Are Software Projects Really That Different?

Here's a great commentary by Max Wideman regarding James Bullock's article, "The Top 10 Ways Software Projects Are Different."

It's not that Wideman disagrees with Bullock on his 10 points, but Wideman astutely points out that many other types of projects share the same challenges, whether caused by conflicting stakeholders (i.e. trying to build a road amid protesting citizens) or great uncertainty (like most research and development projects, or even filming a movie where success isn't known until the test audience and final audience see it).

The point is that software projects aren't that unique in themselves. No doubt, many of them have quite a bit of uncertainty, and that requires some approaches that are different than projects with less uncertainty (i.e. rolling wave scheduling, iterative prototypes, pilot tests, etc.). However, the basics of project management should be the same for any type of project.

Like anything, we have many project management tools at our disposal, and we need to use them correctly, whether it's a software project, construction project, or any other type of project.

Here's Max Wideman's article in PDF format...