Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering (PMSE)

[Copyright (c) 1995, 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved. Updated: 04/30/08]

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[UPDATE: 04/12/08: I am posting the revised PMSE pitfalls over at my BFWA website; click this link for a current list.]

[UPDATE: 06/05/07 -- I have posted a PDF file of Chapter 2 of the original Pitfalls as an example to those of you who might want to contribute to PMSE. Please forgive the formatting glitches; I'll clean it up when I get the chance.]

Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote and published Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development (M&T Books, 1995). The book captured lessons learned from five years of full-time commercial software development using object-oriented technology, as well as cautions and observations gleaned from books and articles on the subject. Shortly after the book went into publication, I started plans to do a second edition, but M&T Books lost interest in the book itself and let it go out of print, which (according to the publishing agreement) meant that the publication rights reverted back to me.

In the twelve years since Pitfalls came out, most of my professional career has been focused on why information technology (IT) projects fail (and succeed). I have conducted reviews of major IT projects within corporations, some with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In some cases, after presenting my findings, I have then been asked to help get the project back on track.

In 1999, PricewaterhouseCoopers recruited me to join their Dispute Analysis & Investigation group, specifically to act as a consulting and testifying expert in litigation involving information technology, including what we termed “IT systems failure” lawsuits. As part of my work there, I reviewed documents for over 120 such lawsuits covering a 25-year period, then wrote a white paper identifying common patterns in these lawsuits. I spent two years at PwC, then set up my own firm to continue both with my consulting work and my expert witness services. During these past several years, I have continued to serve as a consulting/testifying expert in lawsuits involving disputed, troubled or failed IT projects, in some cases with budgets over $1 billion.

As a result, I decided a few years back that a second edition of Pitfalls focused solely on object-oriented development would be of less use than a more comprehensive work focused on all aspects of modern software engineering and IT project management. So this book project has now become Pitfalls of Modern Software Engineering (PMSE for short, pronounced “PimSee”). PMSE will follow the format of the original Pitfalls, but will cover a wider range of topics. As with my other out-of-print book, The Art of ‘Ware, I am seeking a publisher for the revised and expanded edition but will make the full text of PMSE (as it is written) available here for the time being.

The outline below will track the organization and content of PMSE as I work on it and is, of course, subject to change without notice. II welcome all comments, feedback, and suggestions; if you have specific pitfalls to contribute and I include them, I will certainly credit you, though I retain all rights to the work itself.

Initially, I am not going to set up separate chapters within Parts I through V. Instead, I am going to simply list the pitfalls and then indicate potential categories for them, since some pitfalls may well have multiple categories. The situation reminds me a bit of iTunes — there are tracks that I’d like to classify under multiple genres (say, ‘Soundtrack’ and ‘Classical’), but iTunes doesn’t allow that (yet). Likewise, there are pitfalls that may well classify as, say, Political and Managerial. We’ll see how it all falls out.

PLANNED SCOPE:

• Part I: Organizational Pitfalls
  • Conceptual Pitfalls
  • Political Pitfalls
  • IT Governance Pitfalls
  • Managerial Pitfalls
  • Change Management Pitfalls
  • Personnel Pitfalls
  • Marketing Pitfalls
• Part II: Societal and Legal Pitfalls
  • Auditing Pitfalls
  • Security Pitfalls
  • Privacy Pitfalls
  • Intellectual Property Pitfalls
  • Regulatory and Compliance Pitfalls
  • Contractual Pitfalls
  • Criminal and Civil Pitfalls
• Part III: Software Lifecycle Pitfalls
  • Methodology Pitfalls
  • Scheduling Pitfalls
  • Analysis and Requirements Pitfalls
  • Implementation Pitfalls
  • Quality Assurance Pitfalls
  • Change Control and Configuration Management Pitfalls
  • Support and Training Pitfalls
  • Maintenance and Legacy Pitfalls
  • Process Improvement Pitfalls
• Part IV: Architecture, Design and Implementation Pitfalls
  • Conceptual Pitfalls
  • Architecture Pitfalls
  • Design and Pattern Pitfalls
  • Module, Class and Object Pitfalls
  • Coding Pitfalls
  • Testing Pitfalls
• Part V: Technology- and Methodology-Specific Pitfalls
  • Object Technology Pitfalls
  • Distributed Object Pitfalls
  • Web Portal Pitfalls
  • Web Services Pitfalls
  • CMM Pitfalls
  • CobiT Pitfalls
  • RUP Pitfalls
  • XP/Agile Pitfalls
  • Model-Driven Development (MDD) Pitfalls
  • C++ Pitfalls
  • Java Pitfalls
  • <and so on>
• Conclusions
• Bibliography

[back to The Art of 'Ware] [up to Works in Progress] [ahead to Surviving Complexity]
[Copyright (c) 1995, 2008 by Bruce F. Webster. All rights reserved.]

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