Patterns of Software Project Management

Over the last five decades, there have been numerous different ways to run a software project proposed and practiced. Over the last decade, I've been exposed to a few of them. Which will work for you depends on the team you're working with and the expectations of the people you're working for.

Waterfall

My first experience of a "death march" was on a waterfall project. The product manager wrote a document explaining the requirements of the new product. These were prioritized using 1-3 (with 1 being "we'll probably finish these in time," and 2-3 taking up space on the page). Then, the lead developer wrote a functional specification, explaining what each of the controls in the product would be and how each of them would fulfil a requirement from the first document.

Given the functional specification, the lead developer (not necessarily the same one as mentioned previously) would estimate how long it'd take to...