"Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices" (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series; ISBN 0-201-48542-7) by Capers Jones is a very through book on evaluating IT projects. Capers Jones is a well-known expert on these topics. His company is the backer of the SPR assessment methods. This backing is seen in the book, but to Capers' credit, he does try to fairly evaluate the alternatives to the best of his ability.

The book starts with an introduction and then compares the SEI and SPR software process assessment methods. It should be noted that both SEI and SPR are rather heavy assessment methods.

The next chapter goes into benchmarking software projects. Capers does a great job of covering the problems and issues with software benchmarks. I know many IT managers who do benchmarks that need to read this chapter.

Then Capers looks at factors that affect assessment and benchmarks briefly. He then discusses best and worst practice identification.

Chapter 6 is on Software Process Improvements. It is a good guide to improving your software processes over time.

Chapters 7 through 12 are roughly parallel to each other. MIS Sofware Projects, Outsourcing Projects, Systems Software, Commercial Software, Military Software and End User Software each get one chapter. When reading this book, I focused on the outsourcing chapter because the company I work for does quite a bit of it.

The heart of the chapter is in three major sections. One covers success and failure factors. The other two cover technical and personnel best practices. I learned quite a bit of valuable information about the industry we work in.

In conclusion, I view this book as invaluable for IT managers to better understand how to measure and improve the success of their software projects.