Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Controversial and thought-provoking! Many software professionals might disagree with the author's assessments, but all will embrace the debate. Identifies many of the key problems hampering success in this field. Each fact is supported by insightful discussion and detailed references. A lot of what software engineers ought to know about building software is, for whatever reason, not known (forgotten, neglected, never considered, etc.). This book is a collection of fifty-five facts that software engineers should always consider. The facts are fundamental. The facts are frequently forgotten. And above all, the facts are important to the success of a project. Robert Glass brings a lifetime's work in software engineering to this often-witty book. In his considerable experience, the author has witnessed that software engineers need to learn the same lessons over and over again. In formally presenting many of these key facts, he hopes that software builders can avoid many of the pitfalls that all too often plague a project. The book covers management, all stages of the software lifecycle, quality, research, and much more. The author even presents ten common fallacies that help support the fifty-five facts. Anyone with an interest in building better software can benefit from this thought-provoking new book. Robert L.Glass is a consultant on software quality issues who has written more than a dozen books on Software Engineering topics and on the lessons of computing failures, including Software Runaways: Monumental Software Disasters, and Computing Calamities. Glass owns his own company, Computing Trends, and writes a column on software engineering for two societal journals, Communications of the ACM and IEEE Software, and he publishes his own newsletter, The Software Practitioner. He is a frequent speaker at Software Engineering events.