• A summary of finance concepts.
  • An example of how various financial standards apply to ensure a system meets government and accounting standards.
• An overview of earned value measurement for project management.
• A change control or PTR process description, based on what the FAA did to manage changes to air traffic control software.
• Discussion of Agile/Extreme project management approach characteristics.
  • The Agile manifesto
• The Cluetrain manifesto describes how information technology is changing business' approach to customers. The book of the same name can be read online for free.
• I compared the prioritization approach used for emergency management to the way project managers collect and use data about their projects.

The Software Program Manager's Network (SPMN) published many handbooks on best practices, lessons learned, and other guidance for software development and program management. Their publications circa 1999-2000 included:

• Article describing best management practices, and the 16 critical practices themselves.
• Big yellow book of software acquisition practices and resources (zipped)
  • A condensed guide for acquisition practices, and software acquisition questions.
• Configuration management best practices
• Excuses for all aspects of software development
• A software evaluation model (zipped)
• Two handbooks on testing best practices (one, and two)

The SPMN website is now maintained and operated by the Integrated Computer Engineering (ICE), a Division of American Systems Corporation.

• An old (1998) but excellent set of definitions by INCOSE, with sources for each definition.(zipped)
• It took working on an SAP project for three years to decipher what they were saying around me. Here is what I figured out.

The World

• The CIA World Factbook describes demographic, geographic, political, economic, and other data for every country in the world. It is posted on Project Gutenberg occasionally. Here is an indexed copy of the 1998 Factbook. The latest available copy online is from 2002 (3.7 MB text). A printed copy of the current version (2006) is available for about $100 from the Government Printing Office Bookstore.