I've got several developers about to start working on the front end of a jquery-based web application. How can we structure the application so that multiple developers can work on the ui at the same time. The end result for the user will just be one web "page", but I don't all of the client development to occur in one file. There is alre...
When doing an in-house IT project, such as in a bank, it's very common to have a team with significant differences in both skill and talent among its members. As the biggest factor in project success is usually the people, this is a major project risk, and needs to be managed appropriately. What useful strategies have you found for deal...
Most developers understand the concept of wicked problems. What's a good analogy to use when explaining this concept to project managers? ...
Managing a software team is a different proposition than managing software. Most of those who become manager or lead of a software team are typically bright software developers who have done a great job over the years writing and managing code. However, transitioning into management or lead position proves to be difficult to them becaus...
We are an all Unix shop (Solaris, Linux). This last product cycle I returned to a project lead capacity, and needed to produce a schedule. I asked what tools my managers would accept, and was surprised to hear "text files". My teammate and I gamely tried this, and probably worse, HTML tables, to track the tasks we wanted to size. It was ...
Hi, Can anyone suggest which of the Redmine or Tracd would be a better option for project management? Currently I am planning to deploy it on a one project setup but plan to use it across multiple projects in the fututre. Which of the two is easier to deploy? I use windows. Any other software which is web based and comes with its own we...
Is Microsoft Project the best tool for managing software development or IT projects or is there an alternative that is better? ...
At what point in a team's growth must process change drastically? A lone coder can get away with source control and a brain. A team trying to ship large prepackaged software to local and international markets must have a bit more in place. If you've experienced a large transition in 'process': Was the team's process successfully chan...
Have you ever worked on a (full-time) project where using Agile methodologies actually allowed you to accomplish a 40-hour work-week? If so, what were the most valuable agile practices? ...
What are the ways that a hardware design group could use iterations and general agile practices to design boards? Such as: Should the hardware group be integrated with the project team? How does the hardware group schedule iteration work? Using stories? Because of the cost of PCB/board spins, could an agile team do a partial-featur...
I'm a Scrum newbie and looking to implement Scrum in my company. Obtaining buy-in is not a problem, it is my company and the developers are more than happy to work like this. The problem is that 75% of our revenue is derived from fixed length/fixed price projects. Ken Schwaber in his book, Agile Project Management with Scrum, covers t...
I want to implement Scrum, but I can't decide on a Sprint length. Ken Schwaber seems to relate that 30 days it the defacto... but I can't imagine waiting 30 days without the possibility of changing direction or reprioritizing. Our projects usually only last 1-3 months using the waterfall method and moving to Scrum would probably mean l...
Let me clear what is state information of a project: Any information that have to remembered or written and then retrieved when one resume its work on a project (for example, on the next morning when arrives at work, or at the evening when start to work on the side project). For example, when you open the project/solution how, where an...
I currently learning about scrum and want to learn from experienced professionals in the subject. Is velocity relevant for project that take 3 month (and usually have 2-3 intermediate deliveries to customer) ? I think it's not enough time to make a statistic relevant. Is it worth to record velocity per developer across the project to g...
I'm going through the interview process for a "PM" position at a certain company. From what I can tell PMs go to meetings and make Gantt charts all day. So... What do project/program managers do all day? p.s. I heard on the SO podcast that this question received a good # of answers and votes yet it was deleted... so I'm asking it aga...
What is the Best Online forum site for Project Management which has related news, articles, case studies and discussion boards? ...
In the situation of having a project initiated by a marketing or sales team, how can we capture the not so obvious requirements that the project be marketable, or even better, self marketing? In many cases the marketing/sales team can hardly enumerate the functional specs of what the project should do, let alone describing features to ...
The company I work for has historically had very little process as far as software development. Currently we don't really follow any specific method. The problem is of course it makes it difficult to plan, successfully have a decent release or even attract good software developers. I think I may be able to convince them to do some s...
What would you say are the most significant mistakes made by a typical project manager? By "most significant", I mean with a large negative impact on the project. And the context is line-of-business projects, where software isn't the main product of the organization. For each mistake you discuss, it would be great if you could note the...
I manage a small group and I'd keep my work breakdown in project. However, it's difficult to provide my team with an adequate view into the project and ability to report on their progress. I looked at MS Project Server (the sharepoint webpart) but it's an expensive proposition. Has anyone had any experience with any other tool (commer...