Now that you know what goes into a software product and what ships with one, it's time to learn about all the people who create software. Of course, this varies a great deal based on the company and the project, but for the most part the roles are the same, it's just the titles that are different.

The following lists, in no particular order, the major players and what they do. The most common names are given, but expect variations and additions:

• Project managers, program managers, or producers drive the project from beginning to end. They're usually responsible for writing the product spec, managing the schedule, and making the critical decisions and trade-offs.

• Architects or system engineers are the technical experts on the product team. They're usually very experienced and therefore are qualified to design the overall systems architecture or design for the software. They work very closely with the programmers.

• Programmers, developers, or coders design and write software and fix the bugs that are found. They work closely with the architects and project managers to create the software. Then, they work closely with the project managers and testers to get the bugs fixed.

• Testers or QA (Quality Assurance) Staff are responsible for finding and reporting problems in the software product. They work very closely with all members of the team as they develop and run their tests, and report the problems they find. Chapter 21, "Software Quality Assurance," thoroughly covers the differences between software testing and software quality assurance tasks.

• Technical writers, user assistance, user education, manual writers, or illustrators create the paper and online documentation that comes with a software product.

• Configuration management or builder handles the process of pulling together all the software written by the programmers and all the documentation created by the writers and putting it together into a single package.

As you can see, several groups of people contribute to a software product. On large teams there may be dozens or hundreds working together. To successfully communicate and organize their approach, they need a plan, a method for getting from point A to point B. That's what the next section is about.