Summary:
This book contains the candid collected wisdom of Jim McCarthy, a software industry veteran and the director of the Microsoftr Visual C++ development group. Dynamics of Software Development offers practical advice on how to create great software products, produce them on a reasonable schedule, and launch and market them successfully. The book is divided into five sections that chart the progress from initial design to successful products:

• Opening Moves—discusses the process of designing the product, creating a market strategy, and pulling together a development team
• The Middle Game—examines the development process
• Ship Mode—describes the state of the process necessary to refine the product toward its ultimate goal
• The End Game—discusses issues involved in bringing ship mode to fruition
• The Launch—explains how to successfully refine and communicate your marketing messages

Throughout, McCarthy expresses his sometimes controversial judgments in witty, memorable maxims.

Pages:

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations ..... ix

Foreword by Denis Gilbert, General Manager, Microsoft Visual C++ ..... xi

Preface ..... xiii

Acknowledgments ..... xv

Introduction

Think About It ..... 3The Stages of the Game ..... 6If You Don't Ship Packaged Software ..... 7Opening Moves

The Organization ..... 10

QA in a Ghetto? ..... 11Whose Design Is This, Anyway? ..... 11#1: Establish a shared vision. ..... 13A Tale from Close to Home ..... 15#2: Get their heads into the game. ..... 22The Goodness of Ideas ..... 23#3: Create a multi-release technology plan. ..... 24A Technology Plan ..... 25Refining the Technology Plan ..... 27#4: Don't flip the bozo bit. ..... 30Death March to Egghead ..... 33Burn-Out ..... 34#5: Use scouts. ..... 36Looking Ahead ..... 36#6: Watch the ratio. ..... 39#7: Use feature teams. ..... 39#8: Use program managers. ..... 48The Group Psyche ..... 50#9: Be an authority, not an authority figure. ..... 52Empowerment ..... 53The Competition ..... 56

A Little Anthropology ..... 56The Software Struggle ..... 58#10: Alone? A market without a competitor ain't. ..... 60#11: Dead heat? Break out of a feature shoot-out. ..... 63#12: Behind? Ship more often with new stuff. ..... 64#13: Ahead? Don't ever look back. ..... 65#14: Take the oxygen along. ..... 66The Customer ..... 68

The Captive Customer ..... 68A Simple Purchase Model ..... 70Esthetics ..... 71#15: Enrapture the customer. ..... 71#16: Findthe sweet spot. ..... 73#17: It's a relationship, not a sale. ..... 74"I Must Be Dumb'' ..... 76#18: Cycle rapidly. ..... 77The Design ..... 79

#19: Go for greatness. ..... 79#20: State your theme. ..... 80Getting Single-Minded ..... 81Beautiful Properties ..... 82