Articles

This list is relatively short. We chose to elaborate only on the following articles since we find them directly connected to the global orientation of our book. Many other resources were extremely useful in the process of writing this book. These articles are presented in the relevant chapters where they have been used.

Berry, Daniel M., The inevitable pain of software development: Why there is no silver bullet, International Workshop on Time-Constrained Requirements Engineering, 2002.

This paper refers directly to Brooks famous paper No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. The paper reviews a variety of programming models, methods , artifacts, and tools and examines them to determine that each has a step that programmers find painful enough that they usually avoid or postpone the step. The paper concludes that, hence, there is no silver bullet.

Brooks, Fredrick P., No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, IEEE Computer (April 1987): pp. 10 “19.

This article argues that no silver bullet exists for software project management by examining both the nature of the software problem and the properties of the bullets proposed. In a similar spirit to our book, the discussion in Brooks article addresses the fact that software is very different from tangible goods.

Camp, Tracy, The Incredible Shrinking Pipeline, Communications of the ACM 40(10), (October 1997): pp. 103 “110.

This paper addresses specifically the pipeline that represents the ratio of women involved in computer science from high school to graduate school and then at the bachelor s level. The importance of the topic is emphasized by the fact that the number of women at the bachelor s level affects the number of women at levels higher in the pipeline and in the job market. The paper also speculates on what the future holds.

Fairley, Richard E., and Willshire, Mary Jane, Why the Vasa Sank: 10 Problems and Some Antidotes for Software Projects, IEEE Software (April “May 2003): pp. 18 “25.

This article examines the reasons for the warship Vasa s sinking on August 10, 1628. This event is explained by problems in its design and construction process that are remarkably relevant to modern-day attempts to build large, complex software systems. The article describes the problems encountered in the Vasa project, and interprets the problems encountered in terms of modern software projects.

Lethbridge, Timothy C., Priorities for the Education and Training of Software Engineers , The Journal of Systems and Software 53(15), (2000): pp. 53 “71.

This article presents the results of a survey of almost 200 software developers who were asked about which types of knowledge they found most useful in their work, and what they learned in university. The responses are analyzed from different perspectives to better understand the variability needed in the education and training of software engineers.