Dynamics of Software DevelopmentMcCarthy has distilled a veteran's hard-won know-how into 54 memorable, pragmatic maxims - short essays on defining, building, shipping, and marketing software successfully, whether commercially or in-house. With a grown-up wit that's by turns homespun and sophisticated, McCarthy tells you how to maintain your cool ("Don't Flip the Bozo Bit"), organize a crack team ("Get Their Heads into the Game"), analyze the customer and the competition ("Alone? A Market Without a Competitor Ain't"), handle uncertainty and schedule slips ("When You Slip, Don't Fall"), make commitments with integrity ("Be like the Doctors"), and stabilize the product so that you can ship it ("Don't Shake the Jell-O"). McCarthy shows you how to develop a marketing message and how to launch your product too, and in the appendix, he tells you how to hire smart people and keep them happy and productive. Along the way, McCarthy meditates on software aesthetics and familiar software development phenomena - the "death march to Egghead", burn-out, internecine quarrels, being lost in software, the software dream and successive awakenings, the self-critical customer. McCarthy's preoccupation with the dynamics of the process infected his brother, artist Patrick McCarthy, with a sense of the "rich, deep, psychocultural extravaganza" that is software development, and themes both humorous and dark emerge in the handsome illustrations for the book. You'll find Dynamics of Software Development as engrossing and exciting as software development itself. This book is destined to be read by software designers, developers, marketers, technical managers, and industry insiders for many years to come. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
achieve appropriate aware become behavior Beta bug fix candidate challenge check-ins communications competitive complex component consensus conventional wisdom course create creative customers cycle daily build deliverables devel development managers dogfooding Dynamics of Software effective effort emotional empowered endgame expected experience express feature team feel flip the bozo foobars functionality goal group psyche happen healthy team ideas identify individual insight intellectual property investment Jell-O Jim McCarthy launch event leader leadership ment Microsoft Press middle game milestone story opening moves organization person problem program manager radical focus release remediation role scapegoating schedule scouts sense ship mode shipping great software slip software creation software development software development process software project someone Steve Maguire success team member team's teamwork technology plan things thought triage ultimately uncertainty understand usually vision Visual C++ Wilhelm Writing Solid Code ZD milestones