The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects [Paperback]

Joe Marasco (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321321316 | ISBN-13: 978-0321321312 | Publication Date: April 23, 2005

Over the course of a legendary career, Joe Marasco earned a reputation as the "go to" software project manager: the one to call when you were facing a brutally tough, "make or break" project. Marasco reflected on his experiences in a remarkable series of "Franklin's Kite" essays for The Rational Edge, Rational and IBM's online software development magazine. Now, Marasco collects and updates those poignant essays, bringing his unique insights (and humor) to everything from modeling to scheduling, team dynamics to compensation. The result: a new classic that deserves a place alongside Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month in the library of every developer and software manager

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"This set of articles captures decades of in-the trenches experience across a broad spectrum of software topics. Joe Marasco has the scars and the smarts to articulate patterns of success that can satisfy a broad audience. He uses mathematics, physics, common sense, and storytelling along with a no-candy-coating style to provide unique perspectives on significant problems in delivering software results as a business. Whether you are a computer science theoretician, a frustrated software project manager, a successful businessman, or a skeptical programmer, you will learn a lot from this compilation."
—Walker Royce, Vice President, IBM Software Services-Rational, and author of Software Project Management (Addison-Wesley)

"Joe Marasco's readable essays on managing successful projects show that software development managers—no different from all managers—must embrace the fundamentals of management if they are to succeed: working through people and process to be decisive, dealing with politics, keeping on schedule, and, yes, shipping a well-developed product. Marasco uses plain English to explain many integrated skills, ranging from estimating the time it will take to really do things, to negotiating effectively, even to eloquently describing three distinct phases of our personal development. He frequently uses a 'can we talk?' conversation with a fictional colleague, Roscoe Leroy, in a Socratic dialogue to illustrate the two sides to a point in many areas (reminiscent of Galileo's writings to explain his then-heretical views); in this case, Marasco's advice will help technology professionals escape the clutches of pervasive Dilbertian incompetence, and enable readers to be more effective in our ever-changing world."
—Carl Selinger, author of Stuff You Don't Learn in Engineering School: Skills for Success in the Real World (Wiley-IEEE Press), and contributing editor of IEEE Spectrum magazine

The new software management classic: in-the-trenches wisdom from legendary project leader Joe Marasco

Over the course of a distinguished career, Joe Marasco earned a reputation as the go-to software project manager: the one to call when you were facing a brutally tough, make-or-break project. Marasco reflected on his experiences in a remarkable series of "Franklin's Kite" essays for The Rational Edge, Rational and IBM's online software development magazine. Now, Marasco collects and updates those essays, bringing his unique insights (and humor) to everything from modeling to scheduling, team dynamics to compensation. The result: a new classic that deserves a place alongside Frederick Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month in the library of every developer and software manager. If you want to ship products you're proud of... ship on time and on budget... deliver real customer value... you simply must read The Software Development Edge.

Highlights include

• How software projects resemble other projects—and how they're different

• The iterative problem-solving clock: ending the day with real solutions

• The realities of scheduling: How late are you going to be?

• Trade-offs, estimating, project rhythm, and getting products out the door

• Understanding what you're seeing, hearing, and feeling as a software manager

• The human element: politics, negotiation, compensation, culture, and growth

• Avoiding crises before they happen... and mitigating them when they do

• Thinking laterally: original ideas in software project management

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (April 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321321316
• ISBN-13: 978-0321321312
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,851,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Software Development Edge : Essays on Managing Successful Projects, June 26, 2005

By 

R. Max Wideman (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects (Paperback)

[...]
Joe's latest book is simplicity itself. That is not to say it is simplistic. Rather, it tackles a difficult and for many people an often incomprehensible and frustrating subject in a very understandable way. Moreover, it is laced with valuable tips born of Joe's many years of personal software project management experience. It also includes delightful anecdotes to emphasize the various points that Joe wishes to make. The book is laced with copious figures and tables to illustrate Joe's ideas. That always helps to get concepts across and lightens up the pages of the book by adding visual interest. Highly recommended.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely causes you to think about project management..., July 10, 2005

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects (Paperback)

Last night I finished an interesting book on software project management... The Software Development Edge by Joe Marasco. It's a series of essays that cover the gamut of "herding cats"...

Contents:
Part 1 - General Management: Beginning at the Beginning; Computational Roots; Mountaineering; Managing
Part 2 - Software Differences: The Most Important Thing; Modeling; Coding; Getting It Out the Door
Part 3 - The Project-Management View: Trade-offs; Estimating; Scheduling; Rhythm
Part 4 - Human Element: Politics; Negotiating; Signing Up; Compensation
Part 5 - Thinking Laterally: History Lesson; Bad Analogies; The Refresh Problem; Not So Random Numbers
Part 6 - Advanced Topics: Crisis; Growth; Culture; Putting It All Together; Acknowledgements; Index

Unlike many project management books, this is not a "how to" or a methodology volume. It's a series of essays from someone who's been in the trenches for far longer than many have been coding, and he's sharing his wisdom and insights with the reader. So if you're hoping to get a new set of steps to follow, you'll be sadly disappointed. You need to go into this book with an open mind, and look for a few nuggets of truth that will reinforce a point or open you up to a new way of thinking about an aspect of your job. For me, I found the chapter on Crisis (equating troubled projects with a five day old dead fish) and the chapter on History Lessons (comparing software development to a 350 year old ship that sank) quite insightful. Truth may not always be in the place you expect it...

I can't say that every chapter held my interest. In Growth, Marasco talks about how the growth of resources on a software project can be projected and managed (and how it gets out of control if you're not careful). Supplemented by a whole lot of statistics and graphs, I quickly got lost and disinterested. That's not to say that the material isn't correct or helpful, just that some of it is more readable than other parts...

Definitely worth reading if you're responsible for project management in your current position. It won't be a book you refer to every day on your job, but it will cause you to think about some aspects of your career in a different light...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars climb the logic tree, March 29, 2006

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects (Paperback)

Purely by coincidence, the author and I have a lot in common. Both PhD physicists. Though he did his work in high energy physics in the early 70s and mine was in solid state in the 80s. In both instances, the job market was oversupplied with physicists. So we ended up in programming jobs.

The book he produced is a compilation of essays he published over the years, on the managing of software projects. Each chapter can be read in isolation without loss of context. Though you might well up reading them all anyhow.

An early chapter, on "Computational Roots", is a good sociological description of the background of many programmers of his generation. Computer science courses were fairly rare at most universities. Thus, many had engineering or physical science degrees. He also points out a qualitative shift in how programming is done. Back then, due to the restrictions of batch processing and the "joys" of punch card cramming, you'd scrutinise your code very carefully before submitting it for compiling and running. Looking for both compile [syntax] errors and logic errors. This level of analysis is rare nowadays. Most of us press 'make' to let the compiler immediately find the compile time bugs. And perhaps the logic analysis is more perfunctory.

He offers this excellent advice that is perhaps not appreciated nowadays. If your program gives strange results, consider in this order the following causes -

1. computational error. A simple numerical miscalculation.
2. Your computations are correct, but your coding of the model is wrong.
3. The model coding is correct, but it is the wrong model.

In other words, you ascend the logic tree, from specific to general. The above may be the best advice in the book. Some readers should recognise the above as also pertaining to how one could solve a physics problem.