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Please do not be intimidated by the "Key Practices" document. You do not need to read the whole thing!
Why Did the Tower of Babel Fail?
Please read page 74–77. There are two things I would like for you to glean from these pages. The first is that documentation for a large project is, well, large. If you do not plan ahead, it will ground the project to a screeching halt. The second is that you should be thankful for web technologies (briefly mentioned on page 78). We clearly can do a much better job using web technologies than Brooks did using paper and microfiche.
The remainder of the chapter discusses the difference between the producer and the technical director. The producer handles logistics. This is a full-time job requiring a very different skill set than you probably possess. Most successful people in this role have some sort of management background. The technical director is the engineer. A mistake of many organizations is to promote technical people to management roles without checking if they have the proper skill set and without training them. If this happens to you, please carefully read the excerpt from "The Man Who Sold the Moon" at the end of the chapter for an idea how to be successful in a situation like this.
F. Brooks,
Chapter 7: Why Did the Tower of Babel Fail?.
The Mythical Man-Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
The Whole and the Parts
Perhaps this chapter of The Mythical Man-Month is more dated than any other. That being said, it does a good job of presenting concepts that we as software engineers take for granted. It also gives us an excellent historical perspective.
F. Brooks,
Chapter 13: The Whole and the Parts.
The Mythical Man-Month : Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
Capability Mature Model for Software
This is a very dense document that should take most of your reading time for the week. Before starting the quiz, you need to have a deep understanding of the five CMM levels. You should also have a familiarity with the process areas.
M. Paulk et al.,
"Capability Mature Model for Software, Version 1.1," Chapter 1-3
IEEE Software, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 18-27, Jul. 1993.
[Online] Available:
http://dx.doi.org.byui.idm.oclc.org/10.1109/52.219617
Key Practices of the Capability Maturity ModelSM, Version 1.1
The next article for the reading is huge. It is 479 pages! You do NOT need to read the whole thing! Instead, the reading quiz will have you focus on certain parts of the document, the class debate will have you focus on other parts, and you will be using this as a reference for next week's report.
M. Paulk et al.,
"Key Practices of the Capability Mature ModelSM, Version 1.1,"
Technical Report CMU/SEI-93-TR-025, Feb. 1993.
[Online] Available:
http://dx.doi.org.byui.idm.oclc.org/10.1109/52.219617
The Capability Im-Maturity Model
This article is meant as a joke. That being said, it should be read seriously.
Many organizations have a very dysfunctional way of working. The motivation behind management and the workers is not to serve the clients nor make great products, but rather to satisfy their personal goals. The result is chaos at best and destructive behavior at worst. While it is nice to think that this is only the stuff of movies, it is surprisingly common in the workplace. In fact, it is more than likely you will encounter some of these things first-hand in your own career.
Thus, the purpose of this article is twofold. First, it is to wake you up to the realities of the workplace. Second, it is to help you recognize destructive behavior when you see it.
T. Schorsch, "The Capability Im-Maturity Model (CIMM)," [Online] Available: http://www.grisha.ru/cmm/cimm.htm
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