LARGE SOFTWARE PROJECTS Risking Life and Limb By Ansar Muhammad PDF
Preview LARGE SOFTWARE PROJECTS Risking Life and Limb By Ansar Muhammad
LARGE SOFTWARE PROJECTS Risking Life and Limb By Ansar Muhammad & Rahim Hasnani (Contributing Author) Book website: www.largesoftwareprojects.com Large Software Projects This work is released under the Creative Commons License by Ansar Muhammad and Rahim Hasnani You are free to Share – to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work to Remix – to make derivative works Under the following conditions Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. - For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work - Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holders - Apart from the remix rights granted under this license, nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights The full license can be accessed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/legalcode Page 2 of 129 Large Software Projects CONTENTS Acknowledgement 6 Who Should Read This Book? 7 Introduction 8 Part 1 – The Story 10 So It Begins 11 All that Glitters 14 Trouble 15 The Inner Voice 18 Experience 20 Knowing What You Want 22 Think Before You Leap 25 Divide And Conquer 28 Do They Like It Too 33 The Big Day 34 Bull’s Eye 37 There Is Method To This Madness 39 The True Test 43 Need Some Lady Luck 46 Page 3 of 129 Large Software Projects Is Everyone On The Same Page 48 The Sum Of All Fears 52 What’s All The Excitement About Use Cases? 54 Sharing The Plan 57 Having Fun 58 The First PMT Meeting 63 The First Release 65 Minha Delivers On The Promise 66 The Customer Gets The First Exposure 68 Eihaab To The Rescue 71 Motivation 73 Planning The Transition 76 Managing Change 78 Train, Train and Train Some More 81 Both Projects Come To An End 84 Part 2 – Lesson’s Learned 88 Part 3 – What You Should Avoid 106 Management 108 Page 4 of 129 Large Software Projects Technical 119 Concluding Thoughts 127 Reviews 128 Authors 129 Page 5 of 129 Large Software Projects ACKNOWLEDGEMENT No book can be written without unrelenting support from close family and friends. This book is no different in this regard. We thank them for being part of our lives and standing behind us in our endeavours. Special thanks go to our friends who proof read the script and made innumerable valuable suggestions. We thank our parents without whose devotion and love we would not have been able to write a single word, leave alone a book. Page 6 of 129 Large Software Projects WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK This book primarily has been written for new project managers who are just starting out with large software projects. We hope that this book will also help anyone who is involved in the development or implementation / deployment of large software projects. They can belong to the technical community or to the large community of users / sponsors / stakeholders who receive and use the ultimate end products / software. Page 7 of 129 Large Software Projects INTRODUCTION This book tries to explain some of the key concepts of managing large software development projects in the form of a story. The idea is borrowed from Patrick Lencioni, whose books like “Death by Meeting” and “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” have shown that it is better to teach through examples and stories than to give theory and more theory. The lessons learned through this approach tend to stick in the reader’s mind long afterwards. We have tried not to cram too much information in this book; instead we have taken a few themes that we want to talk about and focused on those only. Some of the themes discussed in this book are dividing a project to manage it better, managing scope creep, managing productive teams, writing good requirement specifications, etc. We have divided the book into three parts. The first part “The Story” covers a story which gives the reader an understanding of the issues involved in managing large software development projects. The second part “Lessons Learned” explains the thoughts expressed in each chapter to highlight the message and theme behind the conversation. The third part “What you should avoid?” tries to list most of the mistakes that you should try to avoid while planning and executing large Page 8 of 129 Large Software Projects software projects. This list is a work in progress. There are many good books from Steve McConnell and other authors who have written on software development methodologies and software project management practices and we would encourage our readers to read these books as well. Life is just too short to learn from our own mistakes! You should be able to read this book in a few hours and that is exactly the idea; to keep it short and simple. We have tried to make the book interesting so that you can read it as your bedtime story book! This book is part of a series that is planned to be written so that our readers get good exposure to most of the key concepts related to the topic at hand. Page 9 of 129 Large Software Projects PART 1 THE STORY Page 10 of 129
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