It didn’t get better. For me.
I was really excited when I got this book. And that might be why I’m this disappointed.
After my mid-read checkin, I was hopeful because the project finally seemed to be moving along. Stickies on a Whiteboard was the next chapter and I loved it! Seeing them go through each tasks, canceling, and assigning them to a particular release was satisfying. I love it when the book is about Chandler. But since that chapter, I’m sad that the book has gone further away from the project.
It became a review of different schools of thought. Has software engineering stagnated or not? Does software development need a do-over? Could we hope to standardize the development process and improve productivity? It felt… theoretical rather than historical. A someone-said-this, but another-said-that. And I’ve had enough of the cathedral and the bazaar references.
There were some gems that I did appreciate though, like this quote from Joel Spolsky:
The real goal of a methodology is to sell books, not to actually solve anybody’s problem… The key problem with the methodologies is that, implemented by smart people, they work. Implemented by shlubs who will not do anything more than following instructions they are given, they won’t work.
Joel Spolsky
This and the Capability Maturity Model triggered my aversion to red tape. It made me vent to my partner how productivity metrics leads to players gaming the system and ultimately sabotaging productivity. The Joel Test sounded like something I could ask companies come job search time. “Masterpiece Engineering” where they monitored painters’ brushes per day and assigned Da Vinci to procurement gave me a chuckle.
I guess it can’t be helped that the progress of Chandler was slow for the time limitation of writing the book. Still, I feel that it should be possible to do a deeper look into the project instead of doing a review of literature.
My expectation might be clouding my judgment. Those in for a philosophical read on managing software projects may appreciate “Dreaming in Code” more.