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If you have some non-technical people managing your software development team, is there a book you'd want them to read to understand the process better? For example, in most work, you can pretty well estimate how long a task will take. But in development, the whole point is that you have to figure out the problem, which takes unknown time. This is hard to communicate. Anything you know of that explains this well? |
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"Peopleware" and "Mythical Man Month" would be a couple of classics though I'm not sure how well management would take to reading either book as they may be seen as old. |
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Get Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. EDIT This book is easy to read, and easy to snipe paragraphs from for management. It focuses on the issues of software development from the distance of knowing nothing about it. At the time, I had similar issues to OP, and working with my manager and this book, I manage to convince him that I need more time and resources to complete my tasks. However, I've recently seen a lot of stuff in that book contradicted. As ever, I wouldn't recommend anyone reading anything in the social studies anyway. It's all too wishy washy and changes from day to day. |
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Not a book, but I've had good success directing (reasonably bright) non-technical managers to Joel on Software. |
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In terms of Software development process, I'd have to go with "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. Its full of gems of useful knowledge that would typically take a lot of actual real-world programming experience to learn otherwise. It is also programming language-agnostic and is mostly easy to understand. In terms of estimation, the pragmatic programmer has a brief section about it, but the classic "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred P. Brooks would have to be worth reading. Some of the project examples seem a little dated but much of the ideas still ring true today. |
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For software process and project management, I have to recommend Steve McConnell's Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules and Software Project Survival Guide. These books discuss topics ranging from classic mistakes in managing software projects to managing risks to explanations of best practices and when how to appropriately apply them. Jim McCarthy's Dynamics of Software Development also provides some interesting insights into how software teams work and provides tips and tricks for optimizing software projects, based on real-world cases. |
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Possibly "The Art of Agile Development". This may convince them to look at managing software projects in a more realistic way. Of course, if you don't want them to try agile, that may be a bad thing. But I'm finding it a compelling read myself. |
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Perfect Software: and other illusions about testing should be another book you get them. From the preface, here are some of the questions it discusses: "Why do we have to bother testing when it just seems to slow us down? Why can't people just build software right, so it doesn't need testing? Do we have to test everything? Why not just test everything? What is it that makes testing so hard? Why does testing take so long? Is perfect software even possible? Why can't we just accept a few bugs?" |
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