency, using agile metrics and making other decisions than go/kill. The resource portfolio chapter was poor and doesn't talk much about resource management. The asset portfolio chapter is short but covers some important topics not covered frequently in other places.

Part three just consists of two chapters. The first one uses Scrum to become a portfolio management process. I found the idea interest and absurd. Especially the daily portfolio meeting and the portfolio master seen a sure sign of misapplication. The chapter is speculative, the real story about the real situation is missing. It made me doubt the author has actually done this. The second chapter of part three is a chapter about the PMO. I very strongly disagree with the suggestions from the author, especially making the PMO larger for Agile organizations.

In other words, I only thought that part two was worth my time (and only half of that) thats about 50 pages... Next to this, the writing and editing of the book was poor. Some constructions seem very German and sentences are constructed poorly making me sleepy while reading. I wonder if Microsoft Press did any editing at all or supported the author at all. Quite disappointing.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It's probably better to read some traditional portfolio management book (e.g. Coopers Portfolio Management for New Products) together with some basic Agile books and especially Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning (which covers much of the ROI and value calculation, but explained better). If you read all of these and want some insights and ideas from this book, just read chapter 7, 8 and 9 and skip the rest.

I still rated this book three stars, which is probably too high. After the first 100 pages, I was sure it would not be higher than 1 star. But some chapters contained some insights and that made me decide to give it 2 stars. I switched to three stars simply because I applaud the attempt. This is a new area, there is no existing material and it is great Jochen took this opportunity and tried to fill a gap. Though, a different book is probably needed.

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Product Description:
Find out how your company s full project portfolio can benefit from the principles of agility from an expert on agile processes. Agile software development is now more popular than ever, but agility doesn t need to stop there. This guide takes a big-picture look at how portfolio managers and project managers can make use of proven agile development methods to increase organizational efficiency.

It can be difficult for companies to manage multiple development teams and to ensure that they are in line with evolving corporate strategies. Agile project-management methods help you build more flexible processes that invite feedback and collaboration, adapt to change, and gain better project insights. They enable project teams to execute corporate strategy and top-level managers to make sound decisions. This guide delivers practical, real-world strategies for implementing agile methods across your organization. Learn best practices for reassessing your company-wide processes; successfully coordinating multiple software teams without imposing a rigid, top-down structure; developing clear roles and responsibilities; and transitioning to an agile enterprise.

Key Book Benefits:

Delivers practical, real-world guidance on bringing agile software development methods to your entire enterprise Provides specific suggestions for improving processes, developing clear roles, and making decisions Features a survey of popular agile project management methods

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Principles of Software Development Leadership: Applying Project Management Principles to Agile Software Development Review

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(More customer reviews)It could be argued that the Project Management process, as defined by the PMBOK, is the antithesis of agile.However unlikely, the author does a great job of describing how a project can remain true to agile software development methods within the confines of the PM process. The book fully covers what is needed to accomplish software development from the project management perspective while incorporating agile methods throughout the process.Though it is not a step by step "how-to" guide to agile software development (there are plenty of other books and online sources that cover this), it does fully describe how managers can assure agile product development is incorporated within the PM framework.The author obviously has a great deal of experience in the field and that is reflected in the interesting research cited and the comprehensive bibliographic references at the end of each chapter. Real world examples enliven what could otherwise be somewhat dull subject matter.

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The software development market continues to grow worldwide. As projects become more complicated and the pressure to "do more with less" becomes the rule of thumb, the need for software managers to be well-versed with project management best practices becomes even more critical. Ultimately, every software development leader's primary responsibility is to lead their organization to deliver quality products on time and under budget, but until now, there hasn't been a concise set of principles for managers to follow to ensure these goals are met. "Principles of Software Development Leadership: Applying Project Management Principles to Agile Software Development" successfully integrates principles outlined by PMI in its Project Management Body of Knowledge with software leadership best practices. It provides all levels of software management, from program managers and project managers to software executives, with a set of best practices that will collectively create successful outcomes, and in turn will motivate software teams to deliver quality products on time. Especially important in today's fast-paced environment, Principles of Software Development Leadership also shows software managers how to deliver quality products on time through the management of the relationship between planning, process, and people.Tips are presented on how to run software development like a business, master scheduling, track improvement, find and retain talent, and much more.

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Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) Review

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(More customer reviews)Coaching of all forms--whether of kids playing basketball or software professionals learning to ScrumMasters or other agile leaders--is difficult. The advice given often boils down to "here's how I do it..." or "you should always do..." The first style of advice fails because the coach's personal style may differ dramatically from the apprentice's style. Techniques that appear honest and sincere when one person uses them may appear forced and artificial when used by another. The second style fails because it is directive and ignores important differences in context between two coaching opportunities. In "Coaching Agile Teams," Lyssa Adkins avoids both of these traps.

It would be easy to write a book like "101 Coaching Situations and What to Do in Them." Such a book would present a problem and offer good advice for that situation. If the book was done well, readers could leave the book knowing what to do in precisely 101 situations. But the reader of uch a book would not know what to do about the million other problems he or she is likely to encounter as a coach or ScrumMaster.

The reader of that imaginary book would not have learned how to think through coaching situations. Adkins' book is very different. Her book teaches you to think like a coach. You won't leave this book with 101 memorized solutions to problems, but you will leave knowing dozens and dozens of new tools and ways of approaching situations. These will allow you to solve just about any coaching challenge I can imagine.

Throughout the book, Adkins points out that one thing a good coach does is look for teaching or coaching opportunities. These are the perfect moments for a coach to make a point and for others to learn from it. I encountered many such perfect opportunities while reading "Coaching Agile Teams." Adkins was able to teach me numerous, practical things in each chapter. I am confident others will also learn a great deal from this book.

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Product Description:
The Provocative and Practical Guide to Coaching Agile Teams
As an agile coach, you can help project teams become outstanding at agile, creating products that make them proud and helping organizations reap the powerful benefits of teams that deliver both innovation and excellence.





More and more frequently, ScrumMasters and project managers are being asked to coach agile teams. But it's a challenging role. It requires new skills-as well as a subtle understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Migrating from "command and control" to agile coaching requires a whole new mind-set.





In Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins gives agile coaches the insights they need to adopt this new mind-set and to guide teams to extraordinary performance in a re-energized work environment. You'll gain a deep view into the role of the agile coach, discover what works and what doesn't, and learn how to adapt powerful skills from many allied disciplines, including the fields of professional coaching and mentoring.





Coverage includes

Understanding what it takes to be a great agile coach
Mastering all of the agile coach's roles: teacher, mentor, problem solver, conflict navigator, and performance coach
Creating an environment where self-organized, high-performance teams can emerge
Coaching teams past cooperation and into full collaboration
Evolving your leadership style as your team grows and changes
Staying actively engaged without dominating your team and stunting its growth
Recognizing failure, recovery, and success modes in your coaching
Getting the most out of your own personal agile coaching journey

Whether you're an agile coach, leader, trainer, mentor, facilitator, ScrumMaster, project manager, product owner, or team member, this book will help you become skilled at helping others become truly great. What could possibly be more rewarding?

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Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) Review

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(More customer reviews)Agile Project Management with Scrum is a wonderful book. The author, Ken Schwaber (one of the originators of the Scrum process), informs us through case studies and anecdotes.If you like learning by example, this book is for you. Scrum is quite likely the best starting point for most companies interested in pursuing an agile development process. The readability and excellent anecdotes in this book make it a fantastic starting point for any journey into agile development.
I loved seeing how Schwaber applied Scrum in many varying situations. Rather than introducing each case study one at a time, the book is organized around key areas. Multiple anecdotes are given for each key area. Throughout each chapter, Schwaber brings the anecdotes together in Lessons Learned sections and the chapters conclude by helping point out the conclusions we learn to draw from the anecdotes.
I appreciated that Schwaber was not shy about mentioning projects that didn't go perfectly-including one he got fired from for being too zealous in his role of sheepdog guarding his flock of developers.
Although this book is ostensibly about software development, Scrum has its roots in general new product development and can (and has been) applied to a wide variety of development projects. A problem with a process like Scrum is that it is best learned by "feeling it" rather than being told about it. There are many subtle differences between Scrum and a more command-and-control management process. Learning Scrum by reading a book filled with examples like this is the best way to get the feel for how to use it on your own projects.

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Apply the principles of Scrum, one of the most popular agile programming methods, to software project management-and focus your team on delivering real business value. Author Ken Schwaber, a leader in the agile process movement and a co-creator of Scrum, brings his vast expertise to helping you guide the product and software development process more effectively and efficiently. Help eliminate the ambiguity into which so many software projects are borne, where vision and planning documents are essentially thrown over the wall to developers. This high-level reference describes how to use Scrum to manage complex technology projects in detail, combining expert insights with examples and case studies based on Scrum. Emphasizing practice over theory, this book explores every aspect of using Scrum, focusing on driving projects for maximum return on investment.

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