SUMMARY: Looking 4 resources: Software development cycle / Softwa re Usability

["Carey Jennifer (Cry)" <jennifer -dot- carey -at- cdi -dot- cerberus -dot- ch>]

Thanks to EVERYONE who responded. Many people were kind enough to share
their experiences, recommendations and warnings of pitfalls to watch out
for. As promised, here is a summary of what I have received.

The two seminal books seem to be the "Software Project Survival Guide" and
"The Inmates are Running the Asylum".  The responses about those two were
overwhelming. The complete lists are below.
==========================================
Software Development Lifecycle Recommendations:

BOOKS (for specific comments about these books, see bottom of page):
Software Project Survival Guide, Steve McConnell 
The Mythical Man-Month, Federick P. Brooks, Jr
Death March (The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving "Mission
Impossible" Projects), Edward Yourdon
Writing Effective Use Cases, Alistair Cockburn

WEBSITES:
Software Project Survival Guide Site -
http://www.construx.com/survivalguide/
Joel on Software - http://joel.editthispage.com/
		   http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$51
(online version of recently released book)

Michael Collier's Site - http://www.geocities.com/~m_collier/

=============================================
=============================================
Usability Recommendations:

BOOKS (for specific comments about these books, see bottom of page):
The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper
User Interface Task Analysis, Joann Hackos & Janice Redish
The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman
Software for Use, Constantine & Lockwood

WEBSITES:
Cooper Interaction Design site (by the author of The Inmates are Running the
Asylum) - http://www.cooper.com
For Use site (by the authors of Software for Use) - http://www.foruse.com

=============================================

General Advice:

1)  Before marching into the developers' pit and telling them what should be
changed, clearly understand their position.

 "...chances are that your efforts towards increasing usability (unless you
are right there at product definition, before a line of code has been
written) will be seen as increasing their workload." - S. Lizak

2) Don't expect to make significant changes easily without buy-in from
managment.

 "It is difficult to get people to change the way they have been doing
things and it really takes buy-in from management to make things happen." -
S. Lathrop
 
 "I had a project manager that didn't want to make decisions, so he directed
me to take it directly to the programmers. What I got was belligerent
compliance along with some belligerent non-compliance." - D. Locke

3) Think about the bigger picture when it comes to Usability.

"...always consider the business case. A lot of usability people in their
eagerness to make things better forget that the company still has to finish
development at a reasonable cost, and on schedule. This means that when you
want to suggest a big change, or a change late in the development sycle,
you'd better have an argument for how it will increase company profits
versus releasing now." - S. Lizak

============================================

Specific Comments about Recommended Books:


Software Project Survival Guide, Steve McConnell
 "Excellent book, if your company is working on or is ISO-9000 cetified, you
can tll the higher ups that McConnell's methods map to ISO-9000 for
software." - T. Moye

 "I've found Steve McConnell's book to be a very useful resource for
information about the software development process." - T. E. Sweeney

Death March (The Complete Software Developer's Guide o Surviving "Mission
Impossible" Projects), Edward Yourdon
 "Get some of the more 'academic' books for technique and procedure, and
then round out your reading with this touch of the real world." - J.
Wetherill

Writing Effective Use Cases,  Alistair Cockburn
"...shows how use cases fit into the requirements gathering process and
teaches you how to write them." - S. Lathrop


The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper
 "[Cooper is] a software programmer turned UI designer. [The book is]...an
insightful look into the software development cycle explaining why there is
so much bad software on the market and why so many projects fail." - S.
Lathrop

 "The most seminal work I read when I followed a similar path...[It] helps
you understand the 'traditional' mindset, and suggests useful methods." - C.
Stallard

Software for Use, Constantine & Lockwood
 "They clearly describe how the UI effort should fit into the development
cycle." - S. Lathrop

Jennifer Carey, Technical Writer
Siemens Cerberus Dati
Milan, Italy


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