Process Patterns: Building Large-Scale Systems Using Object Technology (SIGS: Managing Object Technology) (Hardcover)

I think readers will benefit most from the general philosophies that pervade the book, such as testing early and often, letting requirements drive modeling which drives programming (i.e. think first, then act), taking maintenance and support into consideration, and actually doing the work necessary to obtain high levels of reuse. I highly suggest this book to anyone involved in the development of software. Although the book is large, 550 pages, it is an easy read. Another good thing about it is that it's size and content make it a good book to beat your pointy-haired managers over the head with when they do something stupid like set an unrealistic schedule for your team.

1. The editing is atrocious. There are so many incomplete paragraphs missing from the text e.g. page 106, the paragraph ends in mid sentence, "you increase the productivity of your p" (litterally the p is the last letter in the paragraph). This book is filled with such sloppy editing.

2. Bad Editing is obvious when we look at the diagrams. No one has taken the time to make them presentable in a book format. Some diagrams have text flowing out of a box. Some diagrams are not even related to the text. They seemed to be inserted because they were simply available.

It's sad to see a potentially good book ruined by sloppy editing.

3. In terms of content, I found there are many good ideas in the book but it is organized terribly. Once we got the thesis that OO development is "serial in the large" & "iterative in the small" and to combine various object-oriented design & analysis techniques, then we are lost in many disorganized details. If the author has concentrated on the two theses above, the book can be very useful.

4. It is obvious that the author has done much oo development and really want to convey his exeperience to the readers. But if you are looking for process patterns that can be applied in your work, there are not many from this book. A lot of anecdotal, amusing stories, but few "process patterns".

5. The book is more of a mind-dump from the author's lecture notes. He kept promise to provide real-world development examples and away from the "theoretical, ivory-towered", but I feel like what we got is what the author think about the original ideas of other object-oriented experts.

I wrote the book to share my experiences regarding large-scale, mission-critical software using object technology. Our industry runs upward to an 85% failure rate, so it seems to me that we should invest some time understanding how to successfully develop, maintain, and support software. The concepts, techniques, and ideas presented in this book are based on real-world experience, and are backed-up by a wealth of material already existing in the industry.

Process Patterns is concerned with with first half of the OO software process, the Initiate phase where you get your development efforts organized, and the Construct phase where you build your software. The second half of the OO software process is described in detail in More Process Patterns, concentrating on the Deliver phase and the Maintain and Support phase.

I believe that you will find the material presented in Process Patterns, and its sister book More Process Patterns, to be of exceptional value to your organization's efforts to improve its software productivity and success rate. I know of several organizations that are already using this book as a supplement to the Rational Unified Process (RUP), which for the most part is geared towards the development of a single project as opposed to this book which is geared to organizations working on several projects and who are concerned about the maintenance and support of them once they are in production.