Software Mangineeringment: Teaching Project Management from software engineering perspective

Software Engineers are often promoted to management positions, based on their engineering excellence, lacking management knowledge, which is not always part of their undergraduate SE program. Moreover, very early in their career software engineers face management issues, when they are required to meet budget and schedule, to assess potential risks, to make make/buy decisions or to maintain effective communications over globally-dispersed teams. These combined jobs may be referred to as “Software Mangineeringment”. General Project Management education does not equip these engineers with enough relevant practice for the software domain. This article describes an undergraduate course which combines the general project management theory and practice with software-specific practices. The course framework is the guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide), which includes 42 projects management processes organized categorized into 9 Knowledge Areas. The course extends these processes with many practices taken from a large variety of software engineering resources. The course is also delivered as an industrial seminar targeted at software managers in their initial management steps.