Category: Pitfalls

Pitfall: Not identifying and managing risks »

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
What are the risks in modern software development? Look at the pitfalls listed in this book to start. Kind of makes you want to take up gardening, doesn’t it? On the other hand, being able to identify those risks and then manage [...]

Pitfall: Misjudging relative costs »

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
This is a classic pitfall in software engineering. Typically, insufficient time is allocated for the problem specification, research, design, architecture, and review that should occur before coding and during each development cycle. Likewise, software quality assurance (SQA) is often given little [...]

Pitfall: Allowing new features to creep (or pour) in »

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
The impulse to constantly add new and incremental features to a software program certainly isn’t unique to modern software develoment, or to a particular technology or methodology. It derives largely from three sources. Upper management and marketing want, and sometimes need, those [...]

Pitfall: Allowing the specification to drift or change without agreement »

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
Let’s start by freely acknowledging that, with rare exceptions, software of any complexity changes between original specification and actual delivery. This is to be expected, and to a certain extent encouraged, when the changes represent a refinement of our understanding of the problem domain [...]

Pitfall: Attempting too much, too fast, too soon »

[From Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering by Bruce F. Webster (forthcoming)]
Categories: managerial
If your organization is adopting some new technology or methodology (the “TOM”), it is likely because of wonderful claims about how it will improve your software engineering efforts: faster development time, higher quality, lower complexity, and so on. Leaving aside the likelihood of [...]