The third section of this book looks at software development from a project-management perspective. The view is that in the zeroth-order approximation, managing a software development project is just like managing any other project.
In Chapter 9, "Trade-Offs," I look at that age-old problem of how to get "those eight great tomatoes in that little-bitty can." Or, why is it we always seem to be trying to do too much in the time we have allotted to us?
I turn in Chapter 10, "Estimating," to some rudimentary notions about how to estimate software development projects; our old friend Roscoe Leroy reappears.
In Chapter 11, "Scheduling," Roscoe continues with his theory of how to schedule software development projects, injecting some predictive science into the domain.
Finally, we note in Chapter 12, "Rhythm," that all successful projects and the teams that execute them have a certain rhythm to their activity. This rhythm is disarmingly the same when observed over many, many projects, so I look for some underlying causes.
In all these chapters, I of course try to compare and contrast software development with "other" projects, so that you can understand the differences as well as the similarities.
