Preface

Software project management is the art and science of planning and leading software projects. It requires knowledge of the entire software development lifecycle: defining the vision, planning the tasks, gathering the people who will do the work, estimating the effort, creating the schedule, overseeing the work, gathering the requirements, designing and programming the software, and testing the end product. Throughout the process, there are many team members who are responsible for these tasks; the project manager needs to have enough knowledge of their work to make sure the project is staying on track.

To be effective, a project manager must have a wide range of expertise. In this book, we provide an introduction to all of these areas so that you can guide the rest of your team on their tasks. We help you run successful software projects, and we help you diagnose and fix the ones that have gone off track.