Customer Reviews

Software RX: Secrets of Engineering Quality Software

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This is one of the worst technical book I have ever read, or I should say, ever made an attempt to read. While it may contain pertinent information about the software development/QA process, the author's writing style safely obscures it. His officious pronouncements about what constitutes good or bad practices, without supporting information in the near vicinity, is maddening. His odd style of writing construction, where practically every third sentence is followed by a parenthetical phrase that (presumably) is supposed to augment the preceding text, but in many cases either states something so obvious as to be insulting to the reader, or actually contradicts earlier definitions, makes reading it a real chore. This book appears to have somehow escaped the editorial review process and gone right to print.
The overall software development process as envisioned by the author, apparently takes place in some techno-bureaucratic fantasy land, where QA engineers, developers and tech writers are somehow interchangeable and should routinely "rotate jobs" to develop some empathy for the other fellow's position.
If you must read this book, read the conclusions at the end of each chapter, where space constraints dictate a refreshing brevity, and do read the appendices, which are really quite good. Finally, try to ignore the "marketingese" slogans "Best-Practices" and "Best-in-Breed", which of course convey no useful information, but seem to be used everywhere.