In 1995, Jim McCarthy captured the attention of the software development industry with DYNAMICS OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT—offering thought-provoking ideas, techniques, and strategies for delivering great software on time in the real world. Now, this classic book is back—complete with new insights and additional material.
You get the 54 original Rules—including new commentary for the 2006 Edition—with realistic guidance for organizing, managing, and working on any software development team. Adding to these insights, the McCarthys meditate on three new Rules exploring the balance of critical relationships among team members.
You’ll also briefly examine The Core. A system of protocols stemming from The Rules, The Core helps teams reach a shared vision and work together more effectively to deliver great software.
To complete the McCarthys’ tapestry, this 2006 Edition includes a CD with the original video presentation that sparked this book’s first edition and helped influence an entire generation’s approach to software development.
CD features:
- Video of Jim’s popular presentation: 23 ¿ Rules of Thumb (For Shipping Great Software on Time)
- Four episodes of The McCarthy Show
For customers who purchase an ebook version of this title, instructions for downloading the CD files can be found in the ebook.
McCarthy has distilled a veteran's hard-won know-how into 54 memorable, pragmatic maxims - short essays on defining, building, shipping, and marketing software successfully, whether commercially or in-house. With a grown-up wit that's by turns homespun and sophisticated, McCarthy tells you how to maintain your cool (""Don't Flip the Bozo Bit""), organize a crack team (""Get Their Heads into the Game""), analyze the customer and the competition (""Alone? A Market Without a Competitor Ain't""), handle uncertainty and schedule slips (""When You Slip, Don't Fall""), make commitments with integrity (""Be like the Doctors""), and stabilize the product so that you can ship it (""Don't Shake the Jell-O""). McCarthy shows you how to develop a marketing message and how to launch your product too, and in the appendix, he tells you how to hire smart people and keep them happy and productive. Along the way, McCarthy meditates on software aesthetics and familiar software development phenomena - the ""death march to Egghead"", burn-out, internecine quarrels, being lost in software, the software dream and successive awakenings, the self-critical customer. McCarthy's preoccupation with the dynamics of the process infected his brother, artist Patrick McCarthy, with a sense of the ""rich, deep, psychocultural extravaganza"" that is software development, and themes both humorous and dark emerge in the handsome illustrations for the book. You'll find Dynamics of Software Development as engrossing and exciting as software development itself. This book is destined to be read by software designers, developers, marketers, technical managers, and industry insiders for many years to come.
