Bulldozer00's Blog

I own two wildly different books dedicated to the topic of software estimation:

• Steve McConnell’s pragmatic and down to earth “Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art“
• Richard Stutzke’s massive, academic tome: “Estimating Software-Intensive Systems: Projects, Products, and Processes“

I have several of McConnell’s books and I think that he is a brilliant, understandable teacher of all things software. Steve’s concern for, and empathy towards, the layman software engineer shows. Stutzke, on the other hand, is an impressive equation-wielder and master complexity amplifier who seems more concerned with showing off his IQ to fellow elites than transmitting usable information to the dudes in the trenches. It could take more time to apply Stutzke’s work for estimating the size and effort to develop a large software-intensive system than to build the actual system itself.

Since McConnell’s book is half the price of Stutzke’s, buy two of them – one for yourself and one for your manager. On the other hand, give the second one to a colleague since most managers, BM or otherwise, don’t read technical stuff. They also don’t believe in estimation. They delusionally believe in certainty so they can populate their massive and useless Microsoft project files with exact numbers and never revise them until the fit hits the shan and it’s time to apportion blame to the DICforce.