At my partner’s request, I finally uninstalled Homeworld (still the best game ever). That left me with lots of time to catch up on my reading, so I plowed through Stellman and Greene’s Applied Software Project Management and Stepanek’s Why Software Projects Fail back to back. They made an interesting pair, and the differences between their authors’ positions say a lot about where the software industry is today.
Stellman and Greene’s book is the more conventional of the two. Their aim is to put everything you need to know to run a small-to-medium-sized software project between two covers. After a short introduction, which lays out the principles they believe successful managers should follow, the book is divided into two parts. The first, “Tools and Techniques,” includes all the usual suspects: planning, estimation, schedules, reviews, requirements, design and programming, and testing. While their language is sometimes a little highfalutin’ (”Wideband Delphi estimates,” anyone?), the advice is all solidly grounded and eminently practical. It’s all been said before, but as covers go, this is as good as The Clash’s version of “I Fought the Law.”
Read more at:
http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/184429854