Reflections on Management
Published August 17th, 2010 Under Books | Leave a Comment
This book is composed of papers previously written by Watts Humphrey. The people and management aspects of software development are often neglected in books and this one is a good source to start thinking about them… and improving our practice. The book is structured in four parts: managing your projects, managing your teams, managing your boss and managing yourself. In each part, it presents both general principles and real life examples or stories taken from Watts Humphrey career. This makes the book very easy to read as we can connect the theory to situations that we have met in our professional life.
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Reference: “Reflections on Management – How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself”, Watts S. Humphrey and William R. Thomas Addison-Wesley, 260 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-71153-3
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Lean Agile Software Development
Published June 9th, 2010 Under Books | Leave a Comment
The goal of this book is to propose a vision of Agile software development that goes behind the current practices, more specifically Scrum, to integrate the principles of Lean development. To achieve this objective, the authors draw on their own experience in Agile consulting. Read more
The Economics of Iterative Software Development
Published May 19th, 2010 Under Books | Leave a Comment
When you start reading this book, you will quickly understand that the authors are affiliated with IBM. This is nothing wrong per se, but this seems to influence too much the vision that the book proposes, ignoring approaches proposed by others. Including “iterative” in the title seems here to be only a marketing trick used to make it catchy. They don’t give you a precise definition of “iterative”, saying rather than it is a “modern method” (Tom Gilb was talking about evolutionary development 30 years ago) and that iterative management is result-based rather than activity-based. The difference between iteration and increment is not discussed. The IBM bias is visible when they state for instance that RUP is a “well accepted benchmark of modern iterative process”. Read more
Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
Published April 23rd, 2010 Under Books | Leave a Comment
Object orientation (OO) is not a trendy concept these days, but it hasn’t certainly lost it values. The purpose of this book is to integrate the development of object oriented software with the test-driven development (TDD) approach, more specifically in Java. It starts with an introduction to TDD and the tools (Junit, jMock2) that will be used. It describes then in detail the TDD process that is then illustrated by a large example. The book ends with more software testing topics like tests smells or tests readability. A final part is dedicated to special aspects of testing like persistence, threads and asynchronous code.
The book could be read from start to end or be used as a reference book. In the preface, the authors say that the book is intended for developers with professional experience and some first knowledge of TDD. It really goes far beyond “toy” examples that you can find in programming learning books. The content is a balanced mix of concepts, examples and diagrams that makes it easy to read. Besides what could be considered “catchy” acronyms (OO+TDD), this book is an excellent reference on how to design and program software (the authors use the nice concept of “growing” software). I will consider it a must for anyone programming in Java, but I will also recommend it to people programming in other languages, as the thinking process could be applied in other contexts and with similar tools.
Reference: “Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests”, Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce, Addison-Wesley, 358 pages, ISBN 978-0-321-50362-7
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Quotes
“What if software wasn’t “made”, like we make a paper airplane – finish folding it and fly it away? What if, instead, we treated software more like a valuable, productive plant, to be nurtured, pruned, harvested, fertilized, and watered? Traditional farmers know how to keep plants productive for decades or even centuries. How would software development be different if we treated our programs the same way?”
“As John Gall wrote in “The Systems Bible: The Beginner’s Guide to Systems Large and Small”: a complex systems that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works”.
“Sometimes we find it difficult to write a test for some functionality we want to add to our code. In our experience, this usually means that our design can be improved – perhaps the class is too tightly coupled to its environment or does not have clear responsibilities. When this happens, we first check whether it’s an opportunity to improve our code, before working around the design by making the test more complicated or using more sophisticated tools. We’ve found that the qualities that make an object easy to test also make our code responsive to change.”
Leading Lean Software Development – Results are not the Point
Published March 9th, 2010 Under Books | 1 Comment
What fascinates me the most in the Lean software development approach is the quality of the people that support it. The Poppendieck are not an exception to this rule. Their book achieves the seemingly contradictory goals of being very insightful but still easy and captivating to read. It might be however easier to have the right flow when you are a Lean adept ;o)
The book starts with a chapter on systems thinking that takes also examples outside the software development world like Southwest Airlines. The next chapter on technical excellence is dedicated to a panorama of the software development approaches. Chapter 3 is kind of my favorite part of the book, extracting process management knowledge from the history of the construction of the Empire State Building, a project that took only one year to be completed. Chapter four presents the tools for improvement. Finally, the last part of the book is dedicated the people and leadership aspects of Lean.
The structure of the book makes it very pleasant to read, mixing the presentation of lean concepts with case studies and short personal stories. It is definitively a book that I will recommend to every software developer and manager…. and wish that every software developer and manager had read. Even if you think that Lean is not for you or you are a Toyota owner, this book provides a mind-opening text about what the values of software development and organizations should be.
Reference: “Leading Lean Software Development – Results are not the Point”, Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Addison-Wesley, 278 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-62070-5
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Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk