How Software Is Built
How Software Is Built
Software Quality Series: Vol. 1
About the Book
How Software Is Built tackles the first requirement for developing Quality Software (the name of this series of books): learning to think correctly about problems, solutions, and quality itself. The book sets out guidelines that stimulate the kind of thinking needed.
Topics include a discussion of quality, software cultures, patterns of quality, patterns of management, feedback effects, the size/complexity dynamic in software engineering, the role of customers, and how to diagram causes and effects.
The book contains chapter summaries and many invaluable diagrams, as well as exercises, to bring home its lessons.
Here's a few of many five-star reviews:
"Weinberg addresses more clearly the form and essence of quality that we software people worry about... I can't imagine a better way to help change the thinking process in your organization than the wide-scale distribution of Jerry Weinberg's wonderful book." - Ed Yourdon, American Programmer
"I like Jerry Weinberg. He's a lunatic: I like that in a person. He writes from a technical and psychological perspective, describing how to think about what you do. . . . This series is one of my favorites." - Ron Jeffries, xprogramming.com
"The notation is so elegant that it takes almost no effort to learn and use it. The diagrams are simple and easy to understand and used in such a consistent manner that one has to wonder why this notation is not in widespread use. I hope it will be. . . ." —Software Quality World
"A must book for every software development manager." —C.C. Dilloway Computer Books Review
". . . very highly recommended!" —New Book Bulletin
"With the current frenzy for Total Quality Management, ISO 9000, and Baldrige Awards dominating the industry, it's refreshing to have someone as down-to-earth as Weinberg focusing on the need for high-quality management as a necessary prerequisite for high-quality software. . . . [a] people-oriented approach to quality." —Warren Keuffel. Computer Language
"This is one of those landmark books that comes along at the right time and addresses the right set of issues. . . . what makes this book unique and invaluable is the organization and presentation of the material. This is a book every software development manager should study." —Shel Siegel. CASE Trends
About the Author
Bundles that include this book
Table of Contents
- How Software Is Built
-
New Preface
- Preface
-
Part I Patterns Of Quality
-
Chapter 1: What Is Quality? Why Is It Important?
- 1.1 A Tale Of Software Quality
-
1.2 The Relativity of Quality
- 1.2.1. Finding the relativity
- 1.2.2 Who was that masked man?
- 1.2.3 The political dilemma
- 1.3 Quality Is Value To Some Person
- 1.4 Another Story About Quality
-
1.5. Why Improving Quality Is So Difficult
- 1.5.1. “It’s not too bad.”
- 1.5.2. “It’s not possible.”
- 1.5.3. The lock-on
- 1.6. Software Culture and Subcultures
- 1.7. Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 1.8. Summary
- 1.9. Practice
-
Chapter 2. Software Subcultures
-
2.1 Applying Crosby’s Ideas to Software
- 2.1.1 Conformance to requirements is not enough
- 2.1.2 “Zero Defects” is not realistic in most projects
- 2.1.3 There is an “economics of quality”
- 2.1.4 Any pattern can be a success
- 2.1.5 “Maturity” is not the right word
- 2.2 Six Software Sub-Cultural Patterns
- 2.3 Pattern 0: Oblivious
-
2.4 Pattern 1: Variable
- 2.4.1 The superprogrammer image
- 2.4.2 When Pattern 1 is successful
- 2.4.3 The ideal development structure
-
2.5 Pattern 2: Routine (but Unstable)
- 2.5.1 The super-leader image
- 2.4.2 When Pattern 2 is successful
- 2.4.3 The ideal development structure
-
2.6 Pattern 3: Steering
- 2.6.1 The competent manager
- 2.6.2 When Pattern 3 is successful
- 2.6.3 The ideal development structure
- 2.7 Pattern 4: Anticipating
- 2.8 Pattern 5: Congruent
- 2.9. Helpful Hints and Variations
- 2.10. Summary
- 2.11. Practice
-
2.1 Applying Crosby’s Ideas to Software
-
Chapter 3. What Is Needed To Change Patterns?
-
3.1 Changing Thought Patterns
- 3.1.1 Thought and communication in various patterns
- 3.1.2 Using models to change thinking patterns
- 3.1.3 How precise should the models be?
- 3.1.4 What models do for us
-
3.2 Choosing A Better Pattern
- 3.2.1 Is your present pattern good enough?
- 3.2.2 Organizational demands
- 3.2.3 Customer demands
- 3.2.4 Problem demands
- 3.2.5 Choosing a point in “pattern space”
- 3.2.6 The temptation to stagnate
-
3.3 Opening Patterns to Information
- 3.3.1 Circular argument
- 3.3.2 The classic software circle
- 3.3.3 The key to opening closed circles
- 3.3.4 Developing trust
- 3.4. Helpful Hints and Variations
- 3.5. Summary
- 3.6. Practice
-
3.1 Changing Thought Patterns
-
Chapter 1: What Is Quality? Why Is It Important?
-
Part II Patterns Of Managing
-
Chapter 4: Control Patterns for Management
- 4.1 Shooting at Moving Targets
-
4.2 The Aggregate Control Model
- 4.2.1 Aggregation in the software industry as a whole
- 4.2.2 Aggregation in a single organization
- 4.2.3 Natural selection in a Pattern 1 Organization
- 4.2.4 Why aggregation is popular in Pattern 2 organizations
- 4.2.5 Aggregation in other patterns
-
4.3 Patterns and Their Cybernetic Control Models
- 4.3.1 The system to be controlled (the focus of Patterns 0 and 1)
-
4.3.2 The controller (the focus of Pattern 2)
- 4.3.3 Feedback control (the focus of Pattern 3)
-
4.4 Engineering Management
- 4.4.1 The job of management
- 4.4.2. No plan for what should happen
- 4.4.3. Failure to observe what significant things are really happening
- 4.4.4. Failure to compare the observed with the planned
- 4.4.5. Not taking action to bring actual closer to planned
- 4.5. From Computer Science to Software Engineering
- 4.6. Helpful Hints and Variations
- 4.7. Summary
- 4.8. Practice
-
Chapter 5 Making Explicit Management Models
-
5.1 Why Things Go Awry
- 5.1.1 The role of system models
- 5.1.2. Implicit models
- 5.1.3 Inability to face reality
- 5.1.4 Incorrect models
-
5.2 Linear Models and Their Fallacies
- 5.2.1 Additivity fallacies
- 5.2.2 Scaling fallacies
- 5.3 The Diagram of Effects
-
5.4 Developing a Diagram of Effects from Output Backwards
- 5.4.1. Starting with the output
- 5.4.2. Brainstorming backwards effects
- 5.4.3. Charting the backwards effects
- 5.4.4. Charting secondary effects
- 5.4.5. Tracing the secondary effects
- 5.4.6. Explicitly indicating multiplicative effects
- 5.5. Non-linearity Is the Reason Things Go Awry
- 5.6. Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 5.7. Summary
- 5.8. Practice
-
5.1 Why Things Go Awry
-
Chapter 6: Feedback Effects
- 6.1 The Humpty Dumpty Syndrome
-
6.2 Runaway, Explosion and Collapse
- 6.2.1. The Reversible Fallacy
- 6.2.2. The Causation Fallacy
- 6.2.3. Irreversiblity: explosion or collapse
-
6.3. Act Early, Act Small
- 6.3.1 Brooks’s Law made worse by management action
- 6.3.2 The Generalized Brooks’s Law
-
6.4. Negative Feedback—Why Everything Doesn’t Collapse
- 6.4.1 A system waiting for a disaster to happen
- 6.4.2 Negative feedback loops
- 6.4.3 How feedback loops regulate
- 6.5. Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 6.6. Summary
- 6.7. Practice
-
Chapter 7: Steering Software
-
7.1. Methodologies and Feedback Control
- 7.1.1 Plans: the great contribution of Pattern 2
- 7.1.2 Why pure sequential methods don’t always work
- 7.1.3 Methodologies can discourage innovation
- 7.1.4 Adding feedback to the methodology
- 7.1.5 Keeping the feedback early and small
- 7.1.5 Applying the feedback at different levels
-
7.1. Methodologies and Feedback Control
-
7.2. The Human Decision Point
-
7.2.1 Intervention models and invisible states
- 7.2.2 Visualizing the invisible
- 7.3 It’s Not The Event That Counts, It’s Your Reaction To The Event
- 7.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 7.5 Summary
- 7.6 Practice
-
7.2.1 Intervention models and invisible states
-
Chapter 8: Failing to Steer
-
8.1. “I’m Just a Victim”
- 8.1.1. What distinguishes failures from successes?
- 8.1.2 Victim language
- 8.2. “I Don’t Want to Hear Any of That Negative Talk.”
- 8.3. “I Thought I Was Doing The Right Thing.”
- 8.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 8.5 Summary
- 8.6. Practice
-
8.1. “I’m Just a Victim”
-
Chapter 4: Control Patterns for Management
-
Part III Demands That Stress Patterns
-
Chapter 9: Why It’s Always Hard to Steer
- 9.1. The “Game of Control”
-
9.1.1 The Square Law of Computation
- 9.1.2 Control as a game
- 9.1.3 How complex is chess?
- 9.1.4 Computational complexity
- 9.1.5 Simplification by general principles
- 9.1.6 The Size/Complexity Dynamic
-
9.2 The Size/Complexity Dynamic in Software Engineering
- 9.2.1 The history of software
- 9.2.2 The history of software engineering
- 9.2.3. Games against Nature
- 9.2.4. The Fault Location Dynamic
- 9.2.5. The Human Interaction Dynamic
- 9.3 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 9.4 Summary
- 9.5 Practice
-
Chapter 10: What It Takes To Be Helpful
-
10.1 Reasoning Graphically about the Size/Complexity Dynamic
- 10.1.1. Size vs. brainpower
- 10.1.2 The size vs. effort curve
- 10.1.3 Variation and the Log-Log Law
-
10.2. Comparing Patterns and Technologies
- 10.2.1. Comparing with a size/effort curve
- 10.2.2 Seeing through the data
- 10.2.3. Combining two methods into a composite pattern
- 10.2.4. Choosing for reasons other than effort
- 10.2.5. Reducing the risk of change
-
10.3 Helpful Interactions
- 10.3.1. Do no harm.
- 10.3.2 The Helpful Model
- 10.3.3 The Principle of Addition
- 10.3.4. Adding to the repertoire of models
- 10.4 Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 10.5 Summary
- 10.6 Practice
-
10.1 Reasoning Graphically about the Size/Complexity Dynamic
-
Chapter 11: Responses to Customer Demands
-
11.1 Customers Can Be Dangerous To Your Health
- 11.1.1 More customers increase the development load
- 11.1.2 More customers increase the maintenance load
- 11.1.3 Close contact with customers can be disruptive
- 11.1.4 You can be disruptive to your customers.
- 11.1.5 What happens when you have many customers
-
11.2 The Cast of Outsiders
- 11.2.1 Customers and users
- 11.2.2 The marketing department
- 11.2.3 Other surrogates
- 11.2.4 Programmers as self-appointed user surrogates
- 11.2.5 Testers as official and unofficial surrogates
- 11.2.6 Other unplanned surrogates
-
11.3 Interactions With Customers
- 11.3.1 The dynamics of interruption
- 11.3.2. Interrupted meetings
- 11.3.3 Meeting size and frequency
-
11.4 Configuration Support
- 11.4.1 Effects on test coverage and repair time
- 11.4.2 Analyzing the testing situation externally—an Apple example
-
11.5 Releases
- 11.5.1 Pre- and post-release dynamics
- 11.5.2 Multiple versions
- 11.5.3 Release frequency
- 11.6. Helpful Hints and Suggestions
- 11.7. Summary
- 11.8. Practice
-
11.1 Customers Can Be Dangerous To Your Health
-
Chapter 9: Why It’s Always Hard to Steer
- What Next?
Other books by this author
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,718,542writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Recipes for Decoupling
Matthias NobackWrite software that survives
- #2
CQRS by Example
Carlos Buenosvinos, Christian Soronellas, and Keyvan Akbary- Leverage your Software Architecture skills by learning everything about CQRS in detail with lots of examples
- Develop faster applications by applying CQRS and fostering Read Models and Projections
- Learn how to apply CQRS into a brownfield project from a pragmatic approach
- #3
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
- #4
Maîtriser Apache JMeter
Philippe Mouawad, Bruno Demion (Milamber), and Antonio Gomes RodriguesToute la puissance d'Apache JMeter expliquée par ses commiteurs et utilisateurs experts. De l'intégration continue en passant par le Cloud, vous découvrirez comment intégrer JMeter à vos processus "Agile" et Devops.
If you're looking for the newer english version of this book, go to Master JMeter : From load testing to DevOps
- #5
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #6
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #7
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
- #8
The PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking Book
Don Jones and Jeff HicksLearn the patterns, practices, and details of PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking from the industry's two most recognized experts on the subject.
- #9
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
- #10
Introduction to Data Science
Rafael A IrizarryThe demand for skilled data science practitioners in industry, academia, and government is rapidly growing. This book introduces concepts from probability, statistical inference, linear regression and machine learning and R programming skills. Throughout the book we demonstrate how these can help you tackle real-world data analysis challenges.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #3
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #5
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #10
All the Books of The Medical Futurist
6 Books
We put together the most popular books from The Medical Futurist to provide a clear picture about the major trends shaping the future of medicine and healthcare. Digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the future of 20 medical specialties, big pharma, data privacy, digital health investments and how technology giants such as Amazon...
