Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$13.79

Available instantly

Paperback
$10.56 - $25.00

List Price: $27.95 Details

Save: $2.95 (11%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Thursday, April 11 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, April 9. Order within 31 mins

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$25.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

MeyMey's Store

Sold by

MeyMey's Store

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery April 17 - 23 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery April 16 - 18

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by -OnTimeBooks-

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$25.26
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: BlueSkyBazaar

Added

Not added

$26.05
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.

Sold by: Amazon.com

Follow the authors

Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

by Tom DeMarco (Author), Timothy Lister (Author)

121

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$25.00","priceAmount":25.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"25","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Ud00GeGjJBO0y%2BOIengK1eycqI5ZN4LwskbxxMZU7tJr7XdoAh0H76%2FENYE16PTYkdLAiHheMKLyzC2ljZ9ycd%2Fq3h5ylSqxPnN7PWBoS60UeNrfKCVOID0Z2oo7N0v3iWYxihy795KHdDY%2FocZOpD7WcejRUx1w7%2BB7opWTrgXhcjDmX2BCvw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$10.56","priceAmount":10.56,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"56","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Ud00GeGjJBO0y%2BOIengK1eycqI5ZN4Lw2wbYmYsj8Fi4jO3ryMAySqt1fNPmNF7N5GPUAU0HUweMkbg3gPUj9uo45%2FCidugR9J4T3%2FTcHVkQiz3dr76DOxjHmYzzjGwP2Q1mECvz6Wf24DoTF4bKtSnmBRzxJcunjGTlXx1aBOb4tr1EHCQuBYUyjd3pXV2z","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Any software project that's worth starting will be vulnerable to risk. Since greater risks bring greater rewards, a company that runs away from risk will soon find itself lagging behind its more adventurous competition.

By ignoring the threat of negative outcomesin the name of positive thinking or a Can-Do attitudesoftware managers drive their organizations into the ground.

In Waltzing with Bears, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Listerthe best-selling authors of Peoplewareshow readers how to identify and embrace worthwhile risks. Developers are then set free to push the limits.

You'll find that risk management

* makes aggressive risk-taking possible
* protects management from getting blindsided
* provides minimum-cost downside protection
* reveals invisible transfers of responsibility
* isolates the failure of a subproject.

Readers are taught to identify the most common risks faced by software projects:

* schedule flaws
* requirements inflation
* turnover
* specification breakdown
* and under-performance.

Packed with provocative insights, real-world examples, and project-saving tips, Waltzing with Bears is your guide to mitigating the risksbefore they turn into problems.

ISBN-10

0932633609
ISBN-13

978-0932633606
Publisher

Dorset House
Publication date

January 1, 2003
Language

English
Dimensions

5.75 x 0.5 x 8.75 inches
Print length

144 pages
See all details

Frequently bought together

Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

$25.00

Get it as soon as Thursday, Apr 11

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by MeyMey's Store and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

+

Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

$13.59

Get it as soon as Thursday, Apr 11

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition

$35.30

Get it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 10

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

Tom DeMarco
365
Paperback
53 offers from $2.70

Editorial Reviews

Review

" . . . destined to become the Bible for serious IT professionals and project managers." -- Edward Yourdon

"Advice projects must not ignore (but often do) . . . A must for the project manager (and his or her boss)." -- Conrad Weisert, IDINews

"Bold, provocative yet coolly pragmatic . . ." -- Michael Schrage, Co-Director of MIT Media Lab s e-Markets Initiative, Author of Serious Play

"The book is a brilliant tour de force. . . . should be on your bookshelf . . . ." -- Paul Gray, Information Systems Management

"The seminal work on managing software project risk. . . . Finally we have a guide to risk management . . . ." -- Rob Austin, Professor, Harvard Business School

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dorset House (January 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0932633609
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0932633606
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.5 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #715,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #108 in PMP Exam
- #903 in Software Development (Books)
- #2,253 in Computer Software (Books)

Customer Reviews:
121

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Tim Lister
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page
Tom DeMarco
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Tom DeMarco is the author of sixteen published books, including five novels, a collection of short stories, and the rest books about systems technology and the sociology of the workplace.
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

121 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

BlueHooker

A necessity for *developers*

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2006

Verified Purchase

Read this unsystematic and occasionally glib book (I concede this point to other reviewers) and you will suddenly realize that you, your colleagues in development, your technical leads, and your CEO have probably all been lying to yourselves and to each other about every single "milestone". Risk analysis is not merely done badly most of the time. It's usually not done at all. I learned enough from this book on a Sunday to return to work the next day and successfully persuade my colleagues that our project plan was worthless, and we needed to come up with a new one *now* that properly took account of the risks. No, I'm not a risk analyst, but merely the effort of thinking about risk in a different way had a payoff. Before this, we were just driving blind.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Great read

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

The book is great for anyone who wants to get structured thoughts around risk management. For seasoned program managers, it may not have much new; however, it walks one through the process. It also challenges you to look inside your organization to see what level of risk management is being followed, how to improve it and how to build accountability from all stakeholders involved (& not just development teams).

If you think you are an expert on software risk management, then perhaps you don't need to read this. Else, its a pretty good book to have,

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bill Lynch

Using Risk Management to gain an advantage

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

In a lot of organizations risk management has become a burdensome process that simply slows everything down. DeMarco and Lister have done a terrific job creating a conscious and deliberate process that will create a practical amount of management while increasing the chances of actually delivering the project on time. This book should be a mandatory read for anyone managing moderate to high risk projects.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

M. Rabie

very insightful and practical on risks of software

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

very insightful, concise, and practical reading on understanding , and dealing with risks of software projects; the contents are universal and apply to projects of any size. a must read for product managers and project managers (who are not freakishly PMP-y).

Helpful

Deep Roy

Dry Material Turned Into Fun

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

I love quoting from this book, so I must have really enjoyed it! It's a lot of fun so I recommend that you read it as well!

Helpful

Andrew Johnston

A good book covering an important and negelected area

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2003

This book is an interesting mix. It starts with a philosophical discussion of why it is ethically wrong and success-endangering to ignore risks, but commercially weak to simply avoid them, thus establishing that we must accept and manage risk. The book then develops a comprehensive method for risk management in IT (or other) projects.
It may be surprising where DeMarco & Lister start from, explaining what risk is, why we need to accept it and why we must manage it, but they explain how common attitudes in the IT industry, which they correctly term "pathologies", can make it almost impossible to properly acknowledge and manage risks.
Maybe it's my background as a physicist, but I assumed that most project managers understand the concept of uncertainty in estimates of cost, timescale and benefits. The authors clearly start from the opposite position. This may be a little off-putting for some readers, but will definitely help those to whom this is a new concept, while the use of "uncertainty diagrams" (probability profiles) will be a useful addition to the toolkit even for those more familiar with the underlying ideas.
The book is very strong on how risk impacts budget and schedule, and how to more scientifically make goals and committed targets more realistic. There's a very good discussion of how to assess deadlines using probability theory, which shows the folly of trying to manage large efforts by single deadlines. The book also includes a very good section on brainstorming and analysing different stakeholders' "win" conditions to identify potential risks.
One weakness is the almost total lack of discussion of risk prevention - actively working to prevent a risk materialising, or at least to reduce its probability as well as mitigating its impact. For example they quote the example of an operating system upgrade which is incompatible with a "make or break" product development. Any sensible manager would work with the OS vendor and its developer information programmes to actively prevent this, rather than just worrying about its possible impact.
When it comes to combining the effects of multiple risks, the authors rely entirely on Monte-Carlo simulation and the "black box" outputs from a spreadsheet (which is downloadable from a web site for the book). This will be a useful tool, but a simple worked example showing the mathematical principles at work would be much better (see [...] risks.htm for my attempt at this).
The book is dismissive of time-constrained scheduling as "schedule flaw", and there is only limited consideration of methods such as Agile Modeling and eXtreme Programming which aim to mitigate or even prevent the effects of requirements change. However there is a good section on the use of incremental delivery to mitigate risk, but possibly somewhat unrealistic in relying on very complete requirements and design before the incremental delivery plan can be completed.
The approach to benefits, and the importance of properly assessing and measuring benefit is excellent. As DeMarco and Lister state, you can't do any meaningful risk management or prioritisation unless costs and benefits are estimated, measured and controlled to almost exactly the same degree. Conversely, if you can build realistic models of both cost and benefit in risk terms, you have a very powerful but relatively simple model for project prioritisation.
Overall this is a good book which I can recommend, but not the definitive answer I expected from the authors of "Peopleware".

64 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Raj M

Risk Management

Reviewed in Canada on November 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Good Book

Tigger

Inhalt gut, Qualität des Einbandes mittel

Reviewed in Germany on January 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

Über den Inhalt kann ich nicht viel sagen, da es ein Geschenk war.

Der Einband ist von der Qualität nicht besonders hochwertig - die Ecken waren bei Lieferung auch abgestoßen. Der Umtausch ging zwar problemlos, aber hat nur wenig gebracht da auch das zweite Buch etwas mitgenommen aussah. Scheint generell an der Verarbeitung zu liegen. Der Preis erscheint hierfür sehr hoch.

Translate review to English

Mrs. AS Goodwin

A Brilliant computer science textbook

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2009

Verified Purchase

I have tended to find that the smaller computer science textbooks are actually better than the inch thick that are more common. This is a very small book for CS but good things often come in small packages as with this book. If you want to know about software engineering in a short space of time then read this as opposed to Sommerville's Software Engineering mammoth tome.

4 people found this helpful

Stephan Wiesner

nothing new

Reviewed in Germany on June 18, 2004

Verified Purchase

If you have read Deadline (DeMarco's best book by far), you will find nothing new.
Otherwise the book might be fun to read (if you don't have to pay the large price, which it clearly is not worth). Don't expect to do better risk management afterwards, though. Curves don't need to be 'nice and smooth' to make their point and his scientific methods are no better than an 'Nutzwertanalyse' (taking the average of a lot of guesses and thinking that this will result in an absolute measure of truth).

10 people found this helpful

Andrew Johnston

A good book covering an important and negelected area

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2003

Verified Purchase

This book is an interesting mix. It starts with a philosophical discussion of why it is ethically wrong and success-endangering to ignore risks, but commercially weak to simply avoid them, thus establishing that we must accept and manage risk. The book then develops a comprehensive method for risk management in IT (or other) projects.
It may be surprising where DeMarco & Lister start from, explaining what risk is, why we need to accept it and why we must manage it, but they explain how common attitudes in the IT industry, which they correctly term "pathologies", can make it almost impossible to properly acknowledge and manage risks.
Maybe it's my background as a physicist, but I assumed that most project managers understand the concept of uncertainty in estimates of cost, timescale and benefits. The authors clearly start from the opposite position. This may be a little off-putting for some readers, but will definitely help those to whom this is a new concept, while the use of "uncertainty diagrams" (probability profiles) will be a useful addition to the toolkit even for those more familiar with the underlying ideas.
The book is very strong on how risk impacts budget and schedule, and how to more scientifically make goals and committed targets more realistic. There's a very good discussion of how to assess deadlines using probability theory, which shows the folly of trying to manage large efforts by single deadlines. The book also includes a very good section on brainstorming and analysing different stakeholders' "win" conditions to identify potential risks.
One weakness is the almost total lack of discussion of risk prevention - actively working to prevent a risk materialising, or at least to reduce its probability as well as mitigating its impact. For example they quote the example of an operating system upgrade which is incompatible with a "make or break" product development. Any sensible manager would work with the OS vendor and its developer information programmes to actively prevent this, rather than just worrying about its possible impact.
When it comes to combining the effects of multiple risks, the authors rely entirely on Monte-Carlo simulation and the "black box" outputs from a spreadsheet (which is downloadable from a web site for the book). This will be a useful tool, but a simple worked example showing the mathematical principles at work would be much better (see [...] risks.htm for my attempt at this).
The book is dismissive of time-constrained scheduling as "schedule flaw", and there is only limited consideration of methods such as Agile Modeling and eXtreme Programming which aim to mitigate or even prevent the effects of requirements change. However there is a good section on the use of incremental delivery to mitigate risk, but possibly somewhat unrealistic in relying on very complete requirements and design before the incremental delivery plan can be completed.
The approach to benefits, and the importance of properly assessing and measuring benefit is excellent. As DeMarco and Lister state, you can't do any meaningful risk management or prioritisation unless costs and benefits are estimated, measured and controlled to almost exactly the same degree. Conversely, if you can build realistic models of both cost and benefit in risk terms, you have a very powerful but relatively simple model for project prioritisation.
Overall this is a good book which I can recommend, but not the definitive answer I expected from the authors of "Peopleware".

30 people found this helpful

See more reviews

Return this item for free