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Title: A must read for any software manager
Review: "You can't control what you can't measure", is how DeMarco opens this seminal work in software project management, and the primary focus of this book is how to develop an effective strategy for measuring software development costs and thus build a reliable means of estimating the cost of future projects. Most of this discussion is, in my opinion, too dated to be of direct use (DeMarco suggests, for example, that counting the now obsolete metric "frequency of compiles" as an indicator of software stability). But the true genius of this work lies in the periphery of his discussion--particularly insightful comments into what not to do when managing software development. Useful insights, lucid prose, and DeMarco's engaging wit keeps this book on the top of the stack on my desk, and I expect to revisit it often.
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