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Preface
Chapter 1 — Introduction
Chapter 2 — Schmoozing
with the Ideas
PART 1: CONTEXT
Chapter 3 — Software Engineering and
Metrics
Chapter 4 — Key Themes in Software
Measurements
Chapter 5 — Taking Your Project the Metrics
Way
Chapter 6 — Iterative and Incremental
Development: A Brief Background
PART 2: CONSTRUCTS
Chapter 7 —Requirements: The Drivers of
Software Development
Chapter 8 — Analysis and Design: On
Understanding, Deciding, and Measuring
Chapter 9 —Implementation: It Takes Some
Doing
Chapter 10 — Testing: Hunt for a Software
Litmus
Chapter 11 — Putting it All Together
PART 3: CASE STUDY
Chapter 12 —The Plot Thickens
Chapter 13 — Getting into the Groove
Chapter 14 — Diving at the Deep End
Chapter 15 — Building Time
Chapter 16 — Feel of the World
Epilogue
Index
- The IT trade literature is full of articles about
the skills that IT workers need to learn in order
to stay employed and advance up the hierarchical
chain. One of the skills that are constantly
mentioned is the ability to understand the business
side of the organization. One of the best books in
this area is "Metrics-Driven Enterprise Software
Development" by Subhajit Datta. If you can't
measure it, you cannot manage it and that means you
have to have measuring tools that are both
understandable and applicable. In a field as
inherently uncertain as software development,
finding such tools is not an easy task;
Fortunately, Datta has done much of that work for
you.
~Charles Ashbacher at Journal
of Object Technology
- I found this book very easy to read and
entertaining to boot, and the metrics information
extremely valuable. In particular the Exception
Estimation Score and Total Testing Score are
excellent means of evaluating the breakdown of an
application.
~Sean Campion at Amazon
- Metrics-Driven Enterprise Software Development is
a comprehensive and eccentric overview of the
history and current state of the techniques and
practice of measurement in large-scale software
projects. This book is not just about a passing
fad. Until revolutionary new developments change
this field, the book will continue to be valuable
to software quality engineering professionals. I
have been familiar with this field for twenty years
and found the book to be immediately valuable in
that it presented some topics and aspects with
which I had been less familiar. I was pleased to
read this book as I could immediately use the
information contained in it for my own work.
The light-hearted, far-ranging and
conversational presentation of the technical
materials covered here surprised me. For example,
when the author discusses the technical and
specialized software-engineering topics of
abstraction, elision, and indirection, the author
presents a two-page side bar to summarize the
ancient Indian epic Mahabharata and its brave and
cunning heroes to illustrate how abstraction,
elision, and indirection have similar meaning
outside of software engineering. This style of
treatment is not an exception in this book and the
author uses this presentation method throughout.
Datta's writing style might be most attractive
to novices to the technical subject matter who may
tire quickly with drier, theoretical, and abstract
works on the topic. I would definitely recommend
this book to less experienced coworkers who may not
have had extensive technical training. The hurried
expert who is looking for the most in-depth and
efficient coverage of the material may not benefit
as much from this choice of treatment.
In writing this book, Subhajit Datta was
evidently committed to creating an
easy-to-understand resource. He presents evidence
for the points he makes in the form of stories,
case studies, and personal experiences. He also
provides a fair amount of tables and graphs, but
the treatment is light on math, proofs, and
derivations. If you are looking for an introductory
text to software metrics that is light-hearted,
easy to read, and also provides a comprehensive,
top-level overview of the history and concepts;
then you will want to add this unique book to your
library.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading this book,
not because of technical details available in this
book, but because of the broad coverage and unique
presentation of the materials. After all, I do not
know of any other book that teaches software
engineering and at the same time recounts ancient
Indian epics. If I were to rewrite this book, I
would not change anything. If I did, the book would
lose its unique and eccentric character.
~Dr. Tilmann Bruckhaus at Stickyminds.com
- It is a light and interesting reading. It is
thought provoking and humorous in places.
Unlike other books in software or metrics space,
the style of writing is very different and is
simplistic in nature. The author has provided
practical examples and has used cross-discipline
analogies to prove the point. Anyone starting new
in software field will certainly find a lot of
wisdom rolled into this one book.
The author has covered a lot of ground by
bringing in his experience. Reading thru the book,
one could tell that the topic is well researched
and the author clearly knows the role of metrics in
the software field.
~Sandeep Khanna at Amazon
- Practitioner Datta explains how enterprise
software is built, rather than how to build it, and
how metrics can make a difference. He presents a
set of metrics and artifacts to help software
engineers ,make decisions, starting with
understanding the basic ideas behind metrics and
their applications to software engineering. He
describes key themes in software measurements,
moving projects into the metrics way, iterative and
incremental development, treating requirements as
the drivers of software development, performing
analysis and design as a way of deciding and
measuring, performing implementation, hunting for
means of testing and assessment, and taking lessons
learned in the initial stages to use the metric way
consistently and effectively. Datta offers an
extended case study readers can follow to see how
all the aspects of metric-based software deign work
in a real project. Each section has its own set of
references.
~Anonymous reviewer at Entrepreneur.com
- Subhajit produces a very interesting read, a
great feat for a dry topic. The book produces new
metrics, some of which I will certainly be using.
Given the current trend of enterprise roll out of
Agile SDLC, this book provides a good resource to
define metrics for measurements that will help
quantify the value of Agile.
If there is anything "against" the book that I
can think of, is in some cases the use of some
uncommon words from the English Language. However
that is really is a treat for connoisseurs of the
language.
Whether you are a mid-level manager or a Sr.
Executive, if you are in a business where
"requirements change" (i.e. your team is
building/defining software product), I strongly
recommend reading this book and implementing the
metrics.
~Dr Animikh Sen at Amazon
- A commendable contribution toward advancing the
theory and practice of software engineering. Taking
a cut across the software engineering life cycle
and brilliantly juxtaposing know-how and show-how,
Metrics-Driven Enterprise Software Development is a
fine source of guidance on the use of metrics in
enterprise software development for developers and
managers alike.
~Dr Deependra Moitra from the
back cover
- Metrics-Driven Enterprise Software Development is
honest, informative and even funny in the right
places without diluting the topic. The introduction
of this book is beautifully crafted. It made me
want to read more a rare accomplishment for a
technical book.
~Shovon Mukherjee from the back
cover
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