Stranger than Fiction Case Studies in Software Engineering Judgment with Steve McConnell

January 28, 2015 High-profile software project disasters have been commonplace for decades. Failed projects are followed by hand-wringing and cries of, "Where did we go wrong?" The people involved in the failed projects seem unable to determine the root causes of failure. Post mortem analyses typically settle on conspicuously incorrect answers, such as "We didn't test enough," "We should have been more agile," or "We should have motivated our staff better." The topic of judgment is ignored in the software engineering literature, yet development of sound professional judgment is key to correct and useful diagnoses of past failures and essential to creating future successes.

In this talk, award-winning author Steve McConnell uses the "Four Core Influences" framework from his upcoming book, Software Engineering Essentials, to dissect published reports of software project outcomes. He demonstrates how to use sound software engineering judgment to vastly improve understanding of software project dynamics, which in turn leads to correct diagnosis of failure, more effective corrective actions for projects already underway, and a significantly improved chance of success on every project.

Steve McConnell

Steve McConnell is CEO and Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software where he consults to a broad range of industries and oversees Construx's consulting and training offerings. Steve is the best-selling author of the industry classic Code Complete as well as Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, Rapid Development, and other titles. Steve has served as Editor in Chief of IEEE Software magazine and Chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Professional Activities Board. Readers of Software Development magazine voted Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry, along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. Steve can be reached at stevemcc@construx.com.