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Dare To Be Excellent, edited by Alka Jarvis and Linda Hayes, offers case histories and names names from the annals of huge development efforts. It's not a book for Dilbert, it's a book for Dilbert's boss, who might indeed be better off for having read it.
The subtitle of the book, "Case Studies of Software Engineering Practices That Worked" is a misnomer. It's like having a book on container cargo shipping subtitled "Adventures in Sailing." That which programmers call software engineering is not on the table. The topic is management of large-scale software development.
On this subject the authors and editors are fully qualified to comment. Principals in projects carried out on behalf of Texas Instruments, Intel, PKS, Royal Bank, Primark Investment Services, Cisco, IBS, and others have contributed papers on significant initiatives carried to success despite many challenges and obstacles.
Technologists prove things to a number of significant digits; managers must make rapid decisions based on incomplete information while being lobbied in several directions. This is the difference between engineering and management. The value of Dare To Be Excellent is that it conveys to managers homely truths, many of which are arrived at more easily by technologists than by managers.
For example, Texas Instruments' experience with SAP in the chapter called "Requirements" reads like a drama based upon the old programmer's saw, "You want it cheap, fast, and good? Pick two. Get one, if you're lucky."
The book serves up rather much formal process, but with a welcome chaser of flexibility. Dare to Be Excellent is most excellent when demonstrating pragmatically why today's problem must not be mistaken for yesterday's problem, and that the demands of leadership often run counter to adherence to familiar and favored methodologies. The section "Technology Project Management Process" concludes that "while common sense was not specifically identified in the manual, it was never the intent to exclude it from the process."
Dare To Be Excellent is less excellent as literature. Despite having two editors, the book mangles language. Neither Jarvis, a certified quality auditor (ISO 9000), nor Hayes, a former CEO, caught incorrect usage of "exigencies," "exert," and "to beg the question." Certain events at Intel are said to have been "hemorrhaging the company." We hear of "monolithic changes," "floods of variables," and of that which is both "consistent and non-contradictory." A software group "found their roots in Utah," in the genealogy archives, one supposes.
On the other hand, many who will benefit from Dare To Be Excellent speak and write in similar fashion and still show up for work and do their jobs. To them and to others we commend this volume of practical experience on the forefront of large-scale technological project management.
-- Jack Woehr
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