Roscoe Sums It Up


"Well, it makes sense to me. Basically, when you start a project you don't know spit, so the initial phases are important. After all, you don't want to build a $50 fence to keep in a $10 horse, so understanding what it is you're trying to do just makes sense to me. Likewise, I like the idea of keeping the payroll down until you have a pretty good idea of what all those people are going to do. Otherwise, you're just paying them to chew tobacco until someone figures out what they should be doing."

I was starting to be impressed with Roscoe's appreciation of the situation.

"Then I got into the scheduling and estimating end of things. Some pretty smart fellas there. In particular, that guy Barry Boehm and that guy Walker Royce seem to have a handle on some of it. Although their Coconut model is a little high falutin' for me."

I cringed, but didn't have the heart to correct him. COCOMO and coconut do sound a little alike, after all. And there were lots of other interpretations you had to make in parsing Roscoe-speak, so this would not be too much of an additional stretch.

"Then I got around to reading some Kruchten and Booch, and even stumbled onto your name. Right here," he said, pointing to a page in a dog-eared copy of Grady's book, Object Solutions.[5]

[5] Booch, Grady. Object Solutions: Managing the Object-Oriented Project (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

Sure enough, he had me dead to rights. There I was, in black and white, in a footnote on page 136.




The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 269

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