The Disease of Software Project Management: Project Management is a Disaster for Software (Building Better Software Better Book 1)

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.