Chapter 19: Project Management Methodologies

Overview

As a Web development professional, you might be curious to know whether a software architect can effectively manage projects. The answer is, "Yes! Provided that you have a bit of training under your belt."

Even if you are never confronted with your own project to manage, you will find it immensely useful to understand what the project manager, who is running the show, has to contend with on a daily basis. It will make you stronger as a software architect and as an individual to understand and be sympathetic to the skills required to run a successful development project from start to finish.

And in the event that you do find yourself in charge of a team of bright-eyed young developers one day, you'll find that the skills gleaned from this chapter and the next will serve you well.

This chapter discusses how to collate business requirements into a coherent brief and how to respond appropriately with a rock-solid specification and project plan. You'll learn how to identify and select the key personnel you need to work underneath you, as well as how to guide and manage them throughout the project life cycle. You'll also look at a couple of programming paradigms, discover how to evaluate their usefulness for your own project, and look at the two key approaches to tackling the development work on the shop floor. Finally, you'll discover how to effectively manage your working relationship with your clients.

Admittedly, this chapter doesn't have a whole lot to do with PHP. Nonetheless, the material covered is very relevant to any PHP project you might work on, even though the techniques demonstrated apply just as much to ASP, Java any language. We decided to include them in this book nonetheless because they might well revolutionize the way you tackle big projects.