Software Project Management Bible Needed!

[flipdoubt]

Hi all, I work for a company that is most certainly CMM Level 0 -- for info on CMM see http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/. We don't do CMM, I only dabbled with it at school. I'm not trying to implement CMM, but I do need to get a runaway project back under control and I'm turning to the JaguarPC community to recommend your favorite Software Project Management book, software, or religion. I need to be lead by the ear.

Do any of you have a source you trust? I've tried "The Pragmatic Programmer" but came away empty handed.

Any suggestions are duly appreciated.

[megmond]

Heh. I believe that if you don't do anything to control your software development, you are already CMM level 1, so you're doing *really* badly

I have worked with CMM in the past and present (I helped set up CMM-based procedures for software development at a company I worked for last year). CMM is a really good tool to help you find all the things you need to do (or at least those that may be useful in your organization).

Since you already have the site, there is probably no point referring you there, but if you download the manuals from the website (you might have to search, there are several documents of interest which you can download as PDFs).

I found the documents quite readable, and they provide a good insight in what things are useful to do (and why!).

We ended up implementing most (not all) items from CMM level 2, and I believe one from level 3 (as we felt those were the proper things for us to do at that point - we weren't focussing on becoming certified).

If your project is already underway it might be very difficult to get it back on track if a lot of work has already been done. Depending on the scale of the project (duration, number of people involved, management commitment) it might take anywhere from a month to a year or longer to get a reasonable CMM-like procedure up and running (and make sure you include the time it takes to convince people to use the procedures! Just 'approving' the procedures doesn't mean they will get used properly...)

In any case, you should probably empty your mind of the project, take a deep breath, and start planning from the ground up as if there was (almost) nothing there yet. Again this depends on how much work is already done in the project and the scale - sometimes it's just not possible to do this.

Also, be prepared to judge the current 'delivered' items of the project as objectively as possible, and put that next to the effort required to start fresh - but with a proper procedure. While in larger projects it is usually impossible to start again from scratch, if your project is really off-track at the moment and nobody can oversee it, it might be the best option...

Good luck!

[Jon]

Originally posted by megmond
Heh. I believe that if you don't do anything to control your software development, you are already CMM level 1, so you're doing *really* badly

Exactly what I was thinking! Perhaps he's managing the HostGUI project???

For more on what it mean to be CMM Level 0 see this resource:

http://www.grisha.ru/cmm/cimm.htm