Software Management

This collection of IEEE and ACM papers written by an all star case of industry experts is showing its age in many areas. For example Barry Boehm's "A Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement", while valid for high-risk projects that push the technical envelope, is too risk-adverse for rapid or incremental development projects that are in increasing use. However, some papers that you may be tempted to reject out-of-hand, such as TRW's Ada Process Model for Incremental Development of Large Software Systems is actually worth reading for organizations that have committed to the Rational Unified Process.Overall, the range of papers covers every aspect of software engineering project management. The applicability of the papers collected in this book to contemporary practices is uneven. Some practices are either thoroughly documented and accepted best practices (the entire section of papers on project management), or are transitioning to newer models (the material on the CMM). On the other hand, some papers in this collection are gems and make this book worthwhile despite its age (planning and estimation papers).One final note - the layout and design of this book could be greatly improved. Despite the age and some of the shortcomings I noted this is still a worthwhile resource for software engineering professionals who are working in a CMM Level 2 or above organization.