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Title: Software Project Survival Guide by Steve C McConnell ISBN: 1-57231-621-7 Publisher: Microsoft Press Pub. Date: 14 November, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (48 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good intro / light reading
Comment: Good intro / light reading
McConnell's "Software Project Survival Guide" (SPSG) is a good intro to application development projects using the phased-release waterfall methodology. Unlike other software engineering overviews, he does not assume that his audience is sold on process in general, so he spends some time arguing and presenting facts and stats to support structured project management and software development.
The author presents most of the integral concepts of the discipline and maintains a companion website with templates and checklists. He shares his experience on what development managers should expect from their developers, testers, corporate culture and customers. I read SPSG when it first came out and recently completed it again for a refresh. Although the book is now six years old, the material is still relevant because of the level at which it is presented, even in today's landscape of customized COTS and web services applications.
It gets four stars rather than five because in the last third of the book he takes arbitrary dives into detail before he exhausts the breadth of the subject. For instance, he only once refers in passing to regression-testing and never mentions the concept of SDLC environments, yet offers up formulas for estimating defects using pooling and seeding. Chapters seem to get shorter as if he was in a hurry to finish. As SPSG is relatively short at 250 pages, it seems the author could have easily included another 50 pages to hit those missed topics at a high-level.
SPSG is great for the new manager but is less useful for the experienced manager or as a reference. Fortunately, he includes an annotated bibliography on resources that provide more detail.
Rating: 5
Summary: The perfect addition to McConnell's trilogy
Comment: McConnell's released books on good construction practises, and good development practices. Now he finishes the circle with a book on good management practices. McConnell has a very good way of integrating the thoughts of many prominent industry gurus into a readible comprehensive format. His talent is to recognize the best ways that improve people as software workers. The thoughts and techniques from his previous work, Rapid Development, were excellent, and it is "the Software Project Survival Guide" that puts those techniques into concrete perspective. He concentrates on only a few of his published techniques, those that are most tried and true, but also provides a framework well suited to young and upcoming technical students hoping to become managers. (Like myself 8-D) A great companion to this book is Tom Demarco's "The Deadline", as it adds the human-element of managing projects that sometimes seems missing from McConnell's book. This is not to the detriment of McConnell's work, it is just that his approach is different. McConnell's books are readible, interesting, and are the _best_ comprehensive books on improving yourself as a software worker. He's the guru of the 90's.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good but Light
Comment: This was good, but a little light. I have really liked the author's other works and so I expected a lot from this. Maybe that was part of it. I could not give this five stars because it was a little light on details, especially at the end. However, there is a lot of good project information here, from years of experience. Just the fact that it is not huge is a good thing -- too many 40-page books are turned into 600-page tomes so they give an aura of respectability.
If you are new to software project management, this is an excellent book to start with (five stars). If you want to get a quick refresher on good ways to run a project, with some modern-day approaches, this is also good. Give it a try.
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Title: Rapid Development by Steve McConnell ISBN: 1556159005 Publisher: Microsoft Press Pub. Date: 02 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Code Complete by Steve McConnell ISBN: 1556154844 Publisher: Microsoft Press Pub. Date: 14 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Software Requirements, Second Edition by Karl E. Wiegers ISBN: 0735618798 Publisher: Microsoft Press Pub. Date: 26 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Professional Software Development: Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, Enhanced Careers by Steve McConnell ISBN: 0321193679 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 30 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks ISBN: 0201835959 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 02 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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