Our goal with this section is to make the task easier by providing some context for Project Management. It is not a recipe for success, but it presents an approach to managing the project that will markedly improve the odds of delivering successful software.

The purpose of Project Management is:

• To provide a framework for managing software-intensive projects.
• To provide practical guidelines for planning, staffing, executing, and monitoring projects.
• To provide a framework for managing risk.

However, this discipline of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) does not attempt to cover all aspects of project management. For example, it does not cover issues such as:

• Managing people: hiring, training, coaching
• Managing budget: defining, allocating, and so forth
• Managing contracts, with suppliers and customers

This discipline focuses mainly on the important aspects of an iterative development process:

• Risk management
• Planning an iterative project, through the lifecycle and for a particular iteration
• Monitoring progress of an iterative project, metrics

The Project Management Discipline provides the framework whereby a project is created and managed. In doing so, all other disciplines are utilized as part of the project work:

• Requirement discipline
• Analysis & Design discipline
• Implementation discipline
• Test discipline
•  Deployment discipline

The Project Management Discipline is one of the supporting process disciplines, together with:

• Configuration & Change Management discipline
• Environment discipline

Further Reading-the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge

It is not our intention in the RUP to present a complete tutorial on project management. We describe only that subset which is directly related to our approach to software development, and, of that subset, certain topics (as noted above) have been ruled out of scope, and are touched on only lightly, or omitted entirely. The project management approach described here has been influenced by the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®), and the reader should consult that work for a complete coverage of generally accepted best practice in project management. It is available from www.pmi.org. The Project Management Institute (PMI®) is the leading nonprofit professional organization covering project management; it establishes project management standards and provides professional certification.