Professional Software Development: Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, Better Software Careers [Paperback]

I'm not sure who the book is aimed at, but I think it is a useful book to anyone in the business of producing software. The main theme McConnell pursues is that software engineering needs to be treated more as a true engineering discipline, for example in the same way that civil engineering or mechanical engineering. It would not be acceptable for a team to build a large building or design a new car unless the team consisted of qualified and certified engineers. Yet, in the software business it is not unusual for teams to have even no trained engineers. Engineering certification is almost unheard of amongst software developers, even though certification in specific skills is more common.

McConnell also makes persuasive and interesting points about the difference between software development and software engineering, and he makes the case that a true engineering approach is what is needed to help avoid massive cost and schedule overruns.

In the end the book may leave you with more questions than answers... the good thing for us and for the author is that his other books provide a lot of the answers! It is certainly a thought provoking book and this is a good thing, but I am not sure it really delivers what the title implies - for that you'll need to read his other books. For this reason alone I have judged it a 4 rather than a 5 star read.

I must admit I read it over one weekend but found I couldn't recall much of the advice although i'm certain it is one to revisit. I remember the fact that the information was valuable, so maybe it's just information overload?

The sections on professional developemnt were of particular interest to me. I often believe in software development that there is no where to go, you start as a junior then you become senior and that's it! This book outlines the way that our careers can progress in stages. I find these invaluable as i plan what i'm going to do over the next few years.

A worthy addition to the book collection, and well worth reading more than once.

Now I 'm reading his new book and it's 2003 and in principle I still agree with everything the writer says. Pay attention to process, upgrade the skillset of software engineers, even to some degree the assertion that it would be nice if software writing would get some sort of official quality stamp so that trivial and not so trivial errors can be avoided.

But now it seems that this line of arguing is out of touch with the reality that programmers in a large part of the world find themselves in. It's not an issue of improving the software engineering processes, it's an issue of keeping ones current job or finding a job at all. And the newspapers don't help, with the typically journalistic shortsightedness predicting even worse times for employment in the IT sectors.

I also fail to see the huge difference between software engineering and other engineering professions. This difference is supposed to show in monumental amounts of errors in software that no one takes responsibility for and the relatively low educational requirements for becoming a software engineer. When I order a plumber (an authorized plumber with a license, that is) half the time they fail to do even a simple job correctly. When my car needs a repair it doesn't always succeed first time round. How is this different from software?

So my impression of this book today is that it talks about a reality that once was, but that no longer is. By comparison the book "Slack" by DeMarco is delightedly close to reality.

Quality really is 'perceived' quality, whoever does the perceiving. It is not absolute or quantifyable. So licensing software quality makes little sense. The world is just not an engineering market place. It's all mixed up. You build up too much engineering quality in your work and soon you have no more work, because they do it cheaper in India.

So I am not getting from this book much useful guidelines and I wonder how it could give me an enhanced career (a phrase from the blurp).