Author : Jeff Papows
Publisher : Prentice Hall
Category :
Project Management, Process and Best Practices Review by : Ulf Dittmer
Rating : 3 horseshoes
This book aims to describe how to institute a software development process (and the business environment in which it exists) that leads to higher-quality software exhibiting fewer bugs. According to the author, this is done through "better IT governance". Unfortunately, very little of the book is spent on discussing what that means for the actual development process. The most part is taken up by prescriptions so high level as to be either common sense or inactionable. As an example, among the "Ten Ways to Squander IT Governance Resources" are such items as "Enforce bureaucratic processes without explaining the context", "Lock developers out of the code" and "Create reports that nobody can understand". No kidding.
Much of the rest of the book covers a variety of topics demonstrating the importance of IT and software, and how having them exhibit problems can affect millions of people, up to and including posing a danger to their lives. Well, yes, but that's not exactly fresh insight. Someone who has never worked with IT/software topics may find this interesting and illuminating, but not industry insiders.
Reading was somewhat hard work, since there's no common strand along which the content is organized. Each chapter is more or less unconnected to the others, only the very last one tries to tie it all together. Kind of annoying is the author's habit of breaking down each subject into 3 bullet point, and then each of those in turn into 3 more points - it feels like a series of presentation slides, with too little explanation for each bullet.
(Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in
exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.)
More info at Amazon.com