Summary
Chapter 10 - The Documentary Hypothesis – the chapter discusses the importance of having and maintaining formal documents when dealing with a software project. There are several reasons why doing this is important. First, writing decisions down is essential as it solidifies them and makes them clearer. Second, the documents will communicate the decisions to others that migh not know them yet. Finally, a manager’s documents give him a database and checklist.
Chapter 11 – Plant to Throw One Away – this chapter is about change and how we should plan for it. We should know that the system and the organization will change. The system will change as we realize not everything is going to work as we expected it. The management structure will change as the system changes, and we must be preared for it. Also, even after the program is delivered to customers, changes will continue to happen (program maintenance).
Chapter 12 – Sharp Tools – this chapter is about the tools used in a project. The essential tools are a computer facility, an operating system, a language, utilities, debugging aids, test-case generators, and a text processing system. The chapter then goes on and explains each of those tools.
Discussion
These three chapters address really important topics. First, keeping formal documents of what is done and what decisions get made is a very key part of any project. Second, system and organizational change is obviously happening and encouraging people to accept this is really important. I thought it was really interesting that the book says that programs will be at their best at the beginning (by their first release). You would logically think that the more errors you fix and the more iterations you release the better the system would get, but I guess is just a misconception. Finally, choosing the right tools is a critical part of a project, and the chapters hits on every single key part.
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