Podcast #15 from IBM Fellow Grady Booch explores the Nine Things to Do With Old Software. Here is the list, but you'll need to listen to his podcast to get the dialogue, discussion and details.
1) Abandon it.
2) Give it away.
3) Ignore it.
4) Put it on life support
5) Rewrite it.
6) Harvest from it.
7) Wrap it up.
8) Transform it.
9) Preserve it.
Philippe Kruchtenn at the University of British Columbia published an article entitled You Are What You Read in the Career Development section of IEEESoftware, March/April 2009. In the article he indicates that his favorite interview question is to ask the candicate what they have read lately. He goes on to discuss what to read: books, journals, blogs; when to read; and how to retain what you've read. He develops the concept of a fieldstone to use a sort of bookmark with notes. Near the conclusion of the article is a real gem, a link to a list of the Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books as listed by Jurgen Appello, the CIO at ISM eCompany in The Netherlands. I noticed that the author of the book I recently reviewed, Steve McConnell, has four books in the top 100 list with Software Project Survival Guide as #47.
| I just finished an excellent book by software project management guru and author Steve McConnell. After over twelve years in the IT industry as a developer, business analyst, team leader, project manager, architect, engineer and consultant, I was expecting this book to a be a good review and in many ways it was. But as the title implies, it is an excellent guide. It took me through areas of the trade that I am very familiar with and it introduced me to a few more tools and techniques that I'm anxious to put to use. As the author describes, he uses three main references in writing the book: The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) from theSoftware Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh PA, NASA Software Engineering Laboratory's (SEL's) Recommended Approach to Software Development, Revision 3, and third, his own experience which itself is extensive. I highly recommend this book to any one leading or supporting software development projects. |
