Software Project Survival Guide (Pro -- Best Practices)

I'm a one-man database development shop at a nonprofit with a shoestring budget. Without the benefit of senior level programmers, I've had to learn most of my software engineering lessons the hard way- by experience.I picked up this book seven years into the job, which in retrospect was about seven years too late. In some respects, this book repeats lessons that that have already become obvious through experience (e.g., software testing needs to be performed separately from development). But, this lends credibility to my judgment, and provides new insights substantiated by software engineering research studies. Non-technical management and funders are responsive to the hard figures I often find myself citing from this book. For example:1) Programmers are 2.5 times more productive in a quiet office vs. a cubicle- so, I need to be allowed to work from home2) The most efficient programmers are 10 times more productive than the least efficient programmers- really, you would think this would be obvious, but when work needs to be contracted, the low bidder is not necessarily the best choice over the long haulCurrently faced with my most substantial and challenging programming project yet, I'm essentially using this book as a cookbook to process. Upfront I was a bit overwhelmed with the scope of the project. Having finished the book, I have a well-defined process in place, am confident this will get done, and feel I am much more articulate describing the stages of software development to management and contracted vendors. Some presumably industry-standard strategies are proving invaluable- implementing a Top Ten Risk list to ensure that major barriers are addressed upfront rather than deferred, creating specific milestones, etc.This book (or an equivalent) should absolutely be mandatory for anyone about to take on their first major software project. It is most useful because it reads like a cookbook- guiding you through all the phases of software development, one after the other.

This book is a strong theoretical background every software project manager should understand. The author provides deep analysis why such a big number of software projects fail. The author offers a set of reality-testing tools (software project survival test) that helps to understand chances of a project to success or to fail, from the very beginning.An intriguing idea is that "software project need hierarchy" is essentially the same as Maslow's "human need hierarchy": human beings respond to a hierarchy of needs that involve a natural progression from lower motives to higher ones. Lower motives such as food, air and water must be satisfied before we can be motivated by the need for belongingness, love, self-esteem or self-actualization. Similar hierarchy of needs applies to software projects.The author clearly shows that the outcome of any project depends equally on both the customer and the project team, and on the way of their communication and cooperation.Showing the power of process and distinguishing "process" from "thrashing" and "productive work", the author doesn't decline that the people are always important.Another cunning idea presented by the author is "The Cone of Uncertainty" which means "early in the project you can have firm cost and schedule target, or a firm feature set, but not both".While by no doubt the first part of the book "The Survival Mind-Set" is an excellent theoretic inspection, the remaining, practical parts of the book are questionable. I'd recommend you to take them skeptically, and, before taking decisive action, getting the full picture by reading "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn to get the overview of the modern methodologies, "Extreme Programming Explained" by Kent Beck as an example of such methodoloty, "Peopleware" by Tom Demarco & Timothy Lister to make sure that the good workplace and the jelled team is a major factor, "Quality is Free" by Philip B. Crosby to understand what really the quality is and "Leadership Without Easy Answers" by Ronald A. Heifetz to assure that nothing will succeed without a leader.

I found the lessons and practical writing in this book to be fantastic. It spoke plainly about project management, not in academic terms as many other project planning materials that are out there. It covers the basics of the lifestyle that I already knew but overlays so great ideas and practices that I find myself nodding, pondering how I can apply these practices to my projects. Great read

This book was initially loaned to me by my IT specialist when I came to him with problems I was having with a software product whose development I was overseeing. I wish I'd read it at the very start of the project---it would have saved me much anguish.