7.1 Introduction

The perceived importance of project management has been increasing in the years since Peter Drucker (Drucker 1993) introduced it as a topic worthy of discussion and specialization in the 1950s. Management of software development projects has also been a much discussed area. It is fair to say software development projects are among the most complex undertakings. It is also fair to say that they have consistently been poorly managed, given the rate of success of projects in our industry (http://www.standishgroup.com/) versus projects in other industries.

We all understand that a lack of good project managers is a problem. The Project Management Institute (PMI) (http://www.pmi.org) was founded to create a "profession" of project management, much like the professions of accounting, law, or medicine. This has been a fantastic positive step for advancing project management knowledge and prestige.

In this chapter, we will examine why software projects are managed poorly, where we believe the problems come from, and what some possible solutions are. Considering this is a book about requirements for software, this may seem to be an overreaching goal for this chapter. However, we believe the requirements activity and project management have become increasingly intertwined. In the past, project managers have held themselves away from specific scope issues and managed more with work breakdown structures, timesheets, task lists, and issue logs. As we've progressed as an industry, we have evolved into a new style of project management that recognizes the "management importance" of requirements activities.

First, we'll examine the existing ways of project management. Then we'll look at the improvements teams are making to manage more effectively, complementing the changes in the requirements process.