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Dealing with the Developers' World

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by sam99

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I am a Project Manager for a large financial firm. I have been brought on to represent business side needs for both internally developed IT projects and our external vendor relationships. Just as I think it was silly that the firm had developers coding away w/o checking in on the business' needs, I think it is silly of me to try to communicate with a group of developers w/o knowing any of their language/needs. I have no IT background - and I do not want to become a programmer - but I do want tolearn BASIC info/interdependencies - thin client, mid-tier, CITRIX/WinFrame, ProVisor, ActiveX, UNIX platform, Websphere, OS390, ZEKE, ERWIN, DB2, UDB, WinSock, MQSeries, People Soft, J2EE, Stonebranch XML schema etc. - what does this stuff mean?
Please suggest sites, books (that are overviews), etc. anything for an interested "suit" cuz I've asked the developers and, well, now I'm asking you.

thanks

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by kero-girl

When I started my PM job, I had zero appserver experience. I didn't know three tier architecture from a hole in the ground.

But I searched online and read books over lunch.

I put together cheatsheets for myself from whatis.com and cnet.com. You know what your topics are, so get on some search engines and start digging.

k-g

by mc_user

You are off to a good start with this web site. Check out their white papers (detailed reports)

For a quick reference I use STANDS4.com and Webopedia.com when the acronyms get thick.

I also like Byte.com as a well written, intelligent technical magazine. My PM prefers the magazines, Information Week and and eWeek.

by adrian.d.pearson

To learn how to assist in translating business requirements into software requirements, read: "Writing Effective Use Cases" by Alistair Cockburn.

To understand how the technologies all plug together, try: "Software Architect Bootcamp" by Malveau& Mowbray.

Also, try to get one of your firm's software architects assigned to your team, at least part-time. Have the architect sit in on some of your requirements meetings. Then, get the architect more involved, if possible. If your developers won't explain how the technologies all fit together, then you better get someone who will. Otherwise, you will be representing the technical design to the business units even though you don't understand it.

Feel free to contact me to get a head start on defining these terms. The other poster's suggestion to use www.whatis.com was a good one. (Thanks) I sympathize with you and think you've been put into an unfair position. But, now it's on you to start the ongoing process of technology education. Good luck!

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