Wednesday, July 08, 2009

BOOK: The Economics of Iterative Software Development

In the July issue of the Agile Journal I reviewed Walker Royce, Kurt Bittner and Mike Perrow's book The Economics of Iterative Software Development: Steering Toward Better Business Results. Here is an excerpt ...

The Economics of Iterative Software Development: Steering Toward Better Business Results is an important text for anyone trying to persuade management to "go iterative" as well as to anyone needing to measure & track the kinds of business results that management needs to see for a software development project.

I'll be perfectly honest: I was expecting this book to be an extremely dry and boring read, albeit full of lots of useful information densely packed in mathematical models and formulas, perhaps reminiscent of past college days reading a huge tome on socio-political economic theories. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Yes - it is a bit dry in places, but those are the exception rather than the rule. And there are lots of "war stories" sprinkled throughout that hold your interest and stop your eyes from glazing over.

...

All in all, The Economics of Iterative Software Development is a solid-book that is a relatively light/quick read with lots of good, practical advice on how to apply an economic model of thinking and measurement for managing and tracking business-results of an iterative project. If you need help doing that, or with communicating to your management about the need and benefits of an iterative approach, then you need to read this book!

See the full review for more details.

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