The Big Ideas in Software Development
This book provides a broad overview of the most important ideas to consider when developing software.
- 52 Big Ideas…
- Drawn from 40 years of experience…
- Citing relevant wisdom from over 100 different sources…
- Impeccably organized and indexed.
Read it straight through or consult the Navigation section to access the content in other ways.
Table of Contents
2. Fundamental
- No. 1 — This Thinking Business
- No. 2 — Acknowledge Uncertainty
- No. 3 — The Inconvenient Nature of Software Development
- No. 4 — Software Development is a Balancing Act
- No. 5 — Create Value for Customers
- No. 6 — Automate Repetitive Tasks
- No. 7 — Use Things Already Known to Work
- No. 8 — Simplify and Generalize
- No. 9 — Decomposition
- No. 10 — Cohesion
- No. 11 — Loose Coupling
- No. 12 — Communicate Clearly
- No. 13 — Consider Alternatives
- No. 14 — Have Wonderful Arguments
- No. 15 — Show Rather than Tell
- No. 16 — Plan-Do-Check-Act
- No. 17 — Shorten Feedback Loops
- No. 18 — Understand the Arc of Your Project
- No. 19 — What's Not Done is as Important as What's Done
3. Leadership
- No. 20 — Entrepreneurial Leadership
- No. 21 — Build Great Teams
- No. 22 — Govern Wisely
- No. 23 — Take a Long-Term Economic Perspective
- No. 24 — Consider What Might Go Wrong
4. People
- No. 25 — Increase Developer Engagement
- No. 26 — Developers are Always Growing
- No. 27 — Developers Are Not Interchangeable
5. Initiation
- No. 28 — Agree on Terms of Engagement
- No. 29 — Pick the Right Sort of Customer Proxy
- No. 30 — Craft a Product Vision
- No. 31 — Quality Requires Extra Effort
- No. 32 — Plan Thoughtfully But Be Prepared for Change
- No. 33 — Tailor Thoughtfully
- No. 34 — Sharpen Your Axe
- No. 35 — When Estimating, the Whole is Definitely Greater than the Sum of its Parts
- No. 36 — Seek First to Understand Your Customer
- No. 37 — Just Enough Design Up Front
- No. 38 — Deliver Early and Often
6. Execution
- No. 39 — Self-Organizing Teams
- No. 40 — A Deliberate Approach to Decision-Making
- No. 41 — Decrease Friction, Increase Flow
- No. 42 — Configuration Management
- No. 43 — Limit Work in Progress
- No. 44 — Make Problems Visible
- No. 45 — Remain Open to Fresh Learning
- No. 46 — Don't Wait to Integrate
7. Caution
8. Pagan Tuna Posts
- 8.1 Agile Architecture
- 8.2 Benefits of the Scaled Agile Framework
- 8.3 The Core Design Principles for Teams
- 8.4 Customer Communication
- 8.5 The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition
- 8.5 EVM for Mere Mortals
- 8.6 Fighting Organizational Friction
- 8.7 Lessons We (Should) Have Learned from the Web
- 8.8 A New Model for Lean Culture
- 8.9 Model Mania
- 8.9 The Power of Diverse Teams
- 8.10 The Primary Functions of Management
- 8.11 Software Defects
- 8.12 Take the Agile Train
- 8.13 Taming the E-mail Monster
- 8.14 Ten Reasons to Ditch Your Word Documents
- 8.15 Thinking Differently about Perfectionism
- 8.16 The Watery Ketchup Stops Here
9. Reference
- 9.1 About the Author
- 9.4 Glossary
- 9.5 Colophon
11. Bibliography
- Abrahamson, Eric and Freeman, David H.
- Adams, Ansel
- American Psychological Association
- Argyris, Chris and Schön, Donald
- Austin, Rob and Devin, Lee
- Austin, Robert D.
- Austin, Robert D.; Nolan, Richard L. and O'Donnell, Shannon
- Avitzur, Ron
- Badaracco, Joseph L.
- Beck, Kent et al.
- Berkun, Scott
- Bezos, Jeff
- Block, Peter
- Boehm, Barry and Turner, Richard
- Borenstein, Nathaniel
- Boynton, Andy and Fischer, Bill
- Braun, Wernher von
- Brooks, Fred
- Brown, William J., McCormick III, Hays W. and Thomas, Scott W.
- Buckingham, Marcus and Coffman, Curt
- Burgess, Mark
- Camus, Albert
- Chesterton, G. K.
- Churchill, Winston
- Cockburn, Alistair
- Constantine, Larry and Lockwood, Lucy
- Davis, Alan M.
- Daylight
- DeMarco, Tom
- DeMarco, Tom and Lister, Timothy
- DeMarco, Tom, Hruschka, Peter, Lister, Tim, McMenamin, Steve, Robertson, James and Robertson, Suzanne
- Deming, W. Edwards
- Dymond, Ken
- Einstein, Albert
- Eisenhower, Dwight D.
- Elssamadisy, Amr
- Fackler, Martin
- Ford, Henry
- Fried, Jason
- Gall, John
- Gamma, Erich; Helm, Richard; Johnson, Ralph and Glissades, John
- Gawande, Atul
- Glass, Robert L.
- Glazer, Hillel et al.
- Gualtieri, Mike
- Hammett, Dashiell
- Heckel, Paul
- Highsmith, Jim
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.
- Humphrey, Watts
- Hurst, Mark
- Innes, Michael
- Jenson, Scott
- Jobs, Steve
- Johnson, Barry
- Kahneman, Daniel
- Kay, Alan
- Kennedy, Michael N.
- Kim, Gene, Behr, Kevin and Spafford, George
- Knuth, Donald
- Kovitz, Benjamin L.
- Krug, Steve
- Leffingwell, Dean
- Lennon, John
- Lewis, Bob
- Lewis, C. S.
- Liker, Jeffrey
- Lohr, Steve
- Lopp, Michael
- Marsalis, Wynton and Ward, Geoffrey
- Martin, Roger L.
- Miller, Henry
- Morgan, James M. and Liker, Jeffrey K.
- Mulally, Alan
- O'Reilly, Tim
- Page-Jones, Meilir
- Parker, Ian
- Phillips, Katherine
- Pink, Daniel H.
- Poppendieck, Mary and Poppendieck, Tom
- Reeves, Jack W.
- Reinertsen, Donald G
- Ries, Eric
- Robertson, Suzanne and Robertson, James
- Roosevelt, Eleanor
- Santayana, George
- Schembechler, Bo
- Senge, Peter
- Smith, M. K.
- Spolsky, Joel
- The Standish Group
- Watson, Thomas J. , Jr.
- Weber, Craig
- Weinberg, Gerald
- Wilson, David Sloan
- Yourdon, Edward
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