Re: Taming the Wild, Wild I.S.

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- netcom -dot- com>]

Humbird, Len - CFC writes:

> I'm contracting for a company that was recently spun off, and is having
> difficulty managing their own I.S./I.T. department. There is virtually NO
> formal process to manage, coordinate or control software projects and
> resources here! So... I am looking for *samples* of the following types of
> standard internal documentation to implement:

     No idea on documentation layout, but two places I'd suggest you start
looking are:

     The SEI (Software Engineering Institute) at www.sei.cmu.edu,
which has done a lot of the groundbreaking theory & research on 
large-scale software development practices.

     Steve McConnel's books on software project management,
specifically _Code Complete_ and _Rapid Devleopment_.  _Software
Project Survival Guide_ (I think that's the right title) might also
help, in fact it's more likely to have templates/samples/etc, because
it's meant to be more of a "ready to use" set of software development
practices. But don't read it in a void, I highly recommend the other
two books.  _Code Complete_ is often stereotyped as for the computer
scientist while _Rapid Development_ is stereotyped as for the manager,
but in reality it's much less clear cut than that.

     Aside from informing, educating and enlightening you on the whole
situation, McConnel's work will probably have references and reading
recommendations that may be more specifically applicable to your
question.  Still, remember that the docs and forms are the *details*
how you fix the problems, not the fix themselves.

Steven J. Owens
puff -at- netcom -dot- com