Dynamics of Software Development (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Trying to be too clever
Review: I am a software engineer and just finished reading this book yesterday. I decided to see what other thought of it. I was completely shocked to see all of the 5 star ratings here.

Personally I cannot say that I got much out of the book. I much preferred other books like "Debugging the Development Process", "Rapid Development" or "Code Complete". The best things about the example based on the authors experience with the Visual C++ project. I liked his specific examples, like how at the time most developers found C++ too complicated, so their goal was to make it easy to write C++ for C programmers, and how at the time the media made it sound like everyone was doing C++, but in reality 90% of the people were not.

However I found a lot of the rules to be written in too clever a way, and either they did not keep my attention, or went over my head as to why they were so deep. Some of them just seemed obvious, like having a project manager. Most of the pictures in the book were not really worth a 1000 words either.

This book is not horrible, but not really the style I like. Some of the other books by McConnell have a more entertaining and informative style for my tastes.

Rating:
Summary: Stories that stick in your head long after reading
Review: I found this book to be quite helpful, amusing, as well as sobering as I thought of past projects and situations I've been involved/leading. Each of the dynamics is laid out one per chapter --- Jim M. illustrates each one with a solid story including personalities and teams which show the emotions that people feel while participating in complex development work. Lots of useful principles to employ in motivating people and teams (not just for software development).

By the way, this book has principles and stories...this is not a step by step or "how to" on software project management. You'll need to get materials from Steve McConnell or Fergus O'Connell for that.

Rating:
Summary: The "agile" story of Visual C++
Review: This books describes Jim McCarthy's story on developing Visual C++ 1.0. The method of development has much in line with the agile development methods at this moment. Quotes like "embrace the change" are now quite common but were less common in 1995.

The book is written in a very funny way. It's not always easy to follow the author but that doesn't really make it much worse. Jim McCarty puts very much effort on the "group psyche" and focus on team work and communication. He tries to describe on how to make a team with a "winning mood" which then should take all responsibility and 'just' finish the product.

Parts like "Group psyche", "Don't flip the bozo bit", "The world changes and so should you" and "slip but don't fall" are extremly good and useful to read! When reading the book I really got the feeling that he knows how to ship great intellectual property. And the success of the Visual C++ compiler also shows that his methods have been very successfull.

The second edition of the book will be released in 2 days from now (6 Feb. 2004) and that's certainly a book which I will read again! Great stuff.