P2E--Software Project Management Bibliography

From Practice to Experience

Code Inspection

Jack Barnard, Art Price, "Managing Code Inspection Information," IEEE Software, March 1994: Excellent case study on improving the effectiveness of code inspections. The paper describes a disciplined approach for defining metrics using the Goal, Question, Metric paradigm. The authors report on nine key metrics for planning, monitoring and improving inspections.

Software Engineering and Project Management - General

Bill Curtis, Herb Krasner, Neil Iscoe, "A Field Study of the Software Design Process for Large Systems," Communications of the ACM, November 1988, Vol 31, Number 11: Landmark article both with respect to conclusions and research methods. Case study reporting on 17 projects and their obstacles of delivering a quality software product that meets the customer needs. The findings are reported from the perspective of the individual contributor, team, project, company and business milieu. The major obstacles are: (1) The thin spread of application domain knowledge, (2) Fluctuating and conflicting requirements, and (3) Communication and coordination breakdowns.
Marc Rettig, Gary Simons, "A Project Planning and Development Process for Small Teams," Communications of the ACM, October 1993, Vol 36, Number 10: The article describes project management techniques, software development process steps and deliverables for putting the Spiral Software Development Process into practice. Many templates and reports on experiences, peppered with principles and values.
Robert Kraut, Lynn Streeter, "Coordination in Software Development," Communication of the ACM, March 1995, Vol 38 Number 3: Case study reporting on communication practices and coordination for improving the software development process. The study reports that formal and indirect communication means (documentation) are unsatisfactory. Informal communication and feedback from people outside of the project are most valuable.
James P. Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling and Control," Probus Publishing, ISBN 1-55 738-204-2: My favorite book on project management, written from a practitioner's heart and mind. Excellent coverage on scheduling and controlling.
Matthew Pittman, "Lessons Learned in Managing Object-Oriented Development," IEEE Software, January 1993: The article provides a planning outline for planning software projects using object-oriented analysis and design. Proposes an incremental/
David Lindstrom, "Five Ways to Destroy a Development Project," IEEE Software, September 1993: Lessons learned from working in the trenches. The article reports on evaluation criteria for establishing a measurement program.

Monitoring and Controlling

Hans Thamhain, David Wilemon, "Criteria for Controlling Projects According to Plan," Project Management Journal, June 1986: A case study reporting on what 400 project managers think the biggest obstacles are. The number one problem is "end-date driven schedules." The key finding is that five out of 10 problems are related to organizational/managerial human aspects, such as gaining commitment from team members and management, communicating effectively among task groups, and dealing with conflict.

Cost Models

Chris Kemerer, "An Empirical Validation of Software Cost Estimation Models," Communication of the ACM, May 1987, Vol 30 Number 5: A study comparing two proprietary and two commercially available cost estimation models. The key finding is that after calibrating these cost models to company specific project data, 88 percent of the behavior of a project can be explained. The quality of the results are comparable between commercial and public-domain cost models. There are no differences in the quality of estimates between size-based and function count-based cost models.

Requirements Specification

Donald Gause, Gerald Weinberg, "Exploring Requirements Quality before Design," Dorset House Publishing, ISBN 9-932633-13-7: Excellent overview of requirements gathering techniques that are practical and can be tailored to specific company needs. The focus is on the social process of gathering requirements.

Software Engineering

Frederick P. Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month," Addison Wesley Publishing, ISBN 0-201-00650-2: Good observations, concrete suggestions and clear on principles and values on how to develop software system products.

Software Architecture

Mary Shaw, "Comparing Architectural Design Styles," IEEE Software, November 1995: Comparison of 11 different analysis and design methods using the cruise control problem as an example. The article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the different methods.

Software Risk Management

Barry Boehm, "Software Risk Management: Principles and Practices," IEEE Software, January 1991: Excellent tutorial on software risk management. The article includes a simple procedure for preparing a risk management plan that is not time consuming.
Richard Fairley, "Risk Management for Software Projects," IEEE Software, May 1994: Case study for identifying risks, defining quantifiable metrics for monitoring the risks and creating probability models for describing and evaluating their costs.

Software Test Design

John Musa, "Operational Profiles in Software Reliability Engineering," IEEE Software, March 1993

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