Software Engineering Process with UPEDU

Pierre N. Robillard, Philippe Kruchten.
Software Engineering Process with UPEDU.
Addison-Wesley, 2003.

Ch. 9: Software Project Management Discipline

p.233

In talking about climbing a mountain, we often make the mistake of focusing on getting to the top, as though that is the only goal. Getting to the summit and then getting the whole team back down the mountain in one piece is the real objective. (In a similar vein, the objective of the space program in the sixties was not merely to put a man on the moon; it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back alive.) The software analogy, to stretch the point a little, is to focus all the effort on the software development necessary to ship the initial version of the product. Completing this effort allows you to "plant the flag," as it were. (Sometimes we proclaim victory even earlier; for example, upon shipping a first beta copy.) I contend that the moral equivalent of climbing the mountain and getting back down safely is shipping a software product that you can support and maintain. It means putting together a product whose programming is robust, whose documentation is complete and understandable, and whose support burden doesn't kill the rest of the organization. So when we plan a software project, we must plan to do the whole job, not just plant the flag at the summit.

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