Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals.
15
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9answers
2k views
How to lead a development project without technical expertise
I have been a hands-on developer for my entire career and love working with code. I have always resented the team lead who has little or no expertise regarding a particular technology and yet insists ...
15
votes
5answers
874 views
How to introduce Agile to a team that uses rigid non-Agile methods?
Consider a company that is proudly certified for some non-Agile methodology, uses it as a selling point to its customers to demonstrate accountability.
How do you go about introducing Kanban or ...
15
votes
6answers
1k views
how much time do you spend on Unit testing?
In a company I used to work for, executives insisted that the code coverage with unit tests must be 99% or more. This resulted in writing more tests than code. It took us literally 3 days to write ...
15
votes
2answers
275 views
How to recognize a bad client before you start to work for him?
I'm sure that many of you have encountered a bad client. I'm also sure you took some measures to prevent such encounters in the future. What is the most influential characteristic of a client that ...
15
votes
2answers
734 views
How to move from Programmer to Project Lead
At my job, I'm currently a programmer, but in the next few weeks I'll be taking control my own project. I was wondering if anyone else here has been in the same situation, and if so, what advice you ...
15
votes
1answer
292 views
Guiding Management to the Correct Decision
My supervisor (also a developer) and I have a running joke about writing a book called "Managing From Beneath: Subversively Guiding Management to the Right Decision" and including a number of ...
14
votes
11answers
2k views
Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?
I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since.
I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice ...
14
votes
12answers
2k views
Why does adding more resource to a late project make it later?
It's a fairly common adage that adding more programmers to a late project will make matters worse. Why is this?
14
votes
6answers
896 views
Should a developer be allowed to use VSS if he prefers it?
I introduced Mercurial to my department. I love it, but it is my first version control experience. I am using it with NetBeans PHP for web development. Another developer who works on internal company ...
14
votes
12answers
1k views
How to deal with people who don't want to share knowledge? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How do you deal with an information hoarder?
Often, in IT teams knowledge equals power. This is fine as long as (IT-)knowledge is equally accessible by all members of ...
14
votes
11answers
847 views
Is it significantly costlier to fix a bug at the end of the project?
In a blog post by Andrew Hay, the following axiom was posited:
It costs significantly more to fix a bug at the end of the project that it does to fix the same bug earlier in the project.
...
14
votes
7answers
531 views
Can't work on real projects because I keep thinking about my side projects
I have a "real" project I'm working on to make money from, and a side project that is vastly more interesting.
I'm having a problem where every time I go to work on my "real" project, all I can ...
14
votes
8answers
2k views
What recommendations can you give in managing a team of remote software engineers?
I am a Web application developer who also is responsible for project managing some projects, I sometimes have to manage remote developers, who work for me under a contract basis. I feel that sometimes ...
14
votes
6answers
502 views
How do you manage projects left over by other employees? [closed]
It happens that some one just leaves the company all of sudden. Now his work needs to be completed and you are being assigned it. Having no idea what was he up to (was it 90% done or 9%), how do you ...
14
votes
7answers
592 views
How should I describe the process of learning someone else's code? (In an invoicing situation.)
Edit: Justin Cave made a good point that this sort of communication should be up front in my quoting / estimations. Is this case, I'm still interested to know what sort of language people use to ...
14
votes
8answers
570 views
Quantifying the value of refactoring in commercial terms
Here is the classic scenario; Dev team build a prototype. Business mgmt like it and put it into production. Dev team now have to continue to deliver new features whilst at the same time pay the ...
14
votes
6answers
876 views
Are there complete packages for bug/time tracking, invoices and project management? [closed]
Are there complete packages for time tracking, invoice generation, bug tracking and project management?
These don't have to be Web Applications, I wonder if there exist full packages for Visual ...
14
votes
5answers
460 views
Are my team's processes out of control?
I'm a software dev team leader (I recently took control of a new team), and ultimately responsible for maintaining high productivity, good quality and organized priorities.
I have 6 senior developers ...
14
votes
7answers
388 views
Are there general rules or best practices for building a new framework?
I need to start the design and development of a new framework to interact with an open source ECM. This inludes a customized data model to help web site developers interacting with this ECM, so they ...
14
votes
4answers
440 views
What to legitimately charge clients for
I'm not talking about fixed price jobs, they're fairly straightforward. But i'm on about an hourly rate project, my question specifically relates to what to charge for. If i have an IE/CSS issue that ...
14
votes
6answers
524 views
How to determine the priority and severity of a “code improvement”?
We have "priority" and "severity" fields in our bug tracking system. We define severity as "how it impacts the user" and priority as "how it impacts the product".
My question is about how to ...
14
votes
6answers
452 views
How to stand ground when colleagues are neglecting the process?
The problem I am facing:
My team members start working on projects without the functional/technical documents ready - even if our company process dictates these should be there before starting.
My ...
14
votes
2answers
3k views
How secure is my private repository on bitbucket
Does anybody know how secure are my private repositories on bitbucket.org? Can I rely on that?
I have some repositories and I only want them to be reachable only by me and two others.
14
votes
4answers
1k views
How can I maintain my technical skills after becoming a project manager?
As I advance in my career, I have found that I do less technical work and more project management work. I joke that I am getting dumber every day. Each time I go back to doing technical work it ...
14
votes
2answers
836 views
Suggestions for a GUI library in Haskell
As the Haskell Wiki itself states:
There is a large number of GUI libraries for Haskell. Unfortunately there is no standard one and all are more or less incomplete. In general, low-level veneers ...
13
votes
24answers
7k views
How many lines of code can a C# developer produce per month?
An executive at my workplace asked me and my group of developers the question:
How many lines of code can a C#
developer produce per month?
An old system was to be ported to C# and he would ...
13
votes
18answers
2k views
How to read thousands lines of code without any documentation?
Previously I was searching for a good TimeLine control for a WPF project. I found an answer in Here which direct me to this CodePlex project.
Now I want to change code to feed my culture needs. But ...
13
votes
7answers
853 views
What to do when your “failing” project is actually “successful”?
What would you do if you were in a situation where the project you are working on is obviously built poorly and will have failures in the future and be a nightmare to maintain...but it is considered a ...
13
votes
8answers
749 views
How to handle management pushing legacy systems?
I am currently on a paid internship, and have been tasked with maintaining an obsolete system that has been developed by multiple developers (at different times) over the course of the past 5 years. ...
13
votes
6answers
652 views
Managing expectations
I am in my senior year of college. I am an intern at a $120 million a year company. I am responsible for maintaining three websites, I'm essentially the dba for the marketing database, and write and ...
13
votes
5answers
820 views
What is the minimum subset of best/well-known practices in software development for a solo programmer? [duplicate]
I've been the lonely programmer in my work for quite a long time. Usually I've read articles and posts about
Version Control Systems
Continuous Integration/Delivery
Development methodologies: Scrum, ...
13
votes
5answers
472 views
Project frozen - what should I leave to the people after me?
So the project I've been working on is now going to be frozen indefinitely. It is possible that if and when the project unfreezes again, it won't be assigned to me or anybody from the current team. ...
13
votes
8answers
1k views
How do you accurately create estimates for programming projects given to you?
I am looking for some insight from you smart people on SO. I'm a relatively new developer (3+ years of experience) primarily on the .NET framework, and I'm absolutely terrible at knowing how to ...
13
votes
7answers
1k views
Leading an offshore team
I'm in a position where I am leading two teams of 4. Both teams are located in India. I am on the west coast of the U.S.
I'm finding leading remote teams challenging: First, their command of the ...
13
votes
7answers
837 views
What is needed for a self-taught developer to be able to move into senior-level and leadership positions?
I'm a self-taught developer that currently has more than enough experience to hold up against my colleagues waving their degrees. Still, I feel that I'm lacking some important skills to advance into ...
13
votes
4answers
905 views
My colleague doesn't understand things he works with. What to do? [closed]
I've spent 3 days debugging one very obscure bug in a library made by my colleague, this bug happens very infrequently. After all I found that this bug happens due to cross-thread access to an object ...
13
votes
5answers
992 views
What would you do if a senior level programmer stole your code?
This was my experience at a previous company. As it was a small startup company, some of the normal software development procedures were not followed strictly. One of my colleagues was a senior ...
13
votes
8answers
1k views
In Scrum, should tasks such as development environment set-up and capability development be managed as subtasks within actual user stories?
Sometimes in projects we need to spend time on tasks such as:
exploring alternate frameworks and tools
learning the framework and tools selected for the project
setting up the servers and project ...
13
votes
4answers
301 views
How to manage scope creep?
We often receive last minute requests from the business asking for an extra feature to be implemented. The project manager is usually responsible for filtering out these requests as "must haves" or ...
13
votes
5answers
764 views
Developing a feature which sole purpose to be taken out?
What is the name of the pattern in which individual contributors (programmers/designers) developed an artifact for the sole purpose is to serve as a diversion so that management can remove that ...
12
votes
16answers
1k views
Best (worst) logically impossible task assigned to you? [closed]
What was a project or spec that got put on your desk that could not possibly be done? How did you explain the dilemma to the "requester"? More importantly, did they understand after you explained the ...
12
votes
6answers
1k views
Burnout… Project Issues… Now They're Witholding My Salary… What Should I Do Next? [closed]
I've been working at a startup for 9 months. Except for the first 3 months, I've been miserable.
It started when I joined the organization. I didn't join as a fresher. My first task was to create a ...
12
votes
14answers
526 views
Should we encourage coding styles in favor of developer's autonomy, or discourage it in favor of consistency?
A developer writes if/else blocks with one-line code statements like:
if (condition)
// Do this one-line code
else
// Do this one-line code
Another uses curly braces for all of them:
if ...
12
votes
10answers
764 views
Should you charge clients hours spent on the wrong track?
I took up a small CSS challenge to solve for a client and I'm going to be paid on a hourly rate.
I eventually solved it, it took 5 hours but I spent roughly 25% of the time in the wrong track, trying ...
12
votes
8answers
583 views
How can be get sure that we're not implementing micromanagement in the field of software development?
As I got the feedback of developers about scrum methodology in this question, on whether it turns active developers into passive developers or not, I encountered the word micromanagement.
However, ...
12
votes
5answers
621 views
How to start a development project when there are too many potential stakeholders
I've just taken on a new job at a college as (the sole) Web application developer.
The college has a number of disparate but all pretty badly coded legacy systems. Mostly built in PHP they deal with ...
12
votes
6answers
466 views
What is a correct/polite way to inherit from an abandoned open-source project for a new open-source project?
My team just tried to contact some guys from an old open source project hosted on code.google.com. We told them that we'd like to join their project and commit to it — at least to some branch of ...
12
votes
5answers
674 views
Should technical debt be scheduled as a feature or a chore (or a bug)?
I've added a couple of user stories that address some technical debt to my Pivotal Tracker board. Should I consider them as features (keeping my velocity level) or as chores/bugs (lowering my ...
12
votes
9answers
471 views
Are there any arguments that can make a contractor reconsider working on fixed price?
I've been working for a contractor who brings in some good projects, but they are all fixed-price and often fixed-time.
As a result he always has me making a quote over loose requirements, which ...
12
votes
4answers
9k views
What is an example of a good SMART objective for a programmer? [duplicate]
Following on from this question, I wondered if folk might be able to suggest some samples of what might be considered a "good" objective in a periodic review cycle for a programmer?
Let's define ...
