Where can i study software project management

Question

Where can i study software project management

Answer 1

Sundar,

Let me start out by recommending that you first begin by studying "traditional" project management. Many universities around the world offer online "introduction to project management" classes. (I can recommend the University of California Irvine http://www.uci.edu. I am not affiliated with them, but I know many of the teachers there.) These intro courses will give you a good understanding of project management basics. You need this in order to then move on to IT project management.

Next, I can recommend a book to you: "Introduction to IT Project Management" by Cindy Snyder and Frank Parth. Both are project managers whom I respect and they wrote an excellent book on this topic. You can find the book here: http://tinyurl.com/554see

A further resource is Bas de Baar's www.softwareprojects.org. He has great knowledge about software projects and shares most of it freely. This can be very helpful in addition to your traditional studies.

And finally, once you have taken your basic PM course, then you can move on to an IT course. The online university that you select will most definitely have a course that addresses this topic. The "big" decision that you have to make is to decide whether you want a course that focuses on traditional software PM (waterfall methodology) or one that focuses on methods that have emerged in the past decade like agile, scrum or extreme PM. The basic course that you took in the beginning will very likely touch on these topics and you will have a good understanding of what each is and which one you will need.

And finally, you can also listen to the following podcasts:

- http://www.thepmpodcast.com (mine)

- http://www.controllingchaos.com (Dina Doolen)

- http://www.pm411.org (Ron Holohan)

These podcasts are completely free. We all discuss software PM in one form or another and listening to the episodes will also help you understand in which way you want to "specialize".

Until next time,

Cornelius Fichtner, PMP

The Project Management PrepCast™ - http://www.pm-prepcast.com

The Project Management Podcast™ - http://www.thepmpodcast.com

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/corneliusficht

[e-mail]