About This Book

In this book we tell the story of how we worked as a team. We talk about some of the technical obstacles we faced and how we overcame them. We describe some of the patterns we encountered and how we applied them to our team, our project, and our code. We talk about how this small team developed a method for communicating effectively with each other and with our customer. We also talk about the different techniques and methods we adopted, and adapted from several different methodologies, such as RUP, eXtreme Programming (XP), and others.

This book doesn't contain all of the technical details about any specific type of software development technique. It doesn't describe a process. It isn't about writing efficient code, debugging methods, testing techniques, requirements management, or process engineering. Yet, this book touches on all these topics.

The PSP Tools Project

This book chronicles our experiences with developing a working software project, PSP Tools. The goal of PSP Tools is to provide automated support for Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process (PSP). In version 1, we implemented timers and data gathering tools to support PSP level 1. (For more about PSP, see Appendix B.)

This book contains screen shots, tables, and other snippets showing our progress. We present our experiences, including the final software, to you "warts and all," so that you can see how we actually worked, rather than an idealized interpretation of how we wish we had worked. Our book's Web site, www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321202945, contains all our code plus several non-code artifacts, links to useful sites, and other late-breaking news. We're also happy to hear from you, either about your reactions to the book or about your own experiences developing software. Our email address is [e-mail].

How This Book Is Organized

The book is organized as follows :

• Chapters 1 to 3 set the context of the project. We introduce our approach to software development; our views on the importance of balancing people, process, and tools; and describe the PSP Tools project.

• Chapters 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 11 describe the project from a team and process perspective. We discuss the different phases of RUP and what we did during each phase.

• Chapters 7 and 9 provide technical details about the code and technology we worked with. While these chapters aren't extensive expositions of the full application, they are designed to give a flavor of the code and explain some of our technical decisions. We hope they will inspire you to download the project from the book's Web site for further exploration.

• The appendixes provide background information about topics with which we assume you have some familiarity : RUP, PSP, and XP.