IBM created this Project Manager Survival Kit to cover important topics that can affect the success of any software project. It now includes the new Buyer's Guide to Software Development for the On Demand Enterprise as well as easy-to-digest white papers and informative Webcasts. Learn how the IBM Software Development Platform can give you the tools, services and best practices for success from start to finish, at every stage. Specific topics include:

Process, Project and Portfolio Management:

• Software Development for the On Demand Enterprise Buyers Guide
  The SDP Buyer's Guide helps IT executives and project managers make more informed decisions as they plan and implement a software development infrastructure. It explores key evaluation criteria that can help provide the right software development tools to support the project, team, or organization. The Buyer's Guide discusses key capabilities that can improve team performance in each of the following software development disciplines: Requirements & Analysis, Design & Construction, Software Quality, Deployment Management, Process & Project Management, and Software Configuration Management. For each discipline, the Buyer's Guide explores the key technology issues, business goals, and associated solution criteria.
• Effective Management Through Measurement
  Using sample views generated by automated tools in the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform, this white paper shows how an automated measurement program can help software project managers assess progress, mitigate risks, and improve team productivity.
• How to extend premier portfolio management capabilities to include lifecycle management
  Imagine having integrated lifecycle management with immediate insight into demand management and earned value. Project managers and development directors see overviews of overall project schedule status, capacity planning and utilization, project cost across the portfolio, and early warning capabilities that use trending data on elements impacting projects, including those in other Rational tools. Senior level executives get an overview of their investments based on access to the latest data.
  
  Join us to explore how to extend portfolio management capabilities to include lifecycle management with integration of IBM Rational Portfolio Manager and IBM Rational ClearQuest.

Change and Release Management:

• Improve operational efficiencies and speed applications into production
  Competitive pressures, increased marketplace demands and the constant need to reduce expenses have only intensified the demands put on companies to develop and deploy their software applications as quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. This paper discusses how to bridge the gap between development and deployment to improve operational efficiencies, reduce risk, gain lifecycle traceability and deliver applications into production faster.
• Improving Project Management with IBM Rational Software Configuration Management Tools
  This online demonstration shows how change and configuration management solutions can improves visibility and control of software projects, and enable fast delivery of high-quality software. It explores how you can increase productivity through automated processes, parallel development, reduced build/release cycle times, and increased software reuse. It discusses how you can increase software quality through repeatable, controlled development processes; stable, reproducible build environments and build audit features; and by preventing users from making mistakes and reducing bugs in delivered code. And it shows how you can get reliable, up-to-date information to make better decisions faster and effectively manage tasks and schedules.
• Streamline and Speed the Delivery of High-Quality Software Applications
  In many companies today, software development and testing activities are disconnected. This paper outlines how you can unify development and testing activities, provide a consolidated, real-time view across the project, customize and enforce development and testing processes and workflows, and seamlessly coordinate work across distributed locations to speed the delivery of high-quality software applications.
• Better Management through Process Automation
  An organization’s success depends in part on the effectiveness of its process management. Manual processes can lead to costly delays, errors and omissions. Team members need access to up-to-the-minute information, whether they are located across the building or across the globe. This paper discusses how you can take control of your development processes, improve visibility across the project and access the information you need from virtually anywhere.
• Agile Configuration Management for Large Organizations
  This paper discusses the need for agile practices in large companies and outlines best practices for agile configuration management.

Requirements Management:

• The Five Levels of Requirements Management Maturity
  This Webcast covers the simple concepts first, then progresses to more advanced ideas to help practitioners categorize and understand both simple and complex requirements management concepts. It introduces a requirements-management maturity model to provide clear guidelines for understanding where your organization stands in the requirements process and how you can get to the next level. This white papers also discusses the cost and benefit of getting there.

Quality Management:

• The key to successful automated testing and planning
  In this white paper, you will review the role of test planning in the software development life cycle and the concepts of effective testing planning. It explores the value added by automation to test efforts and discusses the corresponding planning prerequisites necessary to improve the likelihood of success.

Architecture Management:

• Webcast: Application Design & Development with the IBM Software Development Platform
  Speakers: Jon Ward & Gary Cernosek
  Sometimes application design and development is best conducted as separate activities performed by distinct groups of architects and developers. In other cases, a more integrated approach provides higher value to the development organization and the customer. The IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform supports both types of development. This white papers is designed to give project managers and leads an overview of these two approaches. We first focus on how mainstream developers can use Rational Application Developer for building applications using both code-centric and rapid application development techniques. We then show how software architects and senior developers can use Rational Software Architect for modeling and model-driven development and achieve even higher degrees of productivity.

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