The Disease of Software Project Management: Project Management is a Disaster for Software

by David B. Black

Project Management in some form is the mainstream methodology used to achieve results in software. The question is never whether to use project management -- it's only what kind and how much.

But the fact is that project management in all its forms has been a disaster for software. It doesn't need to be improved; it needs to be discarded. There are deep theoretical problems in multiple dimensions that make it simply inapplicable to software, problems which explain the decades-long track record of failure.

“Project management” is as effective at guiding software projects to success as hopping and grunting is at helping pool balls to drop in the intended pockets – it may be entertaining to watch, but it has no constructive impact on the outcome. More important, to the extent that we focus on our hopping and grunting technique, we fail to pay attention to what really matters – hitting the ball correctly with the queue. Similarly, in software projects, the more things get off track, the more we seem to focus on project management hopping and grunting activities, so much so that the shaking floor actually makes things worse.

The book explains what's wrong with project management in general, why it's bad for software in particular, and gives general guidelines for the kind of process that leads to positive outcomes in software development.

84 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2012

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

(All too un-)common sense from the trenches

My mere six years of experience in professional software development have provided ample opportunity to observe many of the pitfalls and, frankly, insanity of software project management Black lampoons in this book. Although the tone was at times a bit more sarcastic than I thought helpful, the observations about all the misconceptions of what making software requires (project management overlooks or undervalues the needed creativity, adaptability, resilience, perseverance, logical thinking, etc.) and why processes that can work for manufacturing fail utterly with software are spot on. I will read more books in this series; Black's insights are valuable and his prose well crafted.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good common sense advice on how to think about building software well. Including software engineering as a knowledge-based job and that each project is novel and will contain many unknowns. Also the importance of hiring the right people to get stuff done and done well (not just reduce scope and hit easy timelines). Was repetitive and ranty at parts so 3*s.

"In my opinion, this is a real emperor-has-no-clothes scenario. The “planning” effort is all about reducing what gets done, and making sure that, even if people screw up, are lazy, quarrelsome and minimally productive, what little ends up getting committed to does, indeed, get delivered. Instead of the main focus being “how can we get it done; how can we do more, and do it faster,” the main focus in a project planning environment is “severely control and prune our goals, so that above all, we are sure to deliver what little we got away with committing to deliver.” Instead of our satisfaction being tied to how much we accomplish and how productive we were, we are happiest when we deliver our commitments “on time and on budget,” totally ignoring how laughably modest the goals were, and paying no attention to the inefficient and minimally productive efforts that went into accomplishing them!"