Review - Applied Software Project Management

Sean — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 18:39:00 +0100

O’Reilly has recently begun a new line of books called ”/Theory/In/Practice” (and no, I don’t know why it isn’t listed on their web page). These books cover such topics as “Essential Business Process Modeling” and “Applied Software Project Management”. It was my pleasure to secure a copy of “Applied Software Project Management” right before I left for the holidays. Since I am doing some project management now, I figured doing some reading certainly couldn’t hurt, right?

“Applied Software Project Management” is a generalist book. It is modular; no chapter really relying on any other. It covers the whole range of software project and management topics from planning, to managing people, to software testing and everything in between. While a lot of the ideas covered are really only effective for larger teams than the ones I am usually involved with, there are a lot of useful ideas for smaller teams as well. Perhaps the most valuable – Part 2: Using Project Management Effectively. It focuses more on understanding and incorporating changes into an already existing system.

This book reminds me somewhat of Code Complete (a good technical book in my opinion). The fact that it is general enough to be useful to a wide variety of people, yet specific enough to get its points across makes it extremely valuable. Also enjoyable is the fact that it very rarely focuses on specific tools (the only major case of this being the use of Subversion), and when it mentions one specific tool, it always refers to several specific instances (such as mentioning Perforce, Arch, CVS, etc. after mentioning Subversion).

“Applied Software Project Management” is one of the better books I have read from O’Reilly. At no point was I bogged down in technical concepts I couldn’t understand. It was actually quite difficult to put down until I finished whatever section I was reading at any given time. I recommend this book to anyone involved in software project management.

Final Rating: 4.5/5

“Applied Software Project Management�? is available from O’Reilly Media, Inc. for CAN $55.95. Sample chapters can be obtained @ The O’Reilly Catalog

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Review - Applied Software Project Management