Software Project Management

Cool checklist to check yourself, to check how your project/team is doing.

Interesting reading on psychology: how to do UI presentations. Or, rather, what to be aware of.

Basics of iterative/incremental development. There is an assumption that agile is a variation of it.

(Russian) Very informative blog of one Russian project manager.

(Russian Article) Explains lots of various PM-related stuff. Includes: use PERT to estimate tasks and risks; method to prioritize bugs based on "value/risk rectangle" ("квадрат риск-приоритет"), and others.

Short (but to-the-point) explanation of how to use PERT approach to estimation of tasks. What's important, it gives a formula to calculate confidence level.

One more tool. Commercial again :( But this one, they support Kanban board, integrated into the overall system. With bug tracking and effort tracking. They say you can use it for Kanban, Scrum, or whatever your process is.

Here is another online tool for project management. Not free, again :( Haven't tried it, but would like to. Uses evidence-based estimations, built in.

Here is the Pivotal Tracker home page. Used to be free. Now they want some money :( You can use it for free under some limitations, though.

(Russian article) Explains psychological things: why developers think managers are idiots, and why managers thing that developers are spoiled kids. And what manager can do to fix/avoid this problem.

Overview of Pivotal Tracker tool. I've been using this tool for about 3 years now, and can say it's cool.

(Russian article) Gives an overview of how one can use regular reports (like weekly reports) "for good" and "for bad".

Lots of PM-related stuff. Will try to subscribe and see if it is worth monitoring.

(Russian article) Interesting idea for sustaining long projects: while working on bugs/features in a long project, you get to know its problems, deep architectural problems. So, spend some time and work on the "ideal" architecture, the one you'd build from the very beginning if you knew everything you know now. Knowing this "ideal" architecture will help you drive the project in the right direction.

Online service (free) to create and share boards. Can be used to visualize project status and workflow (as in Kanban).

(Russian article) Explains basic management principles, based on chinese philosophy (TAO), and their applicability to software project management.

Starting point for Scrum research. Basics explained.

The article outlines a simple approach to effort estimation, based on the past experience of the team members (statistical).

The article outlines a simple approach to effort estimation, based on the past experience of the team members (statistical).

A variation of burndown chart which allows to visually identify how fast the team is resolving the items, and also, what is the rate of adding new work items in the middle of the work.

A variation of burndown chart which allows to visually identify how fast the team is resolving the items, and also, what is the rate of adding new work items in the middle of the work.