Is "Software Project Survival Guide" by Steve McConnell still relevant to software project management?

Question

This book was written in 1998 and I like some of the concepts it introduces. When I tried to employ some of its strategies, one of the project members said that they weren't realistic. What do you think - outdated or still relevant? What of his concepts works and what doesn't?

Answer 1

I haven't read this book you mentioned. But, I did find Pragmatic programmer very useful and most of the tips I learned from it got accepted by my team.

Answer 2

Any given organization or team is going to require it's own flavor of project management. I haven't read the book you mentioned, but from the sounds of it there's nothing really wrong with it. Just remember that what the author recommends might not work at all for you. You might try to get more of a "sense" of project management from it, and adapt it to your needs.

Answer 3

I think the ideas in the book are still relevant. But personally I got much more from Steve McConnell's project management book Rapid Development which is even earlier. It won a Jolt award in 1997. Rapid Development explains a number of different practices, with the pros and cons of each.

EDIT Now that it's clear that your colleague was criticising design documents and schedules, rather than Steve McConnell, I will say this: your colleague may be a fan of Extreme Programming. Possibly your colleague has taken it so far they are now a fan of Death Marches - don't tell your colleague I said that last bit ;)

Answer 4

It really depends on the type of project you are building. If it's for a government, then yes it is still relevant.

If it's pretty much anything else, then no. From what I gathered from reading the crib notes his method of project planning etc doesn't work for normal line of business LOB applications. It's too strict, too large, and generally will result in a project that can't keep up with changing business demands.

Look into one of the many forms of agile programming. If you take one idea from agile: Deliver fast, deliver often. You don't need to spec everything out ahead of time (that doesn't work), and you absolutely have to get the app in front of your audience as quickly as possible to know if you are doing the right thing.

The problem is that business users needs change sometimes faster than we can code. Following Mr. McConnell might lead to a well developed application; unfortunately, it will be one that no one cares about when it is done.

Answer 5

I have worked on both small and very large projects and IMHO the survival guide provides very relevant guidence for medium to large sized projects. For any project below say 10 developers you probably would be better off using Scrum if your organization is ready for that, or at least trim the guide to fit the size of you project.

However on projects above that size you will find lots of good advise in McConnells books.

Answer 6

This book, along with McConnell's Rapid Development is required reading for a course at my university, Software Process and Project Management. Generally, the book makes sense. However, you do have to adapt the processes used to the team and to the project. There is no cookie cutter solution, so don't just read the book and do everything it says that can be done just for the sake of doing it. You have to not only understand the process, but how that process helps (or hurts) your project.