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Transition to OO Software Development by Mohamed Fayad & Mauri Laitinen Recommended

ISBN: 0 471 24529 1       Publisher: Wiley       Pages: 354       Price: £25-95

Categories:   object oriented

Reviewed by Mark Easterbrook in Overload OL37 (May 2000)

Part II, Planning and Preproject Activities, contains two chapters mostly covering management and people issues. With all the hype about the technological side I was pleased to see the book focused on the overcoming the real barriers to OO of management planning and general resistance to change.

Part III, Object Oriented Insertion Activities, is a strange term to describe the six activities, one per chapter, essential to implement an OO development environment; Techniques, Tools, Staffing, Training, Legacy systems and Reuse. The text is well illustrated with diagrams, examples and bulleted tips and practical advice. The change in effort and focus as experience is gained is indicated in places to allow estimating for both the initial project and subsequent development.

Part IV, Object-Oriented Project Management, is the final and largest section, which should reflect the importance of this when making such a watershed change to a development process. However, the first chapter in this section covering prototyping really belongs in the previous section and the remainder is pre-occupied with metrics , although tempered by highlighting that it is processes and not people that should be measured. That aside, it still contains a wealth of information on ensuring that all activities are present and how to control them to prevent disregard of procedures or runaway tasks. As with any American sourced book it takes a US-centric view of standards mentioning DoD and SEI standards, however this does not impair the material and the growing importance of ISO9000 is mentioned. Recommended.