The Practical, Start-to-Finish Guide to Planning and Leading Iterative Software Projects

Iterative processes have gained widespread acceptance because they help software developers reduce risk and cost, manage change, improve productivity, and deliver more effective, timely solutions. But conventional project management techniques don’t work well in iterative projects, and newer iterative management techniques have been poorly documented. Managing Iterative Software Development Projects is the solution: a relentlessly practical guide to planning, organizing, estimating, staffing, and managing any iterative project, from start to finish. 

Leading iterative development experts Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence introduce a proven, scalable approach that improves both agility and control at the same time, satisfying the needs of developers, managers, and the business alike. Their techniques are easy to understand, and easy to use with any iterative methodology, from Rational Unified Process to Extreme Programming to the Microsoft Solutions Framework.

Whatever your role–team leader, program manager, project manager, developer, sponsor, or user representative–this book will help you

• Understand the key drivers of success in iterative projects

• Leverage “time boxing” to define project lifecycles and measure results

• Use Unified Process phases to facilitate controlled iterative development

• Master core concepts of iterative project management, including layering and evolution

• Create project roadmaps, including release plans

• Discover key patterns of risk management, estimation, organization, and iteration planning

• Understand what must be controlled centrally, and what you can safely delegate

• Transition smoothly to iterative processes

• Scale iterative project management from the smallest to the largest projects

• Align software investments with the needs of the business

Whether you are interested in software development using RUP, OpenUP, or other agile processes, this book will help you reduce the anxiety and cost associated with software improvement by providing an easy, non-intrusive path toward improved results–without overwhelming you and your team.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

More specific to the RUP/UP than advertised. - 2007-07-25
Reviewer Rating:
The book appears to be a well written text about doing RUP iteratively. Unfortunately, I am not doing RUP or UP. The editorial review on Amazon quoted from the back cover that it would be appropriate for agile methodologies and not just RUP. While that may be the case for some chapters, for a significant portion of the book, I do not believe it is so. We are implementing Scrum and this book is not the best source to help me with that. It is too heavy and UP specific. I will be returning the book. Don't be turned off from the book if you are doing RUP since it may be for you.

Wonderful and Exciting. - 2008-05-31
Reviewer Rating:
I am moving from iterative development to iterative project management. This book is really wonderful and explains in detail the processes, the risks, deliverables. It will help anybody who wants to think "iterative" development.

BTW, it will also help you talk to dinosaurs and explain your approach to project management. A big help.

Valuable and pragmatic material about managing iterative projects - 2008-04-22
Reviewer Rating:
As agile software development approaches are more and more adopted in software development organizations, the title of this book from Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence seems to be right on the target. The book contains two major parts. The first gives an overview of iterative project management. It defines the concepts, discuss controlling and gives tips to assess your readiness for iterative project management. The second is a more detailed walk-through to the planning and management of iterations at different levels. It provides also information on how to assess the results of iterations, discuss the relation between iterative project management and project scales. The last chapter is dedicated to the information needed to start your first iterative project. Finally, appendices provide material on use case development (the topic of a former book from the same authors), templates, checklists and an example of 50 pages.

The process behind the book is widely based on the RUP approach; thus practitioners of a "pure" agile approach could be disoriented by the content. However, this book contains very valuable and pragmatic material about managing iterative projects that could be used in any iterative context. It will also provide good transition information towards an iterative process for project managers that operate in a more traditional organization. With 600 pages, it is a not an easy book that is quickly digested. It will nevertheless helps you to improve you grasp on iterative project management, whether you read the book sequentially or you pick sections according to your current project management questions.

Comprehensive and Informative - 2007-12-23
Reviewer Rating:
Overall I thought this was a very good book for learning about how Iterative Development projects are supposed to work, what the advantages are and why a company might want to use this sort of methodology. The authors did a nice job of avoiding too much methodology jargon as well. Sometimes it seems these books are written only to be read by other methodology academicians, but that wasn't the case here.

I have since shared this book with several other people in my company, including one not even in IT, and they have also found it helpful. So if you are also facing challenges in educating your broader company about how agile development techniques should work, this might be a good place to start.

On the other hand, it is quite long and wordy. Most people will not have the patience to wade all the way through this book, so before I shared it, I went through it with a hilighter and told my people to just read the yellow parts. :-)

My only other beef with the book was that it seemed entirely targeted at internal projects, or for software where the users were all internal. Nowadays that is almost anachronistic. My teams mostly work on web development either for B2B users or for the general public (B2C), which means that statements like "make sure your requirements are reviewed by the business" are of limited value. Our business is our clients and their consumers. If you are working on public web apps, just keep in mind that whenever these authors say "business," they mean "your web consumers" and you should be fine.

Iterative Projects - 2007-01-09
Reviewer Rating:
Iterative Projects are a challenge to plan. They require additional attention to planning and re-planning that traditional projects 'do' but not in forced regular intervals - iterations. This is a solid reference overview of the processes, templates, roles, etc.

Some day... a reference will exist with more details on what was actually planned in iterations of a real project. Address the reality versus the concept.

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