Beyond chaos

Chaos. Not the inchoate state of the early universe, not the ill-behaved subject of a specialized branch of mathematics, not the mid-revolutionary fragmentation of a society in transition, but coding chaos--the everyday reality of projects that develop software applications for computers and the World Wide Web. Countless managers struggle for control and stability, for accountability and predictability amidst this chaos. From the project leaders, who provide the day-to-day oversight and guidance all the way up to the CIOs, whose charge is strategic direction and corporate-wide coordination, they struggle to understand and manage technology and processes of enormous complexity made all the more complex and unmanageable by the relentless and accelerating pace of technological change. Herding squirrels. Corralling cats. Taming the mongrel hordes. Whatever the metaphor, the challenges of managing software development are legend. The stories are alarmingly similar for projects of every scope and size, whether staffed by the arrayed forces of thousands of programmers and testers or tackled by a small team of freelancers. The budget may be blown by a hundred percent or more and deadline upon deadline may be passed like so many exits on a freeway. Rarely do software development projects meet budget constraints, techni-cal objectives, and delivery schedules--if indeed recognizable constraints, objectives, and schedules exist. Applications that are far more complex than a highrise office building have sometimes been launched with little more planning than a sketch on the back of a napkin. Some managers simply give up and accept this uncontrolled chaos as the state of affairs, an unchangeable reality and the unavoidable price of dealing with a highly paid and poorly understood profession. They accept the reality of seeking discipline among the undisciplined, of perpetually pushing the envelope of the possible, or of seeking certainty where specifications are little more than executive fantasies and deadlines are the arbitrary impositions of uninformed marketing managers. Some managers seek refuge in mindnumbing manuals of procedure and in the step-by-step details of elaborately defined processes. They rationalize the investment in expensive systems that promise predictability through the imposition of regulation and regimentation. Some managers, defining defeat as success, instead celebrate unmanageable chaos as the crucible of creation, the necessary and desired context in which to unleash the powers of the digital genie that will transform life on earth. Beyond chaos, however, beyond surrender or celebration, is another view of software development--the view that software development projects and software developers are indeed manageable, that chaos is not an inevitable condition or concomitant. In this view, salvation dwells in the details, success lies in subtle insights, and control is achieved through thoughtful attention and planning.
The expert edge is the difference. Compiled in this book are the insights, inspiration, practical pointers, and provocative thinking of an elite assemblage of working managers and practicing consultants--the recognized experts who contributed monthly to The Management Forum. The Forum, a regular feature in the respected industry publication Software Development, occupied the prestigious inside back page of the magazine and proved to be one its most popular features.
Written for busy working managers, the Forum featured pragmatic, provocative essays by the leading thinkers and doers in software and Web development, software engineering, and technical management, including such industry luminaries as Ed Yourdon, Capers Jones, Meilir Page-Jones, Steve McConnell, and Jim Highsmith. The column set high standards for the clarity and quality of both the writing and the thinking it expressed. Every guest columnist was charged with the twin tasks of providing something that a working manager could put to use tomorrow and of offering something to think about for the next week.
Not surprisingly in light of the diversity of contributors, the discussions reprinted in this volume represent diverse views grounded in a variety of backgrounds and experiences. What they have in common, however, are common and positive threads--that software development and software developers are manageable, and that better management in this economically and technologically critical field is sorely needed.
The essays span such diverse topics as dealing with difficult people, managing from the bottom-up, coping with project failure, sustaining teamwork, and building software to throw away. Managers will find among the chapters the distilled essence of experience and the hard-won wisdom of those who have fought in the trenches of technical management, and won.
Highly focused analyses and specific suggestions are combined with provocative arguments and thoughtful perspectives. The essays have been edited and organized by broad subject matter and arranged to form a logical progression, finishing with what I hope will stand as a challenge and a look to the future of management and of software development.

Contents

IT'S ABOUT PEOPLE

• Dealing with Difficult People: Changing the Changeable.
• Avoiding Feedback Traps: Improving Customer and Client Communication.
• These are Trained Professionals: Beyond Training to Transformation.
• Maintaining Your Balance: Managing Working Relationships.
• Job Qualifications: On Hiring the Best.
• Problem-Solving Meta-Rules: Habits of Productive People.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• First Things First: A Project Manager's Primer.
• Money Bags and Baseball Bats: Sponsorship Rules.
• Productivity by the Numbers: What Can Speed Up or Slow Down Software Development.
• Software Waste Management: Managing Data Migration.
• When in Doubt, Blame Everybody: The Responsibility for Usability.
• Creative Input: From Feature Fantasies to Practical Products.
• Software Collaborations: Managing the Complexities of Cooperation.
• Managing Outsourced Projects: Project Management Inside Out.
• Tough Customers: Toward Win-Win Solutions.
• Avoiding the Iceberg: Reading the Project Warning Signs.
• Lemonade from Lemons: Learning from Project Failure.

UNDER PRESSURE

• Death March: Surviving a Hopeless Project.
• Web-Time Development: High-Speed Software Engineering.
• Taking the Crunch Out of Crunch Mode: Alternatives to Mandatory Overtime.
• Reducing Cycle Time: Getting Through Bottlenecks, Blocks, and Bogs. Dennis J. Frailey.
• Dot-Com Management: Surviving the Startup Syndrome. Tony Wasserman.
• Cutting Corners: Shortcuts in Model-Driven Web Development.

QUALITY REQUIRED

• No More Excuses: Innovative Technology and Irrelevant Tangents.
• The Mess Is Your Fault: Toward the Software Guild.
• Seduced by Reuse: Realizing Reusable Components.
• Real-Life Requirements: Caught Between Quality and Deadlines.
• Rules Rule: Business Rules as Requirements.
• Taming the Wild Web: Business Alignment in Web Development.
• Calming Corporate Immune Systems: Overcoming Risk Aversion.
• Inventing Software: Breakthroughs on Demand.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES AND PRACTICES

• Order for Free: An Organic Model for Adaptation.
• Beyond Level Five: From Optimization to Adaptation.
• Optimization or Adaptation: In Pursuit of a Paradigm.
• Adaptive Software Development: An Experience Report.
• Creating a Culture of Commitment: Of Deadlines, Discipline, and Management Maturity.
• The Commando Returns: Learning from Experience in the Trenches.
• Persistent Models: Models as Corporate Assets.
• Card Magic for Managers: Low-Tech Techniques for Design and Decisions.
• Throwaway Software: Delivering Through Discards.
• Unified Hegemony: Beyond Universal Solutions.

LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK

• Scaling Up: Teamwork in the Large.
• Sustaining Teamwork: Promoting Life-Cycle Teams.
• Managing from the Below: The Russian Embassy Method.
• On Becoming a Leader: Advice for Tomorrow's Development Managers.