Well, this is an excellent book, and one which bears reading a few times I think. Just packed with lots of really excellent useful advice from the trenches. Some of it was a little more hardcore engineeringy than where I am currently at. It's broken up into sections so there are whole areas you can skip over if you're more interested in either the technical / project management etc. parts of things.
On estimates - On the other hand, a diver trapped underwater and running out of air is probably interested in an answer down to the second. What's the value of pi If you're wondering how much edging to buy to put around a circular flower bed, then "3" is probably good enough. [10] If you're in school, then maybe "22/7" is a good approximation. If you're in NASA, then maybe 12 decimal places will do. [10] "3" is also apparently good enough if you are a legislator. In 1897, Indiana State Legislature House Bill No. 246 attempted to decree that henceforth pi should have the value of "3". The Bill was tabled indefinitely at its second reading when a mathematics professor pointed out that their powers did not quite extend to passing laws of nature. One of the interesting things about estimating is that the units you use make a difference in the interpretation of the result. If you say that something will take about 130 working days, then people will be expecting it to come in pretty close. However, if you say "Oh, about six months," then they know to look for it any time between five and seven months from now. Both numbers represent the same duration, but "130 days" probably implies a higher degree of accuracy than you feel. We recommend that you scale time estimates as follows: Duration Quote estimate in 1-15 days days 3-8 weeks weeks 8-30 weeks months 30+ weeks think hard before giving an estimate So, if after doing all the necessary work, you decide that a project will take 125 working days (25 weeks), you might want to deliver an estimate of "about six months." The same concepts apply to estimates of any quantity: choose the units of your answer to reflect the accuracy you intend to convey
What to Say When Asked for an Estimate You say " I'll get back to you"
The O () notation is a mathematical way of dealing with approximations. When we write that a particular sort routine sorts n records in O ( n 2 ) time, we are simply saying that the worst-case time taken will vary as the square of n. Double the number of records, and the time will increase roughly fourfold. Think of the O as meaning on the order
The key to managing growth of requirements is to point out each new feature's impact on the schedule to the project sponsors
he who hesitates is sometimes saved
Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot until the 'decision altitude' call, when the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Landing Pilot, unless the latter calls 'go-around,' in which case the Handling Non-Landing Pilot continues handling and the Non-Handling Landing Pilot continues non-handling until the next call of 'land' or 'go-around' as appropriate. In view of recent confusions over these rules, it was deemed necessary to restate them clearly.
If a bug slips through the net of existing tests, you need to add a new test to trap it next time
Books Computing books can be expensive, but choose carefully and they're a worthwhile investment. Here are a handful of the many we like. Analysis and Design Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd Edition. Bertrand Meyer's epic book on the fundamentals of object-oriented development, all in about 1,300 pages [ Mey97b ] . Design Patterns. A design pattern describes a way to solve a particular class of problems at a higher level than a programming language idiom. This now-classic book [ GHJV95 ] by the Gang of Four describes 23 basic design patterns, including Proxy, Visitor, and Singleton . Analysis Patterns. A treasure trove of high-level, architectural patterns taken from a wide variety of real-world projects and distilled in book form. A relatively quick way to gain the insight of many years of modeling experience [ Fow96 ] . Teams and Projects The Mythical Man Month. Fred Brooks' classic on the perils of organizing project teams, recently updated [ Bro95 ] . Dynamics of Software Development. A series of short essays on building software in large teams, focusing on the dynamics between team members, and between the team and the rest of the world [ McC95 ]
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