The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

Fred Brooks, the author, is the individual primarily responsible for the IBM System/360, arguably the most successful computer software system built to this point. He is also primarily responsible for the IBM OS/360, which was not as successful. You may find that his frank and honest assessment of why one was successful and one was not provides a map of a right way to develop software and an alert system for what can go wrong. Because of this and the distilled thought and experience present in the book, it would be difficult to find a resource that could better prepare you to develop good software.

I have been a software project manager for many years. One of the biggest problem that I encountered was what the author called as "Second System Effect". Some times, architects were unable to discipline himself to avoid over-designing systems in the second project. Their goals were to build perfect systems that would streamline all processes without considering the costs and patience of business groups. To convince others that they were right, they could come up with various reasons that sounded very reasonable. Unfortunately, they were not aware of the cost, time window for product delivery, and etc.

This books provided insightful view about this effect. If our architects could have read this book, they could avoid such problems and became more successful.

An excellent book and a must-have for all those involved in the software industry. The concepts and problems described in this book are still valid to this day in our modern software development process.
I recommend this book to everyone active in the field of software development.

Essential Reading for Project/Program Managers at all levels. This book exposes the shortcomings of the purely quantitative software engineering approach in building software applications and systems. While data driven risk management, decision system is here to stay where PMs use a variety of metrics to measure, control and report on the progress of a particular project, process or operation - the book explains why that approach alone is no substitute for the human factor...

As a developer, get this book for your boss.
Maybe he will understand why he can't assign Richie and Carolina tomorrow to your team so you can deliver that COM API you promised for the day after tomorrow and you could not finish it because you were stuck in the tar pit of your old legacy app, even after you explained to him there is no silver-bullet and you are plannning to throw one away.

Best regards,