Architecture-Centric Software Project Management: A Practical Guide

Rating:
Summary: PM & Global Development
Review: Certainly the importance of mastering project management, in particular for products that contain signficant amounts of software, is crucial for business success, both at Siemens and elsewhere. This book is based on extensive practical experience and is a broad and well-written book on this topic. The special focus on software architecture as a major success factor for projects provides a useful perspective -- not only for project managers but also software architects as well as others in the software development team. This book also provides a unique "global development" perspective on the topic of project management.

Rating:
Summary: PM & Global Development
Review: Certainly the importance of mastering project management, in particular for products that contain signficant amounts of software, is crucial for business success, both at Siemens and elsewhere. This book is based on extensive practical experience and is a broad and well-written book on this topic. The special focus on software architecture as a major success factor for projects provides a useful perspective -- not only for project managers but also software architects as well as others in the software development team. This book also provides a unique "global development" perspective on the topic of project management.

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Summary: Describes an ideal manager for software development
Review: Constructing the appropriate team and environment for the creation of a software project is difficult because writing code is difficult. Many still object to the term "software engineering" because they feel, with a great deal of justification, that it is not yet stable enough to be a field of engineering. To them, a field of engineering has a set of formulas that define the rules for the use of raw materials. Engineers then construct their edifices by placing the proper numbers in the formulas and then building the structure using the results. Despite decades of effort to make it otherwise, software creation is still more art than engineering.
Paulish understands this and uses rules of thumb rather than formulas to describe the software construction process. It all starts with the software development plan (SDP), a description of the organizational structure of the process and the roles and responsibilities of all the members of the team. Short and primarily in outline form, it sets out the general format of how the goals are to be achieved. Experienced managers understand that this starts as a straw man, to be slowly solidified as all inputs are accepted and incorporated.
The hardest part of all software projects is the management of expectations, and it is the place where a manager can make the most difference. One of the quickest ways to poison a well functioning team is to allow unreasonable or inaccurate expectations to be inserted into the plan, either explicitly or by rumor. Paulish devotes chapter four to this, although it is too short. There is much more to this area than he lists in chapter four. Fortunately, this idea recurs in many other sections, so it does receive adequate coverage.
In the modern world, the management of a distributed workforce is fairly typical, and as anyone who has done it will tell you, in many cases the time differential is one of the smaller problems. Language difficulties also occur, but the real difficulties are the social and cultural differences. When you consider how difficult it is to communicate when you share the same cultural background, language, office space and are in proximity for eight hours a day, you realize how difficult it is to make yourself understood when you are separated by half a planet. Chapter 6 is devoted to this issue, but once again, not enough ink and paper are used to cover this critical area. The best piece of advice in the entire book is to undergo some form of focused multicultural training before embarking on an outsourcing project.
While there is a chapter devoted to metrics used to chart progress, it is largely devoid of formulas and expressions. Many of the metrics used are politely referred to as "controversial", which is often a euphemism for "widely disbelieved." Paulish firmly believes in leaving aside the firm tracking mechanisms and relying on hands-on efforts such as following the daily bug tracks and even working as an informal tester. This will give a manager a feel for the software that no other technique ever could.
One of the last chapters is also one of the best, where the simple question "What is a good job?" is asked and answered. This is critical, for software is one area where you can win the battle but lose the war. Many software projects deliver a functioning product and a team of dysfunctional members. The best managers reach the release date with a team that is tired and proud rather than just tired. Paulish rightly considers the staff turnover metric to be one of the key indicators of whether the project can be deemed a success.
Paulish describes a quality, maybe even an ideal manager, which is someone who absorbs a lot of the normal shocks of software development rather than amplifying them before passing them on. His ideas will work to make software development projects work over the long term and if you are in that group, then some of your attention should be focused on what he is saying.

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Summary: Sage insight into software architecture, project management
Review: I find this book enormously helpful with its wise insight into all aspects of software project management, in all the technical, managerial, political, marketing, and personnel areas that influence the success of software projects. Its emphasis on good architecture and design as the basis for good project management is essential for current and future project managers to understand and appreciate. The book is well-written, well researched, and very readable, particularly valuable in the insights from a manager who has worked in multiple divisions, multiple product domains, and in multiple countries with international engineering teams.

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Summary: Effective Software Project Management
Review: If you are a software project manager looking for ways to improve software development performance, then read this book. Architecture-Centric Software Project Management by Daniel Paulish is based on several years of real-life, industry experience and is full of practical advise for you to use and succeed with your software project. Software managers who have always wondered why their software teams don't/can't live up to their expectations should also find this book insightful.

Written in a simple straight-forward style, this books distills the practical wisdom gained for executing successful software projects. The essence of the book is Chapter 2 that captures the motivation for architecture-centered software project planning and outlines the core principles behind it. Organized in seven parts and divided in seventeen chapters, the book integrates in its presentation almost all the aspects of software project management while maintaining the architecture-centered view for executing software projects. Among its various chapters and topics the ones that particularly appealed to me are: Global Analysis (Chapter 3), Global Development (Chapter 6), Trade-offs and Project Decisions (Chapter 9) and Incremental Development (Chapter 10). In its part six, Paulish also presents two cases to illustrate the techniques described in the book.

With software projects becoming increasingly complex and globally distributed software development becoming a business necessity, Paulish's book should be of help to both the
seasoned and novice software project managers alike. After all, the most powerful ideas and techniques are those that are simple in nature but require a passionate and well thought-out implmentation, and this is what Paulish's book is about. Grab a copy of "Architecture-Centric Software Project Management" right away if you are looking for simple ways to be a effective software project manager and improve your project's
performance.

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Summary: Lynchpin of SEI's architecture and product-line material
Review: The ideal audience of this book includes anyone who works within, or who follows, SEI's (Software Engineering Institute's) extensive body of work on architecture and/or product line engineering, or who needs to develop a project management framework for software development. While the approach in this book is more suited for product-oriented development, it can also be used for major internal projects.

As the title implies, the focus on the project management framework is the architecture, and the key elements of the approach are planning, organizing, implementing and measuring. The latter element lends itself to continuous refinement and fits nicely into CMM level 4 and 5 organization, which is not surprising since the CMM is embedded in practically every guide produced by SEI.

What makes this book special, though, is the clearly defined approach that is systematically presented using case studies and frequent diagrams to orient you as you go through the book. More importantly, the author communicates a vision and shows how to put it into practice.

I like the approach because it lends itself to realistic project planning and estimation. By taking an architecture-centric approach it's easy to develop a complete work breakdown structure early in the planning phase, which provides a foundation for detailed estimating. I also like the way the approach separates, then integrates, team organization, requirements and strategy, risk management and release planning.

This is not another project management methodology, but instead, shows how to use architecture as the focal point of the project and use whatever specific PM methodology suits your organization to effectively define project deliverables and the final product. It's complete, realistic and will work in practice.

Rating:
Summary: A bridge between Project Management and SW Architecture
Review: This is the book I have been waiting for. It builds a bridge between Project Management and Software Architecture, the two most important aspects that contribute to the success of a software project. Usually Project Manager's view on a solution is different from Architect's and vise versa. Architecture-Centric Project Management helps the Project Manager to think from Software Architecture perspective and plan accordingly. I also liked the section about managing international development. We face the same issues mentioned in the book while dealing with global development. This book along with Applied Software Architecture by Hofmeister et al. is a good recipe for a successful software project.

Rating:
Summary: A bridge between Project Management and SW Architecture
Review: This is the book I have been waiting for. It builds a bridge between Project Management and Software Architecture, the two most important aspects that contribute to the success of a software project. Usually Project Manager's view on a solution is different from Architect's and vise versa. Architecture-Centric Project Management helps the Project Manager to think from Software Architecture perspective and plan accordingly. I also liked the section about managing international development. We face the same issues mentioned in the book while dealing with global development. This book along with Applied Software Architecture by Hofmeister et al. is a good recipe for a successful software project.