Getting Results from Software Development Teams

By Lawrence J. Peters

Book Overview

Learn best practices for software development project management--and lead your teams and projects to success. Dr. Lawrence Peters is an industry-recognized expert with decades of experience... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735623465
• ISBN13: 9780735623460
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Managing a Software Development Team From Begining to End

The second paragraph in the first chapter sets the key to this book. This key is that getting results from a software development team involves both leadership and management. Not dictating your solution. From there the author takes the reader from why software development is so difficult, to development team building, to software development life-cycles, to project management and estimation, to improving and evaluating software development teams. The Author does this in a mere 276 pages. Considering that there are volumes written on any one of the above topics, that is very amazing. The writing is very clear and well laid out. Even if you have read some of the volumes within these areas, this book is very nice, focused read of overall management of a software project. There are areas in which I would have liked to have read more details and areas that I would liked to have read less ( this is why I gave a rating of 4 stars instead of 5 ). But, I am sure that those areas would not be the same as what you would like. It is very difficult to cover this thoroughly for everyone. Lawrence Peters did an excellent job, overall. I would highly recommend this book, even if you have read books on the stand-alone topics. Having everything in one, focused read is very thought provoking. Also, I would recommend this to all IT technical managers. I have seen so many fail at their endeavors and not even realize it. This book will help you to become more successful in your jobs.

Good but

I like the book.. but sometimes it jumps from amazing advices to purely technical or academic issues.

Manager-focused guide to great software results

This book is a guide for current and aspiring software project managers who would like to bring more determinism into their projects. Peters shows many statistics early on about the vital role of the project manager on the success of projects, and my own experiences agree with those. A good manager can help a mediocre team succeed; a mediocre manager will lead even a great team to failure. There is fairly deep treatment of a variety of planning styles, project lifecycle models, and even information about how to best motivate your team. I particularly enjoyed the ties between what motivates people (like early involvement with planning and release date specification) and how that is an aspect of a variety of different planning frameworks. He also does a great job of providing specific examples of how to let the team, company, and situation help define the right process, rather than always doing exactly the same thing. The only thing I didn't enjoy as much was the treatment of some of the more in-depth planning models. It felt like there was a lot of detail, but I still didn't come away with a good idea of where to get started with them if I wanted to use them immediately. A summary section at the end of each presentation with pointers to good "how to do it" books and tools (as opposed to the existing references to the definitions of them) would help. Also, some of the relative terms like small, medium, and large projects that he used to help with decision-making could use some clarification. After years of working at Microsoft, I still consider anything under a quarter million lines of code small, and it takes about 20 million to make a large project. I don't know how those numbers relate to his breakdowns.

Software project manager? You will love this book!

Dr. Peters' book is the best project management book I have ever read (I've read quite a few). He has an easy style of explaining things, probably from his seminar delivery experiences. The book offers practical advice as well as explaining more complex tools, methods, and metrics. His real-life stories are quite good - many made me smile (been there, did that, seen that), but they also help make his points memorable. This is a very serious book - essential reading for software project managers. Dispels the myth (or sometimes a personal self-delusion) that project managers just happen to be born with natural skills. Although software project centric, it is broad enough to be of interest to anyone involved with technology projects at any level. It is recommended for upper management who might be interested in installing a "culture" of consistent project management disciplines (and successes). It might also be useful for HR personnel in screening candidates. Development team members will also benefit.