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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Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is not about project management.In fact, someone versed in the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge will cringe at some of the statements made in the book (more about that below).It is, however, about delivering successful commercial web sites and it provides the best approach I have ever seen.
Here are some of the things that make this not only unique, but the most authoritative book I have read on the subject:
(1) It is not an IT centric book that focuses on technical issues. The author brings to the forefront the real critical success factors in the form of four equal sets of requirements:commercial, creative, content and technical.In 2000 I was a member of a multi-million dollar dot com project team for a large international company, and from that experience I totally agree with the author's view.
(2)The author manages to balance the time-to-market pressures that permeate commercial web projects with the by-the-numbers method imposed by IT.As such, this book addresses the development life cycle from inception to production by aligning implementation to development life cycle stages. It manages to accomplish this and still cut the project's cycle time by removing any fluff.What is fluff?The tons of non-essential paperwork produced by some of the larger consulting companies.What is not missing are the essentials, as evidenced by the repeated emphasis on testing, the attention given to configuration and change management, and the realities of post-implementation support.These are extremely important and are too often overlooked.
(3) The project controls that are proposed in this book are exceptional.While the author muddles through stuff like the proper definition of critical path, he shows how to effectively control a project by managing to deliverables.Contrast this with the common mistake of managing to a schedule and you will see the real effectiveness of his methods.So, while he misses the mark on some project management fundamentals, he sure makes up for it in pragmatism.He also makes up for his "transgressions" by laying out a project roadmap that, if followed, will guarantee success. If we project management "purists" lighten up a bit while reading this stuff we might learn a trick or two.
The big surprise is the author is not an IT professional - his background is TV producer! Or, perhaps it's not a surprise at all considering the fact that there is no room for failure or missed production schedules in the TV industry, while the IT profession is notorious for massive schedule and cost overruns.What impressed me greatly is the wide range of technical issues that are addressed:browser compatibility, content formats, scripting languages, etc.For someone without an IT background the author demonstrates a solid grasp of real-life issues and gotchas.
Those of us in IT need to carefully read the parts that address creative and content management.We are used to working with technical peers from vendors - working with copywriters and artists requires a wholly different way of interacting and communicating.Moreover, content needs to be treated in an entirely different matter than data, and it also comes with an array of legal issues that we are not trained to think about.
What I discovered , despite my previous involvement with a commercial web project, is there are so many factors I had never considered prior to reading this book that most projects are flying blind.As such, this book should be read by every team member, creative, content (artists and copywriters), technical, legal and commercial (marketing)*before* undertaking such a project.This will ensure that the entire team sees the big picture and understands the complex interrelationships, and all issues and factors are addressed.Mr. Friedlein deserves the highest accolades for making what I believe to be the most significant contribution to this field. My only regret is that I am limited to 5 stars.

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Web Project Management presents a solid Web project management method for building commercial Web sites.Developed by pres.co, a leading interactive agency, this refined eight-stage approach lets you closely manage your project's contributors, quality, costs, and schedules.Importantly, the book also details how to define, measure and understand the success of your project on an ongoing basis.This book is an indispensable resource, whether you are a project manager, online manager, Web director, consultant or producer.

* Includes insider tips from the perspective of the world's leading Web developers.
* Focuses on project management as it relates to e-commerce.
* Teaches you to organize and put together a team, develop goals, manage schedules and budgets, overcome pitfalls, maintain, evaluate and evolve a commercial Web presence.
* Includes an introduction to the key principles of Web project management and a case study of the Channel 5 Web site-a popular project managed by the author.
* Provides templates, via a companion Web site, that you can use to develop your own project documentation, a discussion forum, links to related sites, a glossary of terms, a database of useful white papers, and an Internet knowledge quiz.

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Real Web Project Management: Case Studies and Best Practices from the Trenches Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm working with a design studio that is now offering web services to its clients. This book has been very helpful, giving us a look at web projects and procedures.

It is skewed to larger projects than we will likely be involved in.

The best parts of the book are the descriptions of real projects and real problems.

Humor helps the message get through: that these kinds of projects frequently change, new problems crop up, people don't always react the way you'd expect and that it's all part of the job.

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Web project management is a relatively new and expanding profession. It has developed as people have discovered how different web site development is from traditional software projects. Web project managers are not only found in technology companies or dot coms. As companies of all sizes in all industries rush to integrate the web into their daily business operations, employees are being asked to manage web projects of all shapes and sizes. As veterans of the internet industry, the authors offer detailed solutions to managing web projects. They will present tools and real-world advice on both techniques for success as well as pitfalls to avoid. The numerous examples and case studies are based on their own success at iVillage.com as well as other web sites they have worked on. Rather than presenting a rigid methodology, the authors present a toolbox of tips, tricks, anecdotes, and case studies that will help the reader come up with a Web development methodology that works for him or her.

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