Why Is Software Project Management Difficult? And What That Implies for Teaching Software Project Management

The discipline of project management has been available for almost 40 years. This paper examines several factors that make the management of software development projects more difficult than the management of many other kinds of projects. These factors negatively impact the software project managers' success in estimation and scheduling, planning, responding to schedule and budget pressures, monitoring project status and managing the integration, and testing phases of the project. Techniques for addressing each of these difficulties are described, and topics that need to be incorporated into software project management courses to address these issues are outlined.