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A Discipline for Software Engineering (SEI Series in Software Engineering) (Hardcover)

by Watts S. Humphrey (Author)

3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Price:	�45.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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This item: A Discipline for Software Engineering (SEI Series in Software Engineering) by Watts S. Humphrey
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
Introduction to the Personal Software Process (SEI) by Watts S. Humphrey
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Introduction to the Team Software Process (SEI Series in Software Engineering) by Watts S. Humphrey
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Product details

Hardcover: 816 pages
Publisher: Addison Wesley (13 Feb 1995)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0201546108
ISBN-13: 978-0201546101
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.8 x 3.4 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 569,772 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#97 in Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Software Engineering

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Product Description

This book from Watts Humphrey broadens his disciplined approach to software engineering. In his earlier book, Managing the Software Process, Humphrey developed concrete methods for managing software development and maintenance. These methods, now commonly practiced, provide programmers and managers specific steps for evaluating and improving their software capabilities. In this book, he scales down those methods to a personal level, helping software practitioners develop the skills and habits they need to plan, track, and analyze large and complex projects more carefully and successfully.

From the Back Cover

This new work from Watts Humphrey lays the foundation for a disciplined approach to software engineering. In his previous book, Humphrey developed methods for managing an organization's software process. These methods, now commonly practiced in industry, provide to programmers and managers specific steps they can take to evaluate and to improve their software development and software maintenance capabilities. In Humphrey's new book, he scales those methods down to a more personal level, helping software engineers working on relatively small-scale programs to develop the skills and the habits they will need later in their professional life to plan, track, and analyze large and complex software projects more carefully and more successfully.

Clear examples and samples drawn from industry enhance the practical focus of the book. Exercises in the form of projects give readers the opportunity to practice process management as they learn it, a comprehensive instructor's set includes notes on teaching the course, overhead masters, modifiable assignment kits in Word, and a statistical support package in the form of Excel spreadsheets for the analysis of individual and class data.

Features

Presents concepts and methods for a disciplined software engineering process
Scales down industrial practices for planning, tracking, analysis, and defect management to for the needs of small-scale program development
Shows how small project disciplines provide a solid base for larger projects

0201546108B04062001

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	97% buy the item featured on this page: A Discipline for Software Engineering (SEI Series in Software Engineering) 3.8 out of 5 stars (4) �45.99
	3% buy Introduction to the Personal Software Process (SEI) 4.5 out of 5 stars (2) �18.69

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Formalising but don't limiting your creativity, 6 Jan 2000

By	"wkwyw" - See all my reviews

This book presents some excellent suggestions for formalising your software engineering whilst cleverly avoiding limiting constraints on your creativity. i fought with the concepts in this book for quite some time but persevered, fine tuning Watts' suggested processes as I went along. Within a few months I had massively improved my performance as a software engineer. I was introducing less errors, my designs were more rigorous and I was reusing a much greater proportion of my code.

This book is not perfect. Some of the processes presented are too detailed to be practical. At times it seems you are spending more time collecting data than designing or programming. However after a few iterations through the processes you are soon tuning them to your own requirements.

Use the techniques presented in this book to create your own personal software process and watch your own productivity increase.

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Excellent, 23 Aug 1999

By A Customer

This book is in my opinion the number one best book ever on writing software as an individual. He carefully guides you to dramatically improve your personal ability on 3 fronts (a) the number of defects in your code, (b) your productivity in terms of lines per day and (c) your estimating accuracy. Measurements by others show that Watts' techniques in this and Managing The Software Process can move (a) from 1 defect per 1000 lines of code to 3 defects per million lines of code, (b) 40 fold improvement and (c) move from 75% overrun to 2% plus or minus. Yes it does take time to master his techniques, but boy are they worth it. The software you then produce is solid gold, reusable, stable stuff, not throw away dross that comes from RAD lifecyles.

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4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The apotheosis of meaningless measurement, 26 Jun 1999

By A Customer

Sometimes I question the need for philosophy, then a book like this comes along and I remember why philosophy is important. Philosophers do us the service of carefully analyzing premises, claims, and all the varied artifices of thought. Philosophers notice the clouds beneath the castle. Watts Humphrey's book is in need of a philosophical overhaul. It is a fine expression of 19th-century ideas about scientific management and the nature of human cognition, but takes little note of modern revelations about how human minds work, and how software design happens.

The book is an ode to measurement. Humphrey doesn't justify or explain his measurement theory, though. He seems more intent on telling us what to do than on helping us ask questions like "What do these numbers mean?" He proposes ways to measure quality, but not ways to understand goodness; ways to measure productivity, but not ways to understand productivity in relation to our ambitions. Reflection, inspiration, collaboration, dialogue, discovery, invention, ingenuity, all of these vital processes are ignored in his calculus. But since his calculus is embedded in a prescription for what we're supposed to do, anything left out is driven underground (or underwater, like an animal that doesn't get a ticket for Noah's Ark). It's a good thing for the technology that so few people are disciplined in the way Humphrey proposes.

I just want to point out that there is an alternative to the Brave New World of Watts Humphrey and the SEI. Search for books by Gerald Weinberg and you'll find a polar opposite view of software engineering as a social and cognitive discipline. Weinberg's book on measurement "Quality Software Management, Vol. 2: First-Order Measurement" is a must read.

I also recommend "Things That Make Us Smart" and "Cognition in the Wild", two books that startled me by showing how much cognitive psychology could help the software engingeering craft, if ever we computer people but wake up and take notice.

Discipline is important in any search for excellence. Let's build our discipline on a sound and meaningful foundation, eh?

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4.0 out of 5 stars A blueprint for capturing metrics!
Watts again shows why he has helped pioneer the field of Software Process Improvement (SPI). The book breaks down large and complex industrial software practices to a much... Read more

Published on 1 Dec 1998

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