Rapidly Change IT Project

The subject of this book is the skills that are needed for managing software
projects in the Internet era, when projects evolve rapidly, requirements change
often, and new methodologies, techniques, and tools for management emerge.
In this book, I have tried to transfer all my experience and the lessons learned
about the different topics that are discussed — how to deal with people; how
to manage a group; and how to develop, manage, and maintain a software
project (Section I of the book).

While reading the book, consider that the experiences described and the methodologies
and techniques discussed are based mainly on a particular target
business environment that is described in Section II of the book and that is
more and more common in the Internet era — small companies or small teams
in large companies that deal with small to medium projects that adopt leading
edge technologies and therefore are subject to vast changes during their lifetime.
I have focused on describing the Agile methodologies for software development
and management, since I think that they are the most suitable approach
when one is faced with a rapidly changing IT project. Obviously, I also have
introduced classical methodologies, since one must know enough of all the
methodologies in order to select the most suitable one.

Last, but not least, I also have presented the Agile methodology that I have
developed (ADPD), which also can be employed suitably in all environments
that classically are against the Agile approach, since it can be stated that ADPD
is compliant to CMM-SW Level 3 and, during its adoption, software measurement
and UML can be adopted profitably without abandoning the Agile approach.

This book is organized into two main sections: the first is related to project
management and to the skills that a team manager or a project manager must
have; the second is related more directly to software production process and
assessment. While the first part of the book is less technically oriented, the
second part contains an overview of methodologies, software life cycles, and
techniques for software development focusing on Agile programming and also
giving the reader an overview of techniques for UML and software measurements adoption.

Section I is divided in six chapters: Team Working, Time Management, Presentation,
Training, People Management, and Delegation.
Section II is divided in nine chapters: The Target Business Environment,
Classical Methodologies, Techniques, and Tools for Project Management,
Agile Development, eXtreme Programming, Agile and Defined Project Development,
ADPD and SW-CMM, ADPD and UML Adoption, Software
Measurement, and Project Maintenance.

In order to evidence the activities that are related more to the management of
a project, this part is divided into six chapters, summarized as follows:

• Chapter I. Team Working. In this chapter, the problems and techniques
of working in and managing a team of people are reported. In particular,
team creation and best practices for team working are reported.

• Chapter II. Time Management. Time management is one of the most
difficult activities to carry on. This chapter shows how, with a correct daily,
weekly, and monthly set of activities, time management can be an easy activity
to perform. In order to facilitate this activity, the main tools related to
time management, such as Gantt and PERT diagrams, also are reported.

• Chapter III. Presentation. One of the tasks that a project manager often
has to deal with is presentation. All of the aspects of this particular instrument
for transferring knowledge are considered, and therefore, presentation
preparation, speech preparation, and how to speak are detailed.

• Chapter IV. Training. If you consider the best case in which you have a
very skilled team that does not need any form of training, a project or team
manager often is involved in training activities focused on the customer or
on company partners. Therefore, it is important to know the importance of
the fundamental techniques for training.

• Chapter V. People Management. Once you have created a team and
learned how to manage time and present and train people, it is time to deal
with people problems. In this chapter, some guidelines for correctly approaching
this difficult activity are given.

• Chapter VI. Delegation. The last thing that a manager must learn to do is
to delegate. It is the last because, before delegating to other people, you
must have learned all the lessons reported in the previous chapters, since
delegation is a powerful activity that can improve the productivity of your
team, but it is also risky, if it is not approached in the correct way.