Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software by Mike Gunderloy : Introduction and Chapter 1

Introduction

The author distinguishes between coders, who know syntax and semantics of computer language and developers, who can apply that knowledge to turning out a working application with all the supporting details. The book is targetted to help a coder become a developer.

The author then provides an outline of how the book is organized into a sensible order of chapters so that the reader completes the task to ship a successful software product although every chapter is organized as a stand alone one.

Chapter 1
The author emphasizes on requirements management and choosing a methodology before starting to write a single line of code. The author then provides a list of questions to do brainstorming to start software development process. The author then discusses two concepts:

• The elevator pitch: The idea was popularized in dot-com era when instead of 15-minute presentation, entrepreneurs were told to explain their ideas to a VC in an elevator ride to 87th floor in 30-seconds. Based on this, the author provides a rule to write a short statement describing what the software will do and why. The author warns the developer to refrain away from feature creep - the continuing addition of new functionality when the old ones are still being coded. The author provides some points to keep in mind while coming up with elevator pitch and creates one for his own software.
  
• The mind map: Mind-map is a form of diagram for free-form brainstorming. The author then provides a list of softwares to use mind-map on Windows. The author also provides mind-map of the software he is going to create in the book called Document Tracker.

The author then classifies the requirements in four sets:

• Business requirements: These are high-level objectives of the organization.
• User requirements: The goals the user must be able to perform.
  
• Functional requirements: Software functionality that must be built for the user to accomplish their tasks.
• System requirements:

The author then provides a checklist to help elicit requirements at the time of working with external customer. The author then discuss about ways to capture requirements and describes use case as one of them. The author then enlists use cases of the tool Document Tracker. The author then provides a list of items that should be present in the use case document.

Instead of focusing on major milestones, the author advises the developers and managers to focus on small tasks, e.g. instead of defining a target date for user interface, set target date for individual dialog boxes and forms. The author then provides some examples of project tracking and billing tools.

The author provides a list of issues in using Microsoft Project for software project management such as it is overkill, designed for huge software projects etc... The author then talks about different methodologies of software development such as:

1. Waterfall Approach: The method is like a waterfall which starts from requirements analysis and then flow downhill through preliminary design, detailed design, implementation and system testing and acceptance testing.
2. Iterative Approach: All the project phases like development testing and planning are repeated many times in the course of the project. The author provides two examples Rational Unified Process (RUP) and Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) of iterative approaches.
   
3. Agile Approach: The author lists methodologies such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Crystal for rapid application development.

The author finally recommends to use what works and leave the rest. Both waterfall and iterative approaches measure the cost of an entire project upfront while agile methodologies keep delivering small chunks until time or money runs out. The author also mentions test-driven-development method which resulted from extreme programming.

The author then provides a checklist while planning the software to make sure you are building the right thing.