Three Good Books on Software Project Management

Here are three books I always recommend to people who ask for advice on how to do software project managment,

  • The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks: Fred literally wrote the book on project management and while you might not recognise the hardware referred to in the book, everything else he wrote is a relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
  • Rapid Development, Steve McConnell: Steve actually presages much of the Extreme Programming community in this seminal work on modern software project management. He taught me that convergence to a date was more important that hitting a date.
  • Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change, Kent Beck: XP is probably one of the most important programming developments of the past ten years. Putting the customer at the centre of development is probably the most important precept.

3 thoughts on “Three Good Books on Software Project Management

  1. other classic reads would be:

    1) “Code Complete” by Steve McConnell
    2) “The Dynamics of Software Development” by Jim McCarthy – the softer side of Softare project
    management – I’ll always remember the “Dont Flip The Bozo Bit” phrase…..
    3) Irish author and UCC gradudate Fergus O’Connell’s Silver Bullet series – interesting takes of Project Management drawing from the Movie production industry…

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  2. I just read another book on Project Management unlike anything else I’ve read. Really!

    “Critical Chain” by Eliyahu Goldratt

    Its a business novel introducing Theory of Contraints into managing projects.

    It’s a very easy read with insightful ideas that can be applied to many business challenges. I had read his previous books on Production, “The Goal” and “It’s Not Luck”

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