Product Description

A developer's survival guide packed with real-life case

studies, tips, techniques, and best practices for completing software projects on time and within budget

Whether you work at a large or small company, this book will provide you with expert, down-in-the-trenches tips, techniques, and strategies to deliver a software project in a cost-effective and timely way. Real-life case studies let you learn from the mistakes as well as the successes of others. Author E. M. Bennatan zeroes in on proven methods for avoiding bottlenecks and overruns at every step in the software development cycle--from cost estimating to product delivery.

The Third Edition of this bestselling guide routes you directly to what you need to know about:
* Managing both small and large projects in a distributed environment
* Common development problems and how to avoid them
* Preparing estimates and proposals and bidding for contracts
* Managing teams for maximum quality and productivity
* Proven scheduling and project development planning techniques

New to this edition:
* How best to ensure an effective relationship with customers
* Risk management and disaster prevention
* The pros and cons of acquiring custom software from outside suppliers
* Managing multinational projects
* How to save time by reusing software components

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #480943 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Book Info
With this edition, discover how to manage small and large projects in a distributed environment, prepare estimates and proposals, manage teams for maximum quality and productivity. Includes risk management and disaster prevention, legal issues in software management, and more. Softcover. DLC: Computer software--Development--Management.

From the Back Cover
A developer's survival guide packed with real-life case

studies, tips, techniques, and best practices for completing software projects on time and within budget

Whether you work at a large or small company, this book will provide you with expert, down-in-the-trenches tips, techniques, and strategies to deliver a software project in a cost-effective and timely way. Real-life case studies let you learn from the mistakes as well as the successes of others. Author E. M. Bennatan zeroes in on proven methods for avoiding bottlenecks and overruns at every step in the software development cycle--from cost estimating to product delivery.

The Third Edition of this bestselling guide routes you directly to what you need to know about:
* Managing both small and large projects in a distributed environment
* Common development problems and how to avoid them
* Preparing estimates and proposals and bidding for contracts
* Managing teams for maximum quality and productivity
* Proven scheduling and project development planning techniques

New to this edition:
* How best to ensure an effective relationship with customers
* Risk management and disaster prevention
* The pros and cons of acquiring custom software from outside suppliers
* Managing multinational projects
* How to save time by reusing software components

About the Author
E. M. BENNATAN spent many years leading a multinational software design center for Motorola. He was also responsible for program management of Motorola's High Availability Systems Corporate-wide Initiative. Bennatan has over twenty years' experience in software development and software project management and is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.

Customer Reviews

Bible on Project Management
If you have never been a project manager, and suddenly you need to learn rules of the game, this is a book I would recommend you to use as a reference material. It is easy to read, has real life examples and various templates related to project management are presented in this book. Highly recommended.

We just finished a 2yr project using this text
We (26 person team) just finished a 2+ year project using On Time Within Budget as our process guide. Bottom line: the project came in 7 weeks late -- not bad for a company used to 6 to 12 month schedule overruns. We'll do better next time with more experience on the methods described in the book. Advice to others: the chapters on estimation, standards, and risk analysis are great. The chapters on software teams, quality assurance and testing are good pointers to what we needed to know, but we also used other books on these subjects to fill in more details that we needed. Most everyone liked the epilogue (pulling it all together). This book helped to pull us out of the dark ages into modern software project management. Strongly recommended!

Good reference even for non-software managers
I don't usually write reviews but I was prompted to do this one because I strongly disagree with a preceding review. I am an EE senior manager and software development had always been a mystery to me until I got hold of On Time, Within Budget. I particularly found the following chapters helpful: Chapter 1 which includes reasons for project success and failure, Chapter 2 on risk management and how to reduce the cost of risk events, Chapter 5 on the management of software engineers, and most especially the Epilogue on pulling it all together, which provides a great overall perspective.

This book is full of real-life examples; it was clearly written by someone who has been down in the trenches. This adds credibility to the methods described.

I have learned a lot from the book and I use it as a reference regularly.