Useful Books and Software

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Average Rating: 5.0
Number of Reviews: 7

I am encouraged by the books honesty in stressing that building large systems is hard work. Too often the literature touts "sure-fire" success if you follow a particular "cook book" sequence or employ specific technology. As anyone in the business knows, good preparation, realistic goals, teamwork and attention to detail are more important than choosing the latest "hot" technology. The book walks through the stages of a projects life cycle and provides much "food for thought" in how to get each stage right. But it never deceives one into thinking the process is easy and it never implies that the proposed methods are the only logical approach to take.

Although the title focuses on C/S and Web Application development, the methodology presented has a much broader application. It provides an excellent framework for development of any complex system. The book is well written. It provides broad coverage from requirements discovery through project deployment. The book contains so much information that the reader may want to focus on specific areas of high personal interest at first- such as Web architecture or systems analysis. Fortunately, Mr. Fournier's style is such that you can concentrate on the chapters that are most relevant to your needs first and later read the other sections without a significant loss of continuity.

As an Enterprise Architect, I have found the book very helpful. It contains useful information for project managers, enterprise and system architects, analysts, developers and test engineers. Without going into details I'll say that the tables, checklists and web-references presented throughout the book have been very useful.

I believe the survey, analysis and joint facilitated session chapters are well presented and offer a lot of information on project definition and scoping. They certainly make clear the importance of up-front planning to a projects success. For my purposes, the C/S and Web Architecture chapter was of high interest and was well presented. I was glad to see a chapter devoted to software re-use. However, I would like to see this chapter expanded to include more information on infrastructure, middleware and components. I would recommend anyone interested in the book to quickly scan the table of contents to see the wide range of information that can be found.

Mr. Fournier mentions that there might be a follow-up book focusing on the project management aspects of building complex systems. I sincerely hope he writes this.

I am encouraged by the books honesty in stressing that building large systems is hard work. Too often the literature touts "sure-fire" success if you follow a particular "cook book" sequence or employ specific technology. As anyone in the business knows, good preparation, realistic goals, teamwork and attention to detail are more important than choosing the latest "hot" technology. The book walks through the stages of a projects life cycle and provides much "food for thought" in how to get each stage right. But it never deceives one into thinking the process is easy and it never implies that the proposed methods are the only logical approach to take.

Although the title focuses on C/S and Web Application development, the methodology presented has a much broader application. It provides an excellent framework for development of any complex system. The book is well written. It provides broad coverage from requirements discovery through project deployment. The book contains so much information that the reader may want to focus on specific areas of high personal interest at first- such as Web architecture or systems analysis. Fortunately, Mr. Fournier's style is such that you can concentrate on the chapters that are most relevant to your needs first and later read the other sections without a significant loss of continuity.

As an Enterprise Architect, I have found the book very helpful. It contains useful information for project managers, enterprise and system architects, analysts, developers and test engineers. Without going into details I'll say that the tables, checklists and web-references presented throughout the book have been very useful.

I believe the survey, analysis and joint facilitated session chapters are well presented and offer a lot of information on project definition and scoping. They certainly make clear the importance of up-front planning to a projects success. For my purposes, the C/S and Web Architecture chapter was of high interest and was well presented. I was glad to see a chapter devoted to software re-use. However, I would like to see this chapter expanded to include more information on infrastructure, middleware and components. I would recommend anyone interested in the book to quickly scan the table of contents to see the wide range of information that can be found.

Mr. Fournier mentions that there might be a follow-up book focusing on the project management aspects of building complex systems. I sincerely hope he writes this.