Customer Reviews

The Software Development Edge: Essays on Managing Successful Projects

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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.

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...

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.

This book, I believe, is of importance to all managers, not just those involved in software development. All managers share common concerns. All need to balance the elements of the classical scope/time/resources tradeoff, almost always in a cloud of uncertainty. Marasco's approach to resolving software development management issues is just as valid and useful to resolving general management issues.

In my view, what makes this book work is Marasco's ability to explain reasonably complex issues in real world terms. Terms that people who aren't afforded the luxury of leisurely scholarship can use and apply to their immediate problems. Most managers are drinking out of a fire hose. This book gives them the concise, no frills input they need.

Every manager should have a dog-eared copy of this "guide" on his desk when he's in the office and in his briefcase when he's on the road!

I must admit some bias: I had the pleasure of working with Joe and have a great deal of respect for his opinion. In this book his voice definitely comes through - practical and down to earth. As other reviewers have noted, this book is a great read for anyone managing technical projects, and there are gems of insight in every chapter. I've learned something every time I've talked to Joe, and reading this book was no different: it is like an extended conversation with someone with a wealth of practical experience. I've kept coming back to it time and again.

The chapters on project management, commitment, values, communication, and people growth are worth the price of admission. He clearly calls out best practices and warning signs for software projects big and small, and also brings a bit of hard-nosed reality where many people are afraid to do so today. Understanding where to stand fast and where to be flexible is a hard line, especially in crowds that push the "this is an art" or "big projects have variables you can't control" buttons. Much of what he said resonated with my experiences of what goes well and what can go horribly wrong in projects with large numbers of people.

The book did have a few oddball bits in there, though. The "how to sell UML" chapter felt like it was out of a Rational marketing manual. Additionally, the data and numbers focus in several chapters made it a bit unweildy if you're in an organization like mine where COCOMO estimates are an item of jokes and ridicule, not the serious measurement tools of this book. The chapters on random numbers and software-batteries felt like the "in-between" posts you see on some blogs - just space fillers until you get back to the regularly scheduled programming.

I have been in the software development industry for almost 20 years in roles ranging from developer/project lead/project manager to architect. This is one of the most comprehensive books on project management that I have found. It summarizes many of the experiences that I have encountered in software development and, in addition, adds some very good insights into subjects that have historically been problem areas for me.

Joe's description of software engineering thought processes are spot on, and will help anyone who needs to work closely with software engineers. His discussion of historic projects that ended in tragedy show that the problems that haunt large projects are not limited to software projects.

His section (Part 3 The Project-Management View) on project management is a must read for any person who has a project management role. The classic problem of tradeoffs, estimation and scheduling are analyzed and explained in a very useful manner. For some of the more `touchy-feely' subjects, Joe introduces Roscoe Leroy, an imaginary character, who spouts a continuous stream of common sense and real world wisdom.

This book is a good read for anyone in the software industry. The subject matter discussed in the book will help communication among all the different levels and roles in the software industry.

This book contains many valid observations, yet most of the calculations and explanations seem too simplistic to be of much real use. Still, probably one of the better books you can read on this topic...