Another great article Posted by Brad Egeland
During the course of our projects, we often run into situations where our customer needs some massaging.  Issues come up, problems arise that are the fault of the delivery team, budget overruns happen, and schedules slip.  Rarely does a project team make it through an entire engagement without the customer being upset – often justifiably so – about something.

While I was at university studying Software engineering management I was lucky to have Dr Ian K Bray provide a unit of Requirements Engineering. Why is that such a big thing for me? I’ll tell you, Dr Ian K Bray is the author of one of the most popular published books on Requirements Engineering (An Introduction to Requirements Engineering)
The biggest eye opener in all of this to me was the fact that using use-cases and diagrams to explain the functionality and intent of a software system would drastically reduce …

People : should they be made of gold?
The management of staff in a software engineering environment is crucial. If you do not know already that at the core of any business is the staff, then let me reiterate, at the core of ANY business is its staff. You may argue that it is the quality of the product that is being used? The “Sloppy Joes” burger van enterprise has been a roaring success for the last few years because of the quality of burger? Ok, So who buys the burgers? …

Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I often hear people say, “But I’m concerned about my security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”
Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time.  Just because what you’re doing doesn’t seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that

“One of the most difficult aspect to project management for some individuals is the act of estimating work. Some people are born with it, some acquire the skills and confidence and others never really get it. You have to know your limitations.
Below is another section from Gary Heerkens’ brief case book entitled “Project Management.” This section provides a basic guide to estimating work on a project and covers some common issues with estimating project tasks.
An Introduction to Estimating
Estimating is a big part of project planning. To prepare an accurate, thorough …

This is a nice, simple explanation of the basics of Agile project management a software engineering environment written by Adam Feldman. For the original article please visit his Project management blog
Stories. Acceptance Criteria. Value based prioritisation. Iterate often. Change is normal – be agile.
Stories
Agile encourages the use of User Stories as a requirements gathering technique.  Stories are similar to high level requirements, however, they are normally written from the perspective of the actual user.
It is helpful for each story to express the value of the story to the customer.  For example, …

I have read a few posts and articles about change management in projects and this one written by Martin Burns @ IBM is really quite good. Managing digital projects is always more demanding in mine any many other PM’s opinions. The goalposts shift at such a rate and the web is the most invasive and