Rating: 
Summary: Awesome.
Review: This book is distilled experience. Common sense, easy to apply advice that can make your work (and your life) blossom. In Steve's words, experience is a sum of tiny bits of knowledge each of which might not seem all that important but all together make the difference. And that's what the book is all about.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely worth reading, but not awesome.
Review: This book is NOT about project management, it is about 1st line supervision. Of course, 1st line supervisors interface with management and this book addresses that some, but that doesn't address project management from a manager's view, just a supervisor's. You need to know who this book is for. It is for an experienced supervisor, someone who can spot the occasional errors. In this case the errors are strongly held but misplaced opinions. One error the author made was to call programmers lazy who read source code as part of a job (p. 50). That's a foolish statement. If you've ever debugged someone else's undocumented code, you have to read the source to even figure out what the code is supposed to do. He praises people who make snap decisions (p. 20). That's silly. It's better than no decision, but certainly not praiseworthy. And on pp. 113-115 he says to "Give Experts the Boot." Here he's parroting the "we need generalists" mantra that became popular about 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. I've seen a very noticible drop in quality all over the industry. One example, when one company I worked at got rid of their Ph.D. from MIT who did thermal analysis and replaced him with a non-degreed mechanical designer who was trying to run thermal analysis software, not even having a clue on the intricacies of thermal analysis and design. At this point the thermal design of their computers became a joke. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn't. Don't get me wrong. The author has a number of good points. E.g., fix bugs ASAP (p. 128), don't let them pile up for later. Set your coding priorities (pp. 17-19), and do proper postmortems (pp. 78-80). Very good book, but you must beware of his errors. If you are young, read this again after 10 to 15 years.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth reading, but not awesome.
Review: This book is NOT about project management, it is about 1st line supervision. Of course, 1st line supervisors interface with management and this book addresses that some, but that doesn't address project management from a manager's view, just a supervisor's. You need to know who this book is for. It is for an experienced supervisor, someone who can spot the occasional errors. In this case the errors are strongly held but misplaced opinions. One error the author made was to call programmers lazy who read source code as part of a job (p. 50). That's a foolish statement. If you've ever debugged someone else's undocumented code, you have to read the source to even figure out what the code is supposed to do. He praises people who make snap decisions (p. 20). That's silly. It's better than no decision, but certainly not praiseworthy. And on pp. 113-115 he says to "Give Experts the Boot." Here he's parroting the "we need generalists" mantra that became popular about 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. I've seen a very noticible drop in quality all over the industry. One example, when one company I worked at got rid of their Ph.D. from MIT who did thermal analysis and replaced him with a non-degreed mechanical designer who was trying to run thermal analysis software, not even having a clue on the intricacies of thermal analysis and design. At this point the thermal design of their computers became a joke. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn't. Don't get me wrong. The author has a number of good points. E.g., fix bugs ASAP (p. 128), don't let them pile up for later. Set your coding priorities (pp. 17-19), and do proper postmortems (pp. 78-80). Very good book, but you must beware of his errors. If you are young, read this again after 10 to 15 years.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!
Review: This is a good book on software development process improvements. Steve talks about practical strategies for staying focused, hitting ship dates and building solid teams. These strategies are common-sense but are often ignored by managers, project manager and technical leads.Chapter 1 talks about "laying the groundwork" -- priorities work, establish goals, coding priorites. How true this is ... how often have we started development when we are unsure of what the management wants to achieve out of it. Some of the other strategies include having 40 hour week(hmm ... reminds me of Extreme Programming) and about the danger of having working 12 hours per day. He also spoke about ensuring personal growth in dividuals, and how it directly helps the company. This book is written in simple english, straight to the point. To everyone doing software development, this is a must-read!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!
Review: This is a good book on software development process improvements. Steve talks about practical strategies for staying focused, hitting ship dates and building solid teams. These strategies are common-sense but are often ignored by managers, project manager and technical leads. Chapter 1 talks about "laying the groundwork" -- priorities work, establish goals, coding priorites. How true this is ... how often have we started development when we are unsure of what the management wants to achieve out of it. Some of the other strategies include having 40 hour week(hmm ... reminds me of Extreme Programming) and about the danger of having working 12 hours per day. He also spoke about ensuring personal growth in dividuals, and how it directly helps the company. This book is written in simple english, straight to the point. To everyone doing software development, this is a must-read!!!
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Practical book for Project Leads and Developers
Review: This is one of the great books that i have come across on software project management. The book is not only good for project leads/managers but also for individual developers. Steve McQuire provides an excellent practical realistic insight into project teams at microsoft. Once you start reading this book you would not feel like putting it down. All the concepts are as we encounter them in our software development lifecycle and you can practice them and see the difference, voila!.
I was greatly inspired by this book, love it and its a must have for every software engineer.
Rating:
Summary: Too Bad it is Out of Print
Review: This is really a very good book. I wanted to use it as a textbook for a Software Engineering class I am teaching, but now that it is out of print I felt I couldn't. Anyone who needs to manage programmers, or is dependent on programmers should read this book. It is also a good read for anyone looking to help improve the overall productivity of "information workers." Simple things like how and why you schedule your meetings make a big impact.
Rating:
Summary: Too Bad it is Out of Print
Review: This is really a very good book. I wanted to use it as a textbook for a Software Engineering class I am teaching, but now that it is out of print I felt I couldn't. Anyone who needs to manage programmers, or is dependent on programmers should read this book. It is also a good read for anyone looking to help improve the overall productivity of "information workers." Simple things like how and why you schedule your meetings make a big impact.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on Software Development
Review: This is the best book I've read on managing and coordinating a software development effort. It discussed a lot of the software development "time wasters" as well as good practices. Additionally, unlike a lot of other software books, this book is extremely enjoyable to read. I finished it in only two days. I've already recommended this book to a bunch of my coworkers.
Rating:
Summary: Quick Read That's Worth Your Time
Review: When I read this book, the information seemed simple and obvious. However, I also realized that there were a number of things mentioned that I wasn't doing. That begs the question: Is the material that simple and obvious? Maybe not. Maguire gives some simple, practicle advice for improving the development environment that a manager is responsible for. For example, he recommends starting each day by asking, "What can I do today that will help keep the project on track for the next few months?" I also found the section on feedback loops to be interesting. The suggestion that you have a person stop feature work to fix a bug that they created as soon as it is found is a way to emphasize quality and make it in the best interest of developers to produce high quality code. The chapter on attitudes is also very good. Much of the time, there isn't a lot knowledge wise that separtes good and bad developers. The difference comes in attitude. Attitudes such as, "We can't do that!", "The users won't care!", "Bugs are going to happen!" need to be rooted out. This book gives good insight as to what you as a manager can do and help your developers do in order to have smoother projects that are high quality and on time.
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