Book Title/Product
Software Engineering
Architecture-Driven
Software
Development
Author: Richard F.
Schmidt
Publisher: O’Reilly Media,
Inc. | ElsevierReviewer/Blogger: Virginia Benedict
Target Audience
Project
Managers, Stakeholders, Technical teams, Security Engineers, Students, and
anyone interested in how software products are built.
Prerequisites
Keen
desire to properly learn about software development methodologies and best
practices.
Structure
The
work is comprised of three (3) Sections and 20 Chapters, a short Note from the
Author, Contents, a Preface, and a well-defined Index comprising a total of Foot
Noted 376 pages. The Foot Notes include references to additional reading.
The
author does not include a much-needed dedicated Glossary if the work is to
embrace a wide audience of professionals and most importantly the beginner
student, even though he does provide an integrated version within the Index.
Illustrations and Figures
The
topics and concepts are well illustrated
Companion Content
No
readily available companion content
Reviewer | Blogger Comments
Review Title
Engineering
for Success… Beating the 30% Odds
This
manuscript is comprehensive, detailed, well organized, and easy to follow and is
an important contribution to the software manufacturing industry.
The content is organized around three major topics following the SWEBoK Key Process
Areas methods as depicted in Table 2 presented in the Preface:
SWEBoK Key Process Areas
SWEBoK Key Process Areas
- Fundamentals
- Practices
- Application
Knowledge
areas such as:
- Requirements
- Design
- Construction
- Testing
- Configuration
- Management
- Process
- Methods
- Quality
Richard Schmidt
addresses the topic of Security thoroughly all throughout the book beginning
with SECTION 2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PRACTICES but to my surprise, not as a
knowledge area given the current insurmountably persistent data breach and
violation of privacy events due to poorly written software, among other
culprits. I was expecting Schmidt to
stress Security in SECTION 1 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTALS.
Schmidt attributes the lack of success in software engineering to the ”almost
complete misconception of what a software product design is and how to develop
a complete design description. The second symptom involves the lack of a
standard set of software engineering principles and practices”
I
attribute the primary culprit to be the human condition and its lack of self-discipline
then misconceptions and lack of standards.
An
important and complex subject matter such as the concepts, methodologies, and
standards of software engineering discipline and requirements needs to be
addressed from many perspectives.
Especially in a contemporary scenario where Engineering Teams are
comprised of members from all walks of life, academic backgrounds, and gene
pools. This means that their natural
linguistics ideology can widely differ and this impacts how the product is
engineered. i.e., look and feel,
functions and features, how security is implemented in the product, etc. all
are dependent on the innate cultural and social ideologies of the code writers,
engineers, designers, and architects in this order or precedence.
Therefore,
the importance of works of this genres are imperative and how this complex
discipline is treated when it is presented as a learning tool needs to be presented
from many perspectives as does our author.
It
is important to note that while the work is well organized and elegantly
presented, the Contents guide in the eBook is not hyperlinked to the
destination chapters. However, the author does present an introduction to each
Section and a Chapter outline and introduction in the beginning of each chapter.
While I very much found useful the fact
that he enumerated key concepts in the beginning of each chapter, it was
distracting to me not to be able to navigate the eBook expediently through a
hyperlinked Contents/Topics guide. I had
to resort to scrolling through and/or perform queries in order to review a
chapter or segment within chapters.
Nevertheless,
I did find useful that in his Preface he instantiated hyperlinks to tables
within the preface. I recommend the
reader to pay close attention to this preface since in it Richard Schmidt
presents an architectural synopsis of the work, aligned with the Software
Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBoK) in the form of tables. In addition, he presents a summary of the
Sections and the corresponding chapters.
About the Author
TBPQuotes
If you have read this manuscript and have some opinion,
comments, or praise about this work, please let me know. Your quotes will be published with full billing
Comments
| Opinions | Corrections | Quotes… Welcome
