Book Review Department Editor Warren Keuffel

Book Review
Department Editor: Warren Keuffel, wkeuffel@computer.org

Making Software Development (More) Professional

Paul Freedman

Professional Software Development by Steve McConnell, Addison-Wesley, 2004, ISBN 0-321-19367-9, 272 pp., US$34.99.

Anyone with a wit of software development professionalism knows that too many projects run into problems with requirements (“we built the wrong thing”), quality (“it’s still riddled with bugs”), and money (“we ran way over budget”). That’s why Steve McConnell’s Professional Software Development—subtitled Shorter Schedules, Higher Quality Products, More Successful Projects, Enhanced Careers—provides a good sense of what’s needed.

According to McConnell, Professional Software Development is an “updated and significantly expanded version” of his 1999 book, After the Gold Rush (Microsoft Press). Twenty-one short chapters, some just a few pages long, make the reading easy.

McConnell suggests that it’s high time software development became more “professional.” He looks at doctors, accountants, and especially engineers as occupations that include obligatory licensing or voluntary certification once graduates of accredited programs have demonstrated sufficient knowledge and skill in the field. (As an EE graduate who’s also a certified Professional Engineer, I’m more aware than most in the software development community of what this entails.)

Of course, should we be talking about software engineering or software engineering? McConnell describes two alternative programs, one at the Rochester Institute of Technology and one at McMaster University (where David Parnas is on staff), and leaves the question open to debate.

The take-away? If you regularly read IEEE Software, there’s little of Professional Software Development that you haven’t seen already. The magazine regularly covers the sad state of the practice and attempts to improve it through better auditing (such as CMM), better development methods (such as Extreme Programming), and professional licensing.

However, the chapter describing the professional development program at Construx Software (where McConnell is CEO and chief software engineer) is food for thought. It reflects the corporate need to offer highly competent services to consulting clients while encouraging, on a personal level, the employees’ professional development. If nothing else, by making explicit the company’s expectations about the anticipated improvement in employees’ capability levels, the performance evaluation process becomes more transparent.

Paul Freedman is a Professional Engineer in the Province of Quebec and president at Simlog. Contact him at paul.freedman@simlog.com.