Customer Reviews

Dare to Be Excellent: Case Studies of Software Engineering Practices That Worked

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Of the 10 case studies in the book all were at least interesting and some were very useful. They are focused on commerical and product development processes, so the one reviewer that was looking for embedded and realtime SQA would naturally be disapointed. Not all the companies presented are house hold words, by they are all non-trivial examples of process improvements in the SQA domain. Each case study is structured in the same manner, with both technical and non-techncial aspects of the SQA problem described in moderate detail. I'm sure each companies PR department reviewed the materials, but they are still insigthful. Several of the SQA process are based on the SEI CMM paradigm, so many of the diagrams look familar. Taken as a whole this book should be mandatory reading for any SQA or software development manager. Much of the material could be put to direct use as is. Several of the products are finacial or back office offerings, so they may not be of interest to the lastest intrnet generation. However for those of us tasked with building the boring database transaction processing applications, this book is a welcome addition. I would recommend this book as source material for anyone engaged in Software Process Improvement.

I found this book to be almost useless. Basically it is a set of ten puffed up pieces that look like they were written by company PR shops. You may as well read the ISO 9000-3 manuals.

Little of the true agony of large software development showed. Having been involved in several large software efforts and in process improvement, I found the book to be very antiseptic and clean -- without any of the real messiness of real software development.

Addtionally, the cases presented were slanted totally towards straight business and did not address anything related to embedded or real-time development practices. I was sorely disappointed in this book.

No more theories! This book gives ten examples of real-life case studies. The comapnies participating are from financial industry to high-tech. Software Quality is no longer a mystery. The book and the case studies shows that with discipline, everything is possible.

The book is an excellent compilation of companies for whom the basic software engineering strategies work. We need more "how to" books like this.