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Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
 
 
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Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams [Paperback]

Steve Maguire (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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In Debugging the Development Process, Maguire describes the sometimes controversial but always effective practices that enabled his software teams at Microsoft to develop high-quality software - on schedule. With the refreshing candor reviewers admired in Writing Solid Code, Maguire talks about what did and what didn't work at Microsoft and tells you how to energize software teams to work effectively - and to enjoy their work; why you might want to kick your star programmer off your team; how to avoid corporate snares and overblown corporate processes; which tiny changes produce major results; how to deliver on schedule and without overwork; how to pull twice the value out of everything you do; how to get your team going on a creative roll; and how to raise the average programmer level at your company.

From the Back Cover

In Debugging the Development Process, Maguire describes the sometimes controversial but always effective practices that enabled his software teams at Microsoft to develop high-quality software - on schedule. With the refreshing candor reviewers admired in Writing Solid Code, Maguire talks about what did and what didn't work at Microsoft and tells you how to energize software teams to work effectively - and to enjoy their work; why you might want to kick your star programmer off your team; how to avoid corporate snares and overblown corporate processes; which tiny changes produce major results; how to deliver on schedule and without overwork; how to pull twice the value out of everything you do; how to get your team going on a creative roll; and how to raise the average programmer level at your company.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars Quick Read That's Worth Your Time, Jun 14 2004
This review is from: Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams (Paperback)
When I read this book, the information seemed simple and obvious. However, I also realized that there were a number of things mentioned that I wasn't doing. That begs the question: Is the material that simple and obvious? Maybe not.

Maguire gives some simple, practicle advice for improving the development environment that a manager is responsible for. For example, he recommends starting each day by asking, "What can I do today that will help keep the project on track for the next few months?"

I also found the section on feedback loops to be interesting. The suggestion that you have a person stop feature work to fix a bug that they created as soon as it is found is a way to emphasize quality and make it in the best interest of developers to produce high quality code.

The chapter on attitudes is also very good. Much of the time, there isn't a lot knowledge wise that separtes good and bad developers. The difference comes in attitude. Attitudes such as, "We can't do that!", "The users won't care!", "Bugs are going to happen!" need to be rooted out.

This book gives good insight as to what you as a manager can do and help your developers do in order to have smoother projects that are high quality and on time.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com: 4.2 out of 5 stars (29 customer reviews)

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Smooth reading but simplistic, Nov 6 1999
By Tom O Bjorkholm - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams (Paperback)
The language is easy to read and the style contributes to fast and smooth reading. The book can also be read very fast because there is not enough new facts in the book to slow you down.

The book mainly explains the obvious (although too often ignored) practices that helps your development project: stay focused, avoid distractions, avoid interruptions, avoid wasting time, avoid unnecessary meetings (meetings are interruptions and far too often a waste of time), fix bugs early. The book has some stories to explain the above practices. But, the book has no hard facts to help you fight for the above practices in case you have a "pointy haired" boss.

In my opinion "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnel is a far better book. "Rapid development" has all the hard facts that "Debugging the development process" lacks. "Rapid development" also describes more practices and has a broader view of the development project that "Debugging the development process".


16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth reading, but not awesome., Jun 3 2000
By From_Plano_TX "a_customer_from_plano" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams (Paperback)
This book is NOT about project management, it is about 1st line supervision. Of course, 1st line supervisors interface with management and this book addresses that some, but that doesn't address project management from a manager's view, just a supervisor's. You need to know who this book is for. It is for an experienced supervisor, someone who can spot the occasional errors. In this case the errors are strongly held but misplaced opinions. One error the author made was to call programmers lazy who read source code as part of a job (p. 50). That's a foolish statement. If you've ever debugged someone else's undocumented code, you have to read the source to even figure out what the code is supposed to do. He praises people who make snap decisions (p. 20). That's silly. It's better than no decision, but certainly not praiseworthy. And on pp. 113-115 he says to "Give Experts the Boot." Here he's parroting the "we need generalists" mantra that became popular about 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. I've seen a very noticible drop in quality all over the industry. One example, when one company I worked at got rid of their Ph.D. from MIT who did thermal analysis and replaced him with a non-degreed mechanical designer who was trying to run thermal analysis software, not even having a clue on the intricacies of thermal analysis and design. At this point the thermal design of their computers became a joke. Maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn't. Don't get me wrong. The author has a number of good points. E.g., fix bugs ASAP (p. 128), don't let them pile up for later. Set your coding priorities (pp. 17-19), and do proper postmortems (pp. 78-80). Very good book, but you must beware of his errors. If you are young, read this again after 10 to 15 years.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Wonderful, May 13 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams (Paperback)
Steve talks about all of the problems I've found common in the software development industry that stress out the development team. His discussions of problems he has faced in his own development efforts provide valuable tips on handling the pressures from management, staff and deadlines. I highly recommend this book for anyone who assumes a leadership role, not just in the software industry, but in all industries where pressure and deadlines exist.
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