Software Development Edge, The: Essays on Managing Successful Projects|eBook

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780132782203
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	04/13/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Joe Marasco is a retired senior vice-president and business-unit manager for Rational Software, now one of the five brands of the IBM Corporation. He held numerous positions of responsibility in product development, marketing, and the field sales organization, overseeing initiatives for the Rational Apex product and Visual Modeler for Microsoft Visual Studio. In 1998, he served as Senior VP of Operations. He retired from Rational in 2003. He holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and an M.S.A. from the University of California, Irvine Graduate School of Management. When not writing, he barbecues and plays golf; his ribs are much tastier than his scores.

Read an Excerpt

PrefacePreface

This book draws heavily on a series of columns called Franklin's Kite that appeared in Rational Software's e-zine, The Rational Edge, in the early 2000's. These articles were aimed at software development managers, and their goal was to help readers avoid many of the common pitfalls that await software development projects and teams. More than 20 appeared, and we—my editor, Mike Perrow, and I—noticed that readers often began their monthly perusal of The Edge with The Kite.

My intention here is to not only to collect these articles but to sew them together in a form that makes them even more useful for software development managers and their managers. I have done that by reorganizing them thematically, instead of presenting them in the order they originally appeared. This has caused me to do some light editing in places where "forward-referencing" would otherwise take place. I have also paid attention to the footnotes, many of which appeared in the original as URLs and appear here as more formal citations where appropriate. Finally, I have added material at the beginning and end of each chapter so that the context of each article as part of the whole becomes clearer.

The reader will quickly note that the chapters have several different styles. Some of them are expository, some are fairly analytical, and some are folksy "Socratic dialogs" between the author and his avatar, one Roscoe Leroy. Roscoe is an invented character, a good technical general manager who initially knows little about software development. I use him as a foil, allowing his "naïveté" to force meto explain things without using technical jargon. My approach is ecumenical and subversive: I will use any technique that permits me to get the message across. Some of these chapters will appeal to some readers, and others will appeal to others. Whatever works is, by definition, good. I take my cue from Horace, who wrote in The Art of Poetry, "He has won every vote who has blended profit and pleasure, at once delighting and instructing the reader."¹

I divide the work into six parts of four chapters each. Briefly:

General Management: These chapters deal with topics that are useful to managers in general and also expose the reader to my background and biases. I include them so that we have a common baseline for what follows.
Software Differences: In this section, we take a look at those things that distinguish software development from other management challenges.
The Project-Management View: I take the perspective that a software-development project is a variant of the generic project and, as such, amenable to classical project-management techniques. On the other hand, I strive to point out what is different about software development.
The Human Element: I turn around in this section and look at software development from the perspective of the people who do it. Once again, I try to compare and contrast that which is similar to that which is different for software-development projects.
Thinking Laterally: Software people come at problems from many different points of view. In this section, I expose the reader to some of the more speculative and original ideas that he or she may not have seen before.
Advanced Topics: The successful software-development manager is like a really good pinball player: His reward for high scoring is given in free games. This additional "stick time" leads to his becoming even more proficient. In this section, I talk about some of the challenges that come with success.

This book has 24 chapters.² You can read it serially, or pick out a chapter at a time; they can stand on their own. This is a good "airplane book"; read a chapter and then think about it for the rest of the flight. If you get just one new idea from one of the chapters that covers the price of the book, I will have been successful.

With these prefatory remarks out of the way, let's get down to it.

***
¹Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999). The original Latin text is "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, lectorem delectando pariterque monenendo." It can be found at line 343 of Ars Poetica.
²Coincidentally, so does The Iliad.
***

Preface

This book draws heavily on a series of columns called Franklin's Kite that appeared in Rational Software's e-zine, The Rational Edge, in the early 2000's. These articles were aimed at software development managers, and their goal was to help readers avoid many of the common pitfalls that await software development projects and teams. More than 20 appeared, and we—my editor, Mike Perrow, and I—noticed that readers often began their monthly perusal of The Edge with The Kite.

My intention here is to not only to collect these articles but to sew them together in a form that makes them even more useful for software development managers and their managers. I have done that by reorganizing them thematically, instead of presenting them in the order they originally appeared. This has caused me to do some light editing in places where "forward-referencing" would otherwise take place. I have also paid attention to the footnotes, many of which appeared in the original as URLs and appear here as more formal citations where appropriate. Finally, I have added material at the beginning and end of each chapter so that the context of each article as part of the whole becomes clearer.

The reader will quickly note that the chapters have several different styles. Some of them are expository, some are fairly analytical, and some are folksy "Socratic dialogs" between the author and his avatar, one Roscoe Leroy. Roscoe is an invented character, a good technical general manager who initially knows little about software development. I use him as a foil, allowing his "naïveté" to force me to explain things without using technical jargon. My approach is ecumenical and subversive: I will use any technique that permits me to get the message across. Some of these chapters will appeal to some readers, and others will appeal to others. Whatever works is, by definition, good. I take my cue from Horace, who wrote in The Art of Poetry, "He has won every vote who has blended profit and pleasure, at once delighting and instructing the reader."¹

I divide the work into six parts of four chapters each. Briefly:

General Management: These chapters deal with topics that are useful to managers in general and also expose the reader to my background and biases. I include them so that we have a common baseline for what follows.
Software Differences: In this section, we take a look at those things that distinguish software development from other management challenges.
The Project-Management View: I take the perspective that a software-development project is a variant of the generic project and, as such, amenable to classical project-management techniques. On the other hand, I strive to point out what is different about software development.
The Human Element: I turn around in this section and look at software development from the perspective of the people who do it. Once again, I try to compare and contrast that which is similar to that which is different for software-development projects.
Thinking Laterally: Software people come at problems from many different points of view. In this section, I expose the reader to some of the more speculative and original ideas that he or she may not have seen before.
Advanced Topics: The successful software-development manager is like a really good pinball player: His reward for high scoring is given in free games. This additional "stick time" leads to his becoming even more proficient. In this section, I talk about some of the challenges that come with success.

This book has 24 chapters.² You can read it serially, or pick out a chapter at a time; they can stand on their own. This is a good "airplane book"; read a chapter and then think about it for the rest of the flight. If you get just one new idea from one of the chapters that covers the price of the book, I will have been successful.

With these prefatory remarks out of the way, let's get down to it.

¹Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999). The original Latin text is "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, lectorem delectando pariterque monenendo." It can be found at line 343 of Ars Poetica.
²Coincidentally, so does The Iliad.

Software Development Edge, The: Essays on Managing Successful Projects

Software Development Edge, The: Essays on Managing Successful Projects

eBook

eBook

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews