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There’s an old saying: “There’s only one way to be right, but a million ways to be wrong.”
This is not necessarily the case with sofware projects! In practice, the vast majority of
projects go wrong in one of a small number of ways. At the end of each chapter in Part I,
there is a section aimed at helping you diagnose the symptoms in your organization in
order to determine if that chapter’s tools, techniques, and practices will help fix the spe-
cific problems. This section contains several scenarios that should describe the way this
problem typically looks from the outside. The “Diagnosing” scenarios in the chapters in
Part I describe these problems in a way that should seem very familiar to project managers
suffering from them. If one of these scenarios seems eerily familiar to you, there is a good
chance that the tools in its chapter will help.

Part II: Using Project Management Effectively

It’s not enough for a project manager to understand practices that are used by all of the
team members. A good project manager also needs to know how to lead the team. The
second part of this book is focused on learning how to use the five basic principles listed
above in order to work with people, teams, and organizations. Each chapter in Part II
takes on specific areas of project management:
Chapter 9, Understanding Change
Introducing practices, tools, and techniques to your organization’s culture
Avoiding the most common pitfalls in selling your ideas
Planning for your changes and making them succeed
Chapter 10, Management and Leadership
Understanding responsibility, authority, and accountability
Creating a culture of transparency in your organization
Working with your organization and your team
Chapter 11, Managing an Outsourced Project
Preventing the most common sources of failure in outsourced projects
Forming a relationship with the team and management at an outsourcing vendor

Reviewing and collaborating between organizations
Chapter 12, Process Improvement
Understanding when process improvement is useful (and when it isn’t)
Utilizing process improvement models and certifications
Working with third-party processes and methodologies

Our goal in writing this book is to help you build better software. If you implement all,
some, or even one of these practices, we think you will see a noticeable improvement in
the efficiency of your projects—and that it will make your job easier. We have tried to
make it clear throughout this book exactly why we think these things are important. We
use them every day in our own work, and we hope you find them as helpful and satisfying
as we do.

10 CHAPTER ONE