Gerald M. Weinberg illustrates how to create a supportive environment for software engineering —an environment in which your organization can realize long-lasting gains in quality and productivity by learning how to manage change.
As the author argues, the history of software engineering is riddled with failed attempts to improve quality and productivity without first creating a supportive environment. Many managers spend their money on tools, methodologies, outsourcing, training, and application packages, but they rarely spend anything to improve or to remove the management that created those situations in the first place.
From systems thinking to project management to technology transfer to the interaction of culture and process, this volume analyzes transformation from a broad range of perspectives, providing a breadth of awareness essential for successful management of high-quality software development.
Topics include:
Meta-Planning: Information
Meta-Planning: Systems Thinking
Tactical Change Planning
Planning Like a Software Engineer
What Changes Have to Happen
Components of Stable Software Engineering
Process Principles
Culture and Process
Improving Process
Requirements Principles and Process
Changing the Requirements Process
The book also had five important appendices:
Appendix A: The Diagram of Effects
Appendix B: The Software Engineering Cultural Patterns
Appendix C. The Satir Interaction Model
Appendix D. Control Models
Appendix E. The Three Observer Positions
