Rapid Development

"Rapid Development; Taming Wild Software Schedules" by SteveMcConnell; Microsoft Press. ISBN 1556159005

It describes BarryBoehm's SpiralLifecycle? (whose only Wiki page I can seem to find is ExtremeProgrammingIsJustTheSpiralModel), among a long list of other BestPractices (like don't keep having meetings to ask why everyone's behind schedule). One of its best features are the boxed stories of programmers & managers doing things the wrong way and getting punished, then other stories where they do things the right way and get rewarded. Kind of like military clap-prevention movies.

The book's written for senior programmers, managers & customers, and it introduces concepts like a narrowing delivery ETA window instead of a fixed delivery ETA date. It also has one of the best quotes about WaterFall ever (IMHO and IIRC): "Going back up the phases is like salmon going upstream to breed. You might get there, but the effort might kill you."

From an XP point of view, it reduces BigDesignUpFront to Big RiskAssessment Up Front, and does not talk about delivering value after the first iteration. It seems to take for granted that all features, and a long list of Nice To Haves go out the door all at once. And it does not mention Unit Tests at all. If you do spiral (and if you know real testing and such), do it like this.

--PhlIp

The book focuses on delivering value at all points in the development cycle, if you bother to read it. I've read it twice, and many parts more than that. I've never seen a better book on software development. McConnell takes the most mature software engineering approach I've seen ANYWHERE. It's because I'm a fan of McConnell that I've learned to appreciate XP. --EdPoor

Not to be confused with RabidDevelopment. (E.g., RabidPrototyping?)

In many of the case studies (the "boxed stories" mentioned above), the Bad Guy is a manager-from-hell who consistently makes all the wrong decisions and shipwrecks problems. His name is Bill. RapidDevelopment is published by the MicrosoftPress. Hmm.

See also SoftwareProjectSurvivalGuide if this book is just too much for you. ;-> RapidApplicationDevelopment

CategoryBook