Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects

Book Description

Ship It! is a collection of tips that show the tools and techniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use them well. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modern practices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This book avoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readers find page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in the real world.

Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, Ship It! will show you:

• Which tools help, and which don't
• How to keep a project moving
• Approaches to scheduling that work
• How to build developers as well as product
• What's normal on a project, and what's not
• How to manage managers, end-users and sponsors
• Danger signs and how to fix them

Few of the ideas presented here are controversial or extreme; most experienced programmers will agree that this stuff works. Yet 50 to 70 percent of all project teams in the U.S. aren't able to use even these simple, well-accepted practices effectively. This book will help you get started.

Ship It! begins by introducing the common technical infrastructure that every project needs to get the job done. Readers can choose from a variety of recommended technologies according to their skills and budgets. The next sections outline the necessary steps to get software out the door reliably, using well-accepted, easy-to-adopt, best-of-breed practices that really work.

Finally, and most importantly, Ship It! presents common problems that teams face, then offers real-world advice on how to solve them.

Reviews From AMAZON.COM

A "must read" volume for software developers...

I haven't had the chance to read and review any books from the Pragmatic Programmers series. I decided to change that with the book Ship It! - A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects by Jared Richardson and William Gwaltney Jr. After finishing the book, I put in an order for a few more titles. If all the titles are this practical and useful, I'll be a happy camper...

Contents: Introduction; Tools and Infrastructure; Pragmatic Project Techniques; Tracer Bullet Development; Common Problems and How to Fix Them; Tip Summary; Source Code Management; Build Scripting Tools; Continuous Integration Systems; Issue Tracking Software; Development Methodologies; Testing Frameworks; Suggested Reading List; Index

Richardson and Gwaltney don't try to add yet another methodology that guarantees your life will be rosy. Basically, that methodology doesn't exist. But there are a number of best practices that they've found from real-world experience, and they share those here. The key word is "practical" (hence the "Pragmatic" part of the series title). Even if you can't necessarily adopt all of their suggestions, you can easily take one or two and merge them into your routine. Once they've changed the way you work, you'll be ready for a few new changes.

For instance, they are really big on automated build processes for your software development that requires a compile and packaging process. Having the process done manually means that it won't get done as often as it should, or it will be machine dependent. Taking the time to learn something like Ant can dramatically improve your effectiveness and productivity. Same with using continuous integration software. If your project is constantly being built and tested without intervention, it's a guarantee that new problems will be caught early and resolved quickly.

After reading this book, I'm planning on investigating the use of a wiki for "The List", as well as possibly downloading Bugzilla to have a formal issue tracking system. For me, that's the sign of a great book... you walk away with a few action items that will change what you do today, not sometime in the future. This is really a "required read" for all software developers, and the sooner you read it, the better...

Very good and practical introduction to software project management and development

I read the book in 3 hours. I liked it very much because of its focus and knowledge of software processes which truly works.

I agree with the reviewer who gave only one star that all of the practices and techiques are already covered in other books and references. But I disagree with him about his rate because he forgot to remember that most of the software companies out there don't follow the practices covered.

The only thing I think could make the book even more practical is if the authors could show an integrated system working.

I deployed in my home machine a system with Subversion, Eventum, WebSVN, TortoiseSVN, Maven, CruiseControl, JUnit in less than three days! Without the need to pay a lot of dollars to IBM (with the Rational SDP) or Microsoft (with the Visual Studio Team System) even small and medium IT shops can build a great infrastructure to deliver better and faster software products.

I believe this book is a nice introduction to the SW infrastructure needs of our new geographically and distributed age!!! Join the agile revolution!!!

I didn't see the book yet but I believe the new book "Practical Development Environments" by O'Reilly will be a nice complement to "Ship It!"

Jared and Will, if you see this, thank you for the excellent work!!!


José Papo