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Product Description
Product Description
The ideas discussed are deep, but at the same time lightly and wittily expressed. The book is fun to read, rewarding the reader with many valuble and novel insights. Some sacred cows, including top-down development, dataflow diagrams and the distinction between What and How, are led to the slaughter. Readers will be provoked--perhaps to fury, perhaps to enthusiasm, but surely to think more deeply about topics and issues of central importance in the field of software development.
There are new ideas about problem structuring, based on the concept of a problem frame, leading to a clearer notion of complexity and how to deal with it. And other important topics include:
- Principles for evaluating development methods
- New approaches to capturing and describing requirements and specifications, based on the relationship between the software system and the problem context
- The technology of desciption in software, including new ideas such as designations, the separation of descriptive moods and the scope and span of description
- Incisive information about the proper role of mathematics and formalism.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent little book!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Requirements and Specifications: A Lexicon of Software Practice, Principles and Prejudices (ACM Press) (Paperback)
I loved this book. It is one of the rare books that can be read for education or for entertainment. The book is written for software engineers and architects. Jackson's thesis is that most of the battle in software engineering is in describing the problem to be solved, not in solving it. When the problem is clearly represented, then the solution often falls out. He presents universal techniques that are independent of analysis and design method. He provides systematic, disciplined methods for thinking about and communicating about problems of any sort. Thoughtful readers will enjoy it greatly.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews) 13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-read if you like to base practice on sound theory,
By Stephen Ferg (sferg@acm.org) - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Requirements and Specifications: A Lexicon of Software Practice, Principles and Prejudices (ACM Press) (Paperback)
Each of Jackson's books has expanded on the previous one. PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAM DESIGN was about program design. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT was about systems development (specifically, for information systems). Now, SRS takes it further, and considers techniques for specifying different kinds of systems, and systems that require multiple viewpoints to specify them. One of the main points of the book is to promote the idea that many systems must operate in multiple "problem domains" and so require multiple techniques in their specification. (Does your information system also have security/access requirements in addition to its functional requirements? Then you have a "multi-frame" problem, and you should read this book.) The second major emphasis of the book is on describing the "application domain" -- the real world where the system's users conduct business -- before embarking on designing the system. That is, on understanding the problem befor you jump into trying to solve it. If you've ever worked on a huge system development project that turned out to be a catastrophy because half way through the project you discovered that there was a whole area of user requirements that you didn't even know about, then you should read this book. Find out what went wrong and get some ideas about how to avoid it in the future. This is an excellent book about specifying computer systems, and I can recommend it to anyone. It is especially highly recommended if you enjoy thinking about software development at a fairly high, abstract level (a level above the one where you are designing code and database structures). 16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful, pithy discussion of specifying solutions,
By David Stengle - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Requirements and Specifications: A Lexicon of Software Practice, Principles and Prejudices (ACM Press) (Paperback)
A great deal of software uses the "where the arrow lands, draw the target" approach. Jackson presents formal terms and techniques to pursue an alternative. Anyone collecting requirements and writing specifications will find benefit from this book. His discussion of various problem frames is wonderful.The book is written in tool box style, and Jackson makes clear that he believes in fitting the right method to the task at hand. Thought provoking and well written, the book borders on philosophy (epistemology) and predicate logic in places, something I enjoyed. Jackson's analogy between predicate logic and assembly language is most apt. Highly recommended. 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spec writing for non tech,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Requirements and Specifications: A Lexicon of Software Practice, Principles and Prejudices (ACM Press) (Paperback)
I'm a technical neophyte but I have to communicate ideas concerning software development to developers. Jackson's book takes a complex subject and puts it in simple terms. He creates common ground for the technical and non-technical to communicate. A must for implementation, business analysts, and project managers if you to translate the customers needs to the developers process.
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