Product Description

This book provides a clear and provocative discussion of the economics, metrics, and management strategies necessary to plan and execute a software project successfully. Royce discusses, with refreshing candor, some of the fads, follies, and excesses of the software industry, clearly differentiating proven techniques and obsolete methods. Paired with this insightful examination are compelling arguments for new management approaches that are sure to stimulate debate. The relative impacts of these new techniques are quantified through simple economic analyses, common sense, and anecdotal evidence. The resulting framework strikes a pragmatic balance between theory and practice that can be readily applied in today's challenging development environment. An extensive case study analysis of a large-scale, million-line project deployed successfully on schedule and under budget using these methods further illustrates their application.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #516952 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For a cutting-edge take on how to manage today's object-oriented, iterative software development processes, take a look at Walker Royce's Software Project Management. This readable, comprehensive guide shows how well-managed software teams can produce better, more profitable software in less time.

The book begins by outlining the "traditional" waterfall approach to software development. The author looks at what changes for management when it comes to today's iterative software processes. Written with an eye toward management (with plenty of tables and figures for project estimation and planning), the author takes you through common pitfalls of managing software.

Besides reviewing older studies and metrics, the author offers his own 10 principles to managing software, along with hints for all facets of development, from initial inception to construction and deployment of software. The author provides detailed project milestones and other deliverables to help you manage software better, including a breakdown of tasks for your team that will help maximize your efficiency.

After a look forward at what better software management means for return on investment (ROI), the author presents several very useful appendices, which include software metrics (like COCOMO), as well as a description of the CCPDS-R missile command system (which used many of the author's management principles). Overall, this groundbreaking title will be useful to any software manager or project leader seeking to get control of software costs and improve team efficiency. --Richard Dragan

From the Back Cover

Software Project Management presents a new management framework uniquely suited to the complexities of modern software development. Walker Royce's pragmatic perspective exposes the shortcomings of many well-accepted management priorities and equips software professionals with state of the art knowledge derived from his twenty years of successful from the trenches project management experience.

This book provides a clear and provocative discussion of the economics, metrics, and management strategies needed to plan and execute a software project successfully. Royce discusses--with refreshing candor--some of the fads, follies, and excesses of the software industry, clearly differentiating proven techniques from obsolete methods. Paired with this insightful examination are compelling arguments for new management approaches that are sure to stimulate debate. The relative impacts of these new techniques are quantified through simple economic analyses, common sense, and anecdotal evidence. The resulting framework strikes a pragmatic balance between theory and practice that can be readily applied in today's challenging development environment. An extensive case study analysis of a large-scale, million-line project--deployed successfully on schedule and under budget using these techniques--further illustrates their application.

Software Project Management provides the software industry with field-proven benchmarks for making tactical decisions and strategic choices that will enhance an organization's probability of success. This book includes:

• Top ten principles for modern software management
• Strategies for smoothly transitioning an organization to modern processes and technologies (such as Rational's Unified process)
• Methods for keeping software engineering teams motivated and effectively prioritized
• Insight into the impacts of technology, people, and economics on managing a project
• Metrics and forecasting guidance for project costs, schedules, and quality control

About the Author

Walker Royce is a Vice President and General Manager at Rational Software Corporation. During the past two decades at Rational and TRW he has performed in roles ranging from coder, designer, integrator, cost estimator, and trainer to software architect, project manager, product manager, R&D manager, technical fellow, and principal consultant.

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Customer Reviews

Hard going, a weighty tome, not a jumpstart for RUP
Just a note of warning. This book is not an introductory work and it presupposes a fair bit of knowledge on the part of the reader. It may well reflect lots of practical experience, but it reads like an academic text to me. It will require a lot of committed time to get value out of this book. It is not for a project manager who is an a hurry to get started on a project. Nor is it a guide for project managers who are about to work with the RUP or Objectory processes.

Nonetheless I don't dispute that it is an excellent work and full of wisdom.

Impractical and over-complicated but with useful insights
This is not a good practical introduction to software project management. It uses confusing language and regularly uses terms before defining them in chapters much later on, by which time I was totally confused and had wasted a lot of time and effort trying to figure out what was meant.

This reads like a book by that college professor whom no one ever understood. It is undoubtedly well researched and contains many valuable insights. Unfortunately they have been obfuscated with unnecessarily complicated language and academia-speak. A lot of effort is required to get the most out of the book. A wasted opportunity! A book full of really useful information, clouded by its delivery. Some of the sentences look like strings of randomly assembled manager speak -- meaningless -- it's only after careful analysis that each sentence can be understood, and by then the flow and context have been lost.

If you're thinking -- this guy must be thick, he didn't get it -- then be warned, I'm no slouch. Degree from Oxford, eight years experience developing and managing software projects. This book was understandable, but only just.

I suggest buying Steve McConnell's "Software Project Survival Guide". Along with "Code Complete" and "Rapid Development" these will give you more readily understandable info than "Software Project Management" will.

good book on a subject which is not easy to address
The author provides valuable insight into what is the art and science of successful project management. The key word introduced by Mr. Royce is "balance". Balance between formal techniches and common sense, balance between technology and people, etc.

Unfortunately, software project management still remains an immature subject: there is no general agreement among the gurus about what are the best metrics, and even the recommendations remain subjective. The last chapters give valuable advice on how the standard metrics could be complemented with new approaches in the context of managing ever challenging software environments. If the concepts had been treated with less repetitions the book would have been worth 5 stars.