History

• Software project management is a sub-discipline of project management. Project management is as old as written history, with such obvious accomplishments as the pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes all having required project management to complete.
  Early metrics on project management include the Gantt chart and the PERT chart, developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
  One of the groundbreaking books in the history of software project management is "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks. In the book, Brooks, who managed IBM's IBM/360 operating system development, chronicles many of the problems inherent in all large software projects. IBM subsequently spent a lot of time researching software development and methods to speed it up.
  
  

Significance

• Software project management drives all software development in the world today. It is the unifying structure that brings programmers and customers together to create new products. It is used in every field of software development, from operating systems (Linux, Microsoft Windows) to games (Quake, Chess) and even to the software used on the International Space Station (ISS).
  
  

Types

• There are a number of software project management models in use today and more are being developed. The most cited model is the Waterfall Model, which envisions projects starting with Requirements and moving to Design, Implementation, Verification and Maintenance.
  The Agile software development model works with a number of iterations, adding functionality with each iteration, relying on the skills of the developers and constant interaction between the software development team and the customer.
  Other methodologies include XP, Spiral, Lean, RAD and RUP.
  
  

Benefits

• Software project management allows the cost of developing software to be accurately predicted, allows for pricing of software based on the cost of development, and allows for planning of development cycles, as well as allocations of developers and quality assurance engineers to the development life cycle.
  In general, good software project management leads to software developed to requirements, delivered on time and with an acceptable level of defects.
  
  

Potential

• As software project management continues to grow in expertise, it will become possible to accurately predict development times and costs, allowing for software to be delivered on time and under budget. This will mean cheaper software with more features and abilities.