Beyond Chaos The Expert Edge in Managing Software Development

by Constantine, Larry L.

• ISBN13: 9780201719604
• ISBN10: 0201719606
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-05
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

The popularity of the Management Forum in Software Development Magazine is not surprising. Because the majority of software development projects fail to come in on time, on budget, or on specification, software development managers are constantly seeking out management approaches and techniques that will help them achieve success. Many software development projects deteriorate into a state of chaos. In Beyond Chaos, the keenest contributions to the Management Forum have been incorporated into a single volume to reveal best practices in managing software projects and organizations. The forty-five essays contained in this book are written by many of the leading names in software development, software engineering, and technical management. Each piece has been selected and edited to provide highly focused ideas and suggestions that can be translated into immediate practice. Pragmatic and provocative, they address key management concerns involving people, planning and productivity, coping under pressure, quality, development processes, and leadership and teamwork. Highlights of the book include: bull; bull;Larry Constantine, "Dealing with Difficult People: Changing the Changeable" bull; Karl Wiegers, "First Things First: A Project Manager's Primer" bull; Capers Jones, "Productivity by the Numbers: What Can Speed Up or Slow Down Software Development" bull; Ed Yourdon, "Death March: Surviving a Hopeless Project" bull; Dave Thomas, "Web-Time Development: High-Speed Software Engineering" bull; Meilir Page-Jones, "Seduced by Reuse: Realizing Reusable Components" bull; Jim Highsmith, "Order for Free: An Organic Model for Adaptation" bull; Steve McConnell, "Managing Outsourced Projects: Project Management Inside-Out" These and many more insightful and advisory essays together represent the cutting edge in software development management and the collective wisdom of the field's most knowledgeable practitioners. Both entertaining and enlightening, Beyond Chaos will enrich your skills and enhance your deeper understanding of the process of bringing software from idea to reality. 0201719606B06262001

Author Biography

Larry L. Constantine, a pioneer of modern software engineering practice, is highly regarded as an authority on the human side of software development. A leading international lecturer, author, editor, and consultant, he has ten books and more than 120 published papers to his credit. Under the pen name Lior Samson, Larry has just published his first novel, Bashert, a political thriller set against the backdrop of Israel’s emergence as a nuclear power.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
It's About People	p. 1
Dealing with Difficult People: Changing the Changeable	p. 3
Avoiding Feedback Traps: Improving Customer and Client Communication	p. 11
These Are Trained Professionals: Beyond Training to Transformation	p. 19
Maintaining Balance: Managing Working Relationships	p. 27
Job Qualifications: On Hiring the Best	p. 33
Problem-Solving Metarules: Habits of Productive People	p. 39
Project Management	p. 47
First Things First: A Project Manager's Primer	p. 49
Money Bags and Baseball Bats: Sponsorship Rules	p. 57
Productivity by the Numbers: What Can Speed Up or Slow Down Software Development	p. 65
Software Waste Management: Managing Data Migration	p. 73
When in Doubt, Blame Everybody: The Responsibility for Usability	p. 81
Creative Input: From Feature Fantasies to Practical Products	p. 89
Software Collaborations: Managing the Complexities of Cooperation	p. 95
Managing Outsourced Projects: Projects Management Inside Out	p. 103
Tough Customers: Toward Win-Win Solutions	p. 111
Avoiding the Iceberg: Reading the Project Warning Signs	p. 119
Lemonade from Lemons: Learning from Project Failure	p. 127
Under Pressure	p. 135
Death March: Surviving a Hopeless Project	p. 137
Web-Time Development: High-Speed Software Engineering	p. 145
Taking the Crunch Out of Crunch Mode: Alternatives to Mandatory Overtime	p. 153
Reducing Cycle Time: Getting through Bottlenecks, Blocks, and Bogs	p. 161
Dot-Com Management: Surviving the Start-up Syndrome	p. 169
Cutting Corners: Shortcuts in Model-Driven Web Development	p. 177
Quality Required	p. 185
No More Excuses: Innovative Technology and Irrelevant Tangents	p. 187
The Mess Is Your Fault: Toward the Software Guild	p. 195
Seduced by Reuse: Realizing Reusable Components	p. 203
Real-Life Requirements: Caught between Quality and Deadlines	p. 211
Rules Rule: Business Rules as Requirements	p. 219
Taming the Wild Web: Business Alignment in Web Development	p. 227
Calming Corporate Immune Systems: Overcoming Risk Aversion	p. 235
Inventing Software: Breakthroughs on Demand	p. 241
Processes and Practices	p. 249
Order for Free: An Organic Model for Adaptation	p. 251
Beyond Level Five: From Optimization to Adaptation	p. 259
Optimization or Adaptation: In Pursuit of a Paradigm	p. 265
Adaptive Software Development: An Experience Report	p. 273
Creating a Culture of Commitment: Of Deadlines, Discipline, and Management Maturity	p. 281
The Commando Returns: Learning from Experience in the Trenches	p. 289
Persistent Models: Models as Corporate Assets	p. 297
Card Magic for Managers: Low-Tech Techniques for Design and Decisions	p. 305
Throwaway Software: Delivering through Discards	p. 313
Unified Hegemony: Beyond Universal Solutions	p. 321
Leadership and Teamwork	p. 329
Scaling Up: Teamwork in the Large	p. 331
Sustaining Teamwork: Promoting Life-Cycle Teams	p. 339
Managing from Below: The Russian Embassy Method	p. 347
On Becoming a Leader: Advice for Tomorrow's Development Managers	p. 355
References	p. 367
About the Authors	p. 371
Index	p. 379
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chaos. Not the inchoate state of the early universe, not the ill-behaved subject of a specialized branch of mathematics, not the mid-revolutionary fragmentation of a society in transition, but coding chaos--the everyday reality of projects that develop software applications for computers and the World Wide Web. Countless managers struggle for control and stability, for accountability and predictability amidst this chaos. From the project leaders, who provide the day-to-day oversight and guidance all the way up to the CIOs, whose charge is strategic direction and corporate-wide coordination, they struggle to understand and manage technology and processes of enormous complexity made all the more complex and unmanageable by the relentless and accelerating pace of technological change. Herding squirrels. Corralling cats. Taming the mongrel hordes. Whatever the metaphor, the challenges of managing software development are legend. The stories are alarmingly similar for projects of every scope and size, whether staffed by the arrayed forces of thousands of programmers and testers or tackled by a small team of freelancers. The budget may be blown by a hundred percent or more and deadline upon deadline may be passed like so many exits on a freeway. Rarely do software development projects meet budget constraints, techni-cal objectives, and delivery schedules--if indeed recognizable constraints, objectives, and schedules exist. Applications that are far more complex than a highrise office building have sometimes been launched with little more planning than a sketch on the back of a napkin. Some managers simply give up and accept this uncontrolled chaos as the state of affairs, an unchangeable reality and the unavoidable price of dealing with a highly paid and poorly understood profession. They accept the reality of seeking discipline among the undisciplined, of perpetually pushing the envelope of the possible, or of seeking certainty where specifications are little more than executive fantasies and deadlines are the arbitrary impositions of uninformed marketing managers. Some managers seek refuge in mindnumbing manuals of procedure and in the step-by-step details of elaborately defined processes. They rationalize the investment in expensive systems that promise predictability through the imposition of regulation and regimentation. Some managers, defining defeat as success, instead celebrate unmanageable chaos as the crucible of creation, the necessary and desired context in which to unleash the powers of the digital genie that will transform life on earth. Beyond chaos, however, beyond surrender or celebration, is another view of software development--the view that software development projects and software developers are indeed manageable, that chaos is not an inevitable condition or concomitant. In this view, salvation dwells in the details, success lies in subtle insights, and control is achieved through thoughtful attention and planning. The expert edge is the difference. Compiled in this book are the insights, inspiration, practical pointers, and provocative thinking of an elite assemblage of working managers and practicing consultants--the recognized experts who contributed monthly to The Management Forum. The Forum, a regular feature in the respected industry publicationSoftware Development,occupied the prestigious inside back page of the magazine and proved to be one its most popular features. Written for busy working managers, the Forum featured pragmatic, provocative essays by the leading thinkers and doers in software and Web development, software engineering, and technical management, including such industry luminaries as Ed Yourdon, Capers Jones, Meilir Page-Jones, Steve McConnell, and Jim Highsmith. The column set high standards for the clarity and qua