Working with Coders (eBook)

A Guide to Software Development for the Perplexed Non-Techie

Patrick Gleeson (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2017 | 1st ed.
XIV, 220 Seiten
Apress (Verlag)
978-1-4842-2701-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Get introduced to the fascinating world inhabited by the professional software developer. Aimed at a non-technical audience, this book aims to de-obfuscate the jargon, explain the various activities that coders undertake, and analyze the specific pressures, priorities, and preoccupations that developers are prone to. In each case it offers pragmatic advice on how to use this knowledge to make effective business decisions and work productively with software teams.

Software projects are, all too often, utter nightmares for everyone involved. Depending on which study you read, between 60 and 90 percent of all software projects are completed late, run over budget, or deliver an inferior quality end product. This blight affects everyone from large organizations trying to roll out business change to tiny startups desperately trying to launch their MVP before the money runs out. While there has been much attention devoted to understanding these failings, leading to the development of entire­ management methodologies aimed at reducing the failure rate,  such new processes have had, at best, limited success in delivering better results. 

Based on a decade spent exploring the world of software, Patrick Gleeson argues that the underlying reason for the high failure rate of software projects is that software development, being a deeply arcane and idiosyncratic process, tends to be thoroughly and disastrously misunderstood by managers and leaders. So long as the people tasked with making decisions about software projects are unaware of these idiosyncrasies and their ramifications, software projects will be delivered late, software products will be unfit for purpose, and relations between software developers and their non-technical colleagues will be strained. Even the most potent modern management tools are ineffective when wielded blindly.

To anyone who employs, contracts, manages, or works with software developers, Working with Coders: A Guide to Software Development for the Perplexed Non-Techie delivers the understanding necessary to reduce friction and inefficiencies at the intersection between software development teams and their non-technical colleagues.

What You'll Learn

• Discover why software projects are so commonly delivered late and with an abysmal end product
  
• Examine why the relationship between coders and their non-technical colleagues is often strained
  
• Understand how the software development process works and how to support it effectively
  
• Decipher and use the jargon of software development
  
• Keep a team of coders happy and improve the odds of successful software project delivery
  

Who This Book Is For

Anyone who employs, contracts, or manages software developers-such as tech startup CEOs, project managers, and clients of digital agencies-and wishes the relationship were easier and more productive. The secondary readership is software developers who want to find ways of working more effectively as part of a team.

Patrick Gleeson has been a coder and a manager of coders for the past 10 years. He has worked in a variety of organizations, from bespoke software consultancies to multinational corporations to tiny start-ups, and is currently CTO of Think Smart, a company that provides tools to help young people make better career choices. He holds a degree from the University of Cambridge in Philosophy and Classics, and another one from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Technical Theatre. He also sidelines as a composer for film and theater, and once spent a year building animatronic puppets as part of a robot circus, including a mechanical octopus that played the xylophone.

Inhalt

Contents 6
About the Author 7
Acknowledgments 8
Introduction 9
Chapter 1: Introductions 11
Who you are 12
The Project Manager 12
The CEO 13
The Client 13
Sound familiar? 14
Who I am 14
What this book is 15
What this book is not 17
This is not a book about young white male nerds 17
This is not a book about how to code 19
This is not an attack on non-technical people 20
Chapter 2: Why Writing Software Is Nothing Like Building a House 21
The sad truth about software projects 22
Crunchy numbers 25
The Imagination Problem 27
Birthday wishes 28
Technical specifications, human processes 30
Starting from the wrong place 33
A counterproductive mitigation 34
The Estimation Problem 36
A known issue 37
The uninteresting 40
The unknown 43
Refusing to play the game 46
Estimates are graphs, not points 48
Empiricism 49
The Arithmetic Problem 51
The case of Pheidippides and the singing gorillagram 52
Brooks’s Law 54
In summary 54
Chapter 3: (Fr)Agile 55
A brief introduction to Agile 55
SCRUM 57
Other methodologies 60
The advantages of Agile 61
Small sprints and big decisions 63
Keeping it minimal 65
Stakeholder buy-in 67
“I don’t need to check in every week—just send me a report” 67
“But I already know what I want” 68
“But this new thing needs to get done right now” 69
“But I need those estimates now” 70
Buy-in is fine, but embraces are better 71
Embedded designers and the two-way conversation 72
Syncing 72
Two steps forward, three steps back 73
Integration 74
Agile vs Lean 76
Cleaning up 76
Agile AND Lean 78
When not to use Agile 79
Long cycle times 79
The communicable and the knowable 80
Two types of trust 81
In summary 82
Chapter 4: What Do They Do All Day? 83
What to build 84
Spec it before you build it 84
Yes, you do need to spec it 85
UX details matter 86
A functional specification 88
3.2.7: Key Stats Summary Screen 91
Telling tales 92
A User Story is not a specification 94
It’s a given 95
3.2.7: Key Stats Summary Screen 95
Handing over 97
Code 98
Ones and zeroes 99
Computer guts 102
Software development is an abstract art 104
Objectified 109
Coding is modeling (but not the glamorous type) 113
Done 114
Source control 115
A second pair of eyes 116
Deployment 119
In summary 121
Chapter 5: The Big Green Check Mark 122
The hard way 123
Does it do what it says it does? 124
Does it do what it doesn’t say it does? 124
Does it do what it said it did? 126
Coping with failure 126
Just accept it 129
Where there’s smoke 130
The other hard way 131
Internal examinations 133
Test drives 138
Invisible quality 140
Indebted 141
Prevention 142
Cure 144
In summary 147
Chapter 6: Taking the “Arg” out of Jargon 148
Internet 149
Data 155
Security 159
Coding 163
In summary 168
Chapter 7: So You Need to Hire a Coder 169
Do you actually need a coder? 170
Build vs. buy 170
Hired guns 172
Foreign shores 174
How to look for a coder 175
How to interview a coder 178
Technically challenging 179
Being human 181
How to get a coder to say yes 183
In summary 184
Chapter 8: Programmer Preoccupations 185
The forum phenomenon 186
The Hype Cycle 189
The thrill of the new 189
Tech death 191
Teething problems 192
Coder wars 193
Beauty in code 195
In summary 198
Chapter 9: Keeping Coders Happy 199
A quiet room and a powerful computer 200
Keeping shtum 201
Unleashed 202
Odd hours 202
Flexibility 202
Feeling the burn 203
Old and new 205
Being supportive 205
Legacies 207
Open sourcing 209
Continuing to learn 211
In summary 212
Chapter 10: When It All Goes Wrong 213
When your team hate each other 214
When you’re horribly behind schedule 217
When your product just isn’t very good 219
Wrapping up 223
Index 224

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.7.2017
• Zusatzinfo: XIV, 220 p.
• Verlagsort: Berkeley
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Software Entwicklung
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Mathematik ► Finanz- / Wirtschaftsmathematik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Berufspädagogik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Personalwesen
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Projektmanagement
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Schlagworte: Agile • Business Communication • Business Processes • coders • delivering software projects • Developers • Enterprise Software • Entrepreneurship • IT • Leadership • line management • managers’ guides to computing • managers’ guides to computing • managing coders • Project Management • Scrum • software development • software development process • Stakeholder Management • Technical Terminology • technology startups
• ISBN-10: 1-4842-2701-8 / 1484227018
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4842-2701-5 / 9781484227015