The Enterprize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success

This is a book written by a software project manager for software project managers, et. al., actually good for anyone involved in software development. Whitten gives an honest look at some of the reasons for project failure and provides a practical and workable blueprint for ensuring software project success. He provides a good functional description of the key project players in a software development organization that can easily be adapted to any size organization. He defines the key roles in a project (Project Manager, Business Architect, Product Architect, Process Architect, Team Leader, etc.) in a way that makes the need for these roles seem intuitively obvious -- after you've read it, of course.Much of the secret to project success, according to Whitten, lies in the clear delineation of project responsibilities, in the individual acceptance of these responsibilities, and the willingness to be accountable for one's activites. Whitten provides several sample scenarios for establishing project management organizations and process control for large, medium, and small projects, as well as managing multiple projects with a single organization.Whitten speaks as one who has managed, coached, and consulted through decades of software development projects and acquired a rather large laundry list of "what-not-to-do" in a software project. His writing style is one of frankness and honesty in appraising the right and wrong ways to manage software development projects.