Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone? via Tom DeMarco
Great paper that I just re-read now. https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/mostread/MostRead-SW-SoftwareEngineeringAnIdeaWhoseTimeHasCome.pdfÂ
“For the past 40 years […] we’ve tortured ourselves over our inability to finish a software project on time and on budget. But as I hinted earlier, this never should have been the supreme goal. The more important goal is transformation, creating software that changes the world or that transforms a company or how it does business.” Tom DeMarco IEEE paper in 2009 [2]
Wow!
“strict control is something that matters a lot on relatively useless projects”
Yes, I experienced that.Â
  What if you say as a manager:
“I have a finish date in mind, and I’m not even going to share it with you. When I come in one day and tell you the project will end in one week, you have to be ready to package up and deliver what you’ve got as the final product. Your job is to go about the project incrementally, adding pieces to the whole in the order of their relative value, and doing integration and documentation and acceptance testing incrementally as you go.”
