Software development methodology book for project managers

Question

What book do you recommend on software development methodologies (or on a specific methodology) that good for project managers? So I'm looking for a book that overviews methodologies from the aspect of a PM not a developer.

Answer 1

I recommend PeopleWare.

Also have a look at Book Reviews article.

Answer 2

The Mythical Man Month

It explains in details (what most PMOs fail to understand :-)) :

"adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"

Answer 3

Read No Silver Bullet, for an insight into why any general methodology is not going to solve your specific problems.

Answer 4

I assume you mean development methodologies (e.g. SCRUM, Waterfall, XP) as opposed to project management methodologies (e.g. PRINCE2)?

Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck is a pretty good, very straight forward book on Extreme Programming, one of the most agile of the agile methodologies.

Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber or Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum by Mike Cohn are both pretty good SCRUM books.

The Rational Unified Process Made Easy: A Practitioners Guide to the RUP by Per Kroll is a pretty good Rational Unified Process book.

Answer 5

It depends on how much time you have and how much you want to learn. I can't think of any particular resource that surveys different processes - just books that go in-depth on a particular method or best practices.

I can list a few books.

http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Software-Process-Watts-Humphrey/dp/0201180952/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272554747&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/Software-Project-Survival-Guide-Practices/dp/1572316217/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1272554807&sr=8-4

I think Gerald Weinberg also wrote a book related to the topic but I can't seem to find the particular one I am thinking of. It had a blue cover if I recall.

There are lots of others of course, but it really depends on what you want to get out of it.