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Project Management For Beginners?
lawpoop writes "At my current workplace, I'm tasked with creating a rather complicated and metastasizing web-database application. I've mostly been the sole 'IT guy' at my workplaces in the past, so I've never had to, nor taken the time, to learn proper project management routines — code comments mostly got me through it. Now for this project, it's getting somewhat hairy and I'm sensing that I need to start doing things in a more organized manner. What resources would you direct me to? Books? (I wouldn't mind buying one good one.) Websites? What do proper 'specs' look like? Must I use UML (seems complicated and unintuitive) or a simpler ER diagram? For this job, I just need to provide better estimates for completing features, but what will I need if/when I would be working with a team?"
My advice is to adopt only the project management tools and methods that you need to get the job done effectively. It is all too easy to become mired in learning a complex discipline (project management) when all you really need is a well thought out flow chart and a good ER diagram. In other words, do not spend your valuable time trying to learn MS Project or any of the several readily available alternatives. They are tools for someone well-schooled in the techniques in managing complex projects. Your flow chart could easily expand into groups of related tasks, one grouping for each element in the chart. To manage that, a simple task list manager will do.