The high development and maintenance costs, and the late delivery experienced by many organizations when developing large software systems is well documented. Modern software practices have evolved to overcome many of the technical difficulties associated with software development. To a large extent, however, the high costs and schedule slippages can be traced to management, not technical, deficiencies. This article develops an approach for managing the software development effort that exploits the benefits of modern software practices in staffing, planning, and controlling software development.