- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (18 Sep 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 013673443X
- ISBN-13: 978-0136734437
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.3 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,000,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
A case study book dealing with software failed projects, e.g. The Denver Airport problem. It categorizes these projects into the following areas: 1)Project objectives were not fully specified. 2)Projects were poorly planned. 3)Enabling project technology was not fully understood. 4)Absence of management methodology. 5)Insufficient expertise. 6)Lack of understanding of the risks involved. These cases will show how failure might have been avoided, how they might have been completed, on time and within budget. This book should be seen as a companion volume to Yourdon's DEATH MARCH book and Jones ASSESSMENT & CONTROL OF SOFTWARE PROJECTS, both of which will be extensively referenced in the book.
From the Back Cover
67344-2
What you can learn from 16 colossal software disasters.
If failure teaches more than success, imagine how much you can learn from the most catastrophic software development failures of all time. In Software Runaways, software failure expert Robert Glass shows exactly what went wrong in 16 colossal software disasters -- and how to keep it from happening to you.
Glass goes behind the scenes of those awful projects you've seen on the nightly news -- the Denver Airport baggage system, the IRS modernization --and a host of less well-publicized failures that are equally instructive. Along the way, he identifies six characteristics of projects likely to fail -- and some of them will surprise you.
Software Runaways brings a software engineer's perspective to projects like:
- American Airlines' failed reservation system, Confirm
- The 4GL disaster at the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles
- The NCR inventory system that nearly destroyed its customers
- The next-generation FAA Air Traffic Control System that collapsed
Glass presents specific lessons to be learned from each failure, and shows how to "sniff out" runaway projects early enough to take action. He also considers the typical responses to potential runaways, including risk management and issue management, demonstrating their strengths and weaknesses.
Whether you're an IT executive, project manager or developer, Software Runaways helps you learn from someone else's mistakes -- and that's a whole lot less painful than making them yourself!
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sort of readable, if a bit disjointed. Plenty of software disasters are presented by this well known author (check out his column in the IEEE Software magazine) but little analysis of WHY the projects failed, and what they SHOULD have done.
There are more useful books on software disasters available.
Format:Paperback
Any book that Glass writes is readable and this is no exception. If you enjoy reading about the folly's of mankind then you will enjoy this book. My main gripe is that much of the stuff has been culled from articles and reports and is accmpanied by very little analysis. A good book to take on a plane.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
13 reviews
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Disappointing, not very technical, and of sporadic interest
13 July 1999
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
After reading the other reviews of this book, I expected to find a light read more likened to "America's Most Shocking Police Videos", but I was mostly disappointed.
The first series of articles on the Denver airport debacle (reportedly they set out to build the largest airport in the country but ended up with second-largest airport in Denver) made virtually no reference to software. The contractors of the baggage system ran into problems with physical access to the terminal, changing requirements, and uncooperative City officials, but they didn't discuss the software issues much. It was a typical political mess.
The story behind the FAA's failed air-traffic-control system was the most interesting technically, and the failed New Jersey DMV project was enlightening about using the wrong tool for the job.
The story on the failed California DMV system is *two pages* long, and they mention "unspecified software problems" as being involved. The story about the Adidas warehousing software failure was three pages long, and I did not find a single lesson to take from it. These do not look like any inside information to me.
This book was a fairly enjoyable four-hour read (really!) but it was not worth the $30 I spent on it. Borrow it from the library or a friend before spending yours.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Misleading...
26 July 2000
Format:Paperback
This book suffers some major flaws, which are not well represented on the back cover or in the introduction.
1) The story telling is incredibly dull. The author desperately needs some lessons from Cringely.
2) The story telling is all third-hand. The author had no first hand experience in any of the disasters, nor did he bother to personally interview any of the participants. Instead, he simply compiled information from public media sources.
3) The story telling barely relates to software development at all. Many of the stories superficially relate management failures or legal battles with hardly a reference to the actual software projects/issues.
4) The story telling is often not even by the author himself! Some of the stories are simply reprints of professional journal articles by other authors. Tellingly, these are often the more (barely) interesting stories.
I think the book cover misrepresents the contents substantially. I felt sort of ripped-off. 2 stars only because it is one of the few books that collects a lot of this information in one place.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
poor rehash of famous big-budget disasters
7 Jan 1999
Format:Paperback
This book's subtitle is "Lessons Learned from Massive Software Project Failures." A more accurate subtitle would be "Assortment of InformationWeek articles written about costly failures that involved software." This is a shallow and superficial book. There is no original research, no original reporting, and no deep analysis.
Sometimes there are three separate articles on the same failed software project! This is pointless repetition, not any type of deeper analysis. It's like reading a xeroxed collection of articles, except it's in a glossy cover. The "author" writes a few paragraphs before and after each project.
The quantification, if there is any, involves the dollars exchanged in the settlement between the two companies. No numbers about anything technical ever appear.
This is a good book if you're a consultant and you want some scary stories to tell a CIO. If you want advice, read one of Steve McConnell's books.
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