Estimating software development often produces more angst than value, but it doesn't have to. Identify the needs behind estimate requests and determine how to meet those needs simply and easily. Choose estimation techniques based on current needs and available information, gaining benefit while reducing cost and effort. Detect bad assumptions that might sink your project if you don't adjust your plans. Discover what to do when an estimate is wrong, how to recover, and how to use that knowledge for future planning. Learn to communicate about estimates in a healthy and productive way, maximizing advantage to the organization and minimizing damage to the people. In a world where most developers hate estimation and most managers fear disappointment with the results, there is hope for both. It requires giving up some widely held misconceptions. Let go of the notion that "an estimate is an estimate" and estimate for the particular need you, and your organization, have. Realize that estimates have a limited shelf-life, and reestimate frequently if it's important. When reality differs from your estimate, don't lament; mine that disappointment for the gold that can be the longer-term jackpot. Estimate in comparison to past experience, by modeling the work mathematically, or a hybrid of both. Learn strategies for effective decomposition of work and aspects of the work that likely affect your estimates. Hedge your bets by comparing the results of different approaches. Find out what to do when an estimate proves wrong. And they will. They're estimates, after all. You'll discover that you can use estimates to warn you of danger so you can take appropriate action in time. Learn some crucial techniques to understand and communicate with those who need to understand. Address both the technical and sociological aspects of estimation, and you'll help your organization achieve its desired goals with less drama and more benefit. What You Need: No software needed, just your past experience and concern for the outcomes.

Often referred to as the “black art” because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as difficult or puzzling as people think. In fact, generating accurate estimates is straightforward—once you understand the art of creating them. In his highly anticipated book, acclaimed author Steve McConnell unravels the mystery to successful software estimation—distilling academic information and real-world experience into a practical guide for working software professionals. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, this guide highlights a proven set of procedures, understandable formulas, and heuristics that individuals and development teams can apply to their projects to help achieve estimation proficiency. Discover how to: Estimate schedule and cost—or estimate the functionality that can be delivered within a given time frame Avoid common software estimation mistakes Learn estimation techniques for you, your team, and your organization * Estimate specific project activities—including development, management, and defect correction Apply estimation approaches to any type of project—small or large, agile or traditional Navigate the shark-infested political waters that surround project estimates When many corporate software projects are failing, McConnell shows you what works for successful software estimation.

How to always be on time, and not risk missing important deadlines or go over budget This book is the result of many years of hard work, and plenty of lessons learned. I wrote it because I believe we can do better than the accepted "status quo" in the software industry. It took me years to learn what I needed to learn to come up with my version of the #NoEstimates approach. You can do it in weeks! The techniques and ideas described here will help you explore the #NoEstimates universe in a very practical and hands-on manner. You will walk through Carmen's story. Carmen is a senior, very experienced project manager who is now confronted with a very difficult project. One would say, an impossible project. Through the book, and with the help of Herman, Carmen discovers and slowly adopts #NoEstimates which helps her turn that project around. Just like I expect it will help with the project you are in right now. The book also includes many concrete approaches you can use to adopt #NoEstimates, or just adopt those practices on their own.

Many claims are made about how certain tools, technologies, and practices improve software development. But which claims are verifiable, and which are merely wishful thinking? In this book, leading thinkers such as Steve McConnell, Barry Boehm, and Barbara Kitchenham offer essays that uncover the truth and unmask myths commonly held among the software development community. Their insights may surprise you. Are some programmers really ten times more productive than others? Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster? Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software? Do design patterns actually make better software? What effect does personality have on pair programming? What matters more: how far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart? Contributors include: Jorge Aranda Tom Ball Victor R. Basili Andrew Begel Christian Bird Barry Boehm Marcelo Cataldo Steven Clarke Jason Cohen Robert DeLine Madeline Diep Hakan Erdogmus Michael Godfrey Mark Guzdial Jo E. Hannay Ahmed E. Hassan Israel Herraiz Kim Sebastian Herzig Cory Kapser Barbara Kitchenham Andrew Ko Lucas Layman Steve McConnell Tim Menzies Gail Murphy Nachi Nagappan Thomas J. Ostrand Dewayne Perry Marian Petre Lutz Prechelt Rahul Premraj Forrest Shull Beth Simon Diomidis Spinellis Neil Thomas Walter Tichy Burak Turhan Elaine J. Weyuker Michele A. Whitecraft Laurie Williams Wendy M. Williams Andreas Zeller Thomas Zimmermann

Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does "it" even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us.

Today's tech unicorns develop software differently. They've developed a way of working that lets them scale like an enterprise while working like a startup. These techniques can be learned. This book takes you behind the scenes and shows you how companies like Google, Facebook, and Spotify do it. Leverage their insights, so your teams can work better together, ship higher-quality product faster, innovate more quickly, and compete with the unicorns. Massively successful tech companies, or Unicorns, have discovered how to take the techniques that made them successful as a startup and scale them to the enterprise level. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Spotify all work like startups, despite having workforces numbering in the tens of thousands. Ex-Spotify engineer and coach, Jonathan Rasmusson, takes you behind the scenes and shows you how to develop software the way the best companies do it. Learn how to give teams purpose through Missions, empower and trust with Squads, and align large scale efforts through Bets. Create the culture necessary to make it happen. If you're a tech or product lead and you want to ship product better, this is your playbook on how the world's best do it. If you're an engineer, tester, analyst, or project manager, and you suspect there are better ways you could be working, you are correct. This book will show you how. And if you're a manager, Agile coach, or someone just charged with improving how your company ships software, this book will give you the tools, techniques, and practices of the world's most innovative, delivery-focused companies. Don't just admire the top companies - learn from them.

Printed in full color. Faced with a software project of epic proportions? Tired of over-committing and under-delivering? Enter the dojo of the agile samurai, where agile expert Jonathan Rasmusson shows you how to kick-start, execute, and deliver your agile projects. Combining cutting-edge tools with classic agile practices, The Agile Samurai gives you everything you need to deliver something of value every week and make rolling your software into production a non-event. Get ready to kick some software project butt. By learning the ways of the agile samurai you will discover: how to create plans and schedules your customer and your team can believe in what characteristics make a good agile team and how to form your own how to gather requirements in a fraction of the time using agile user stories what to do when you discover your schedule is wrong, and how to look like a pro correcting it how to execute fiercely by leveraging the power of agile software engineering practices By the end of this book you will know everything you need to set up, execute, and successfully deliver agile projects, and have fun along the way. If you're a project lead, this book gives you the tools to set up and lead your agile project from start to finish. If you are an analyst, programmer, tester, usability designer, or project manager, this book gives you the insight and foundation necessary to become a valuable agile team member. The Agile Samurai slices away the fluff and theory that make other books less-than-agile. It's packed with best practices, war stories, plenty of humor and hands-on tutorial exercises that will get you doing the right things, the right way. This book will make a difference.