Steve McConnell requires no introduction. Remember in Code Complete and Rapid Development Steve said Software Estimation really required a full book. Finally he found the time to aggregate all that has been written on the topic, sprinkle with his own wisdom and produce a Software Estimation guide intended for mere mortals rather than specialists in the field.
There are three main sections to the book:
1. Critical Estimation Concepts
2. Fundamental Estimation Techniques
3. Specific Estimation Challenges
Over the 18 years in IT four of the sixteen projects I participated in failed, in every case problems grew from wishful thinking and unrealistic estimates. If every IT manager read and understand chapter one if this book IT failure rates would plummet overnight, but then there would no hugely late projects for expensive IT consultants to rescue either ;) Admittedly chapter one teaches an experienced developer little, but I left with a better vocabulary to translate my experience into terms non-technical managers are likely to understand and agree with. The diagram called ‘Cone of Uncertainty’ and the section on why underestimation is really dangerous are prime examples that
Interestingly in every failure I saw serious problems mounting well before the projects were canceled. Trying to forewarn management generally results in being labeled a trouble maker, so before you batter a pointy-haired manager with this book make sure you can easily find another job!! I had to once; of course politics and wishful thinking did not deliver working code and the project failed. Both people responsible for firing me were fired for incompetence, and the client tells me they now have a much smaller team producing much better results after the purge; what a surprise ;).
Recently I presented on Software Estimation at the local IASA chapter, the material was based on this book (with Steve’s permission!) and people loved the content – it seemed like every single person present came to me and said they enjoyed the material or emailed me later.
Paul Lockwood Book Review
Offshoring is here for good, get used to it. Only last month I sold my recently delivered ‘07 BMW to an Indian working in the US. He is an off shoring specialist with no coding skills whatsoever! The offshoring trend is way more advanced than you probably think. Oh yes, he paid cash for the car too, these Indians are smart people…
So what are we to do? In his first book ‘My Job Went to India’ Chad Fowler has delivered a ’self-help’ guide for Western developers. Of course you dear reader, as a blog devouring overachiever, 80% of this book will be common sense. During chapter one I almost tossed it back on the book shelf, but Chad’s anecdotes from his time in India are pretty amusing, and chuckles from a tech book always keep me reading :) As the book progressed tips appeared that I bet even you too can learn from. The chapter on Marketing Yourself is something I wish I had read ten years ago.
The cover of the book was my IM avatar for a while – as hoped it generated quite a few laughs, but most friends had never heard of the book, hence this review.
It is an easy read and at only $13.57 from Amazon I suggest everyone pick up a copy
Paul Lockwood Book Review
Is it possible for book to have a more niche title? Interestingly to broaden the market appeal examples are in both C# and VB.Net; I find it hard to believe anyone interested in reading a book on Generics cannot read C#.
You have already read about Generics in Jeff Ricters’ CLR via C# and possibly Jesse Liberty’s Visual C# 2005 too. Today the standard developer quote about Generics is that they are easy; just use List<T> and be on your merry way. Amazingly just that one BCL Generic has removed almost all type-unsafe code from our assemblies.
Recently I as binding a GridView to a custom collection. Naturally the collection implements List<T>, but I wished to sort the GridView on several columns. After expecting auto-magic in GridView to do the sorting for me, it was disappointing remembering about ObjectDataSource – this means we still need to do manual labor so I looked for a reusable solution. Long story short after pinging GridView whiz Marcie 60 seconds later this book was on my desk.
Reading of chapters 1->7 is required reading for anyone wishing to remain a senior .Net developer/ architect. This readability book is not on par with work by say Richter or Esposito, and where is the bold highlighting in code samples that point us towards the salient snippets? Other than these complaints, the book fulfilled its purpose and I now have a much deeper knowledge of generics. Until my comfort level increases
List<T> the mainstay of my Generic usage, but I suspect that as time progresses we as a community will leverage them much more.
Before Marcie kicks me in the face I must return her book. Hence I’ll be putting an order into Amazon for my own copy, as I need to revisit a few of the more technical areas to solidify my knowledge. IMO $25 with free shipping is a bargain for this knowledge, please buy via my link
and put another $2 into the Lockwood retirement fund, LOL
Paul Lockwood Book Review