Evaluating Project Decisions / SEI Series in Software Engineering (PDF)

Effective decision-making is crucial to the success of any software project, but to make better decisions, you need a better decision-making process. In Evaluating Project Decisions, Carnegie Mellon's leading software project management experts introduce an innovative new decision-making model that helps you systematically optimize all of your decisions and avoid the bad choices that lead to project failure.

Using a real-world, case study approach, the authors show how to evaluate software development problems and situations more effectively; thoughtfully assess all of your alternatives; and improve every decision you make. Drawing on their leading-edge research, the authors bridge software engineering theory and practice, offering guidance that is both well-grounded and actionable. They present dozens of detailed examples from both successful and unsuccessful projects, so you'll discover what to do and what not to do.

Evaluating Project Decisionswill help you make better decisions about:

• Requirements-Elicitation, description, verification, validation, negotiation, contracting, and management
• Estimates-Conceptual solution design, decomposition, resource and overhead allocation, estimate construction, and change management
• Planning-Defining objectives, policies, and scope; planning tasks, milestones, schedules, budgets, and staffing; and managing projects against plans
• Product-Proper product definition, development process management, QA, configuration management, delivery, installation, training, and field service
• Process-Defining, selecting, understanding, teaching, and measuring processes; evaluating process performance; and process optimization
• Risk-Defining success thresholds; identifying, communicating, and mitigating project risks; and selecting resource tradeoffs to manage risk
• People-Interaction scenarios, objectives, influencing factors, and learning from past interactions
• Stakeholder expectations-Setting expectations, communication, managing to satisfy expectations, and managing stakeholder perception
• Global development-Managing geographical, time, and cultural differences; distributed and outsourced projects; quality issues; and more

Simply put, you'll use what you learn here on every project-in any industry, whatever your goals, and for projects of any duration, size, or type.