"Ship It!" is a collection of tips that show the tools and techniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use them well. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modern practices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This book avoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readers find page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in the real world. Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, "Ship It!" will show you: which tools help, and which don't, how to keep a project moving, approaches to scheduling that work, how to build developers as well as product, what's normal on a project, and what's not, how to manage managers, end-users and sponsors, and danger signs and how to fix them. Few of the ideas presented here are controversial or extreme; most experienced programmers will agree that this stuff works. Yet 50 to 70 per cent of all project teams in the U.S. aren't able to use even these simple, well-accepted practices effectively. This book will help you get started. "Ship It!" begins by introducing the common technical infrastructure that every project needs to get the job done. Readers can choose from a variety of recommended technologies according to their skills and budgets. The next sections outline the necessary steps to get software out the door reliably, using well-accepted, easy-to-adopt, best-of-breed practices that really work. Finally, and most importantly, "Ship It!" presents common problems that teams face, then offers real-world advice on how to solve them.

About the Author
Jared Richardson is a developer-turned-manager who thinks a good day is having everything delegated so that he can sneak away and actually write code. He specializes in using off-the-shelf technologies to solve tough problems, especially those involving the software development process. With more that 10 years of experience, Jared has been a consultant, developer, tester, and manager, including Director of Development at several companies. He currently manages a team of developers and testers at SAS Institute, and is responsible for a company-wide effort to use test automation to improve the quality of SAS products. Will Gwaltney is a software developer with over 20 year's experience. In that time he hasn't quite seen it all, but he's seen most of it (and a lot of it hasn't been pretty). He's worked at both large companies and start-ups in the fields of electronics CAD, networking, telecommunications, knowledge representation, and web-based planning and scheduling for the enterprise. Will currently works on test automation at SAS Inc., the largest privately-owned software company in the world.

Reviews
"Who should read it? Most people I think. It's aimed at technical leads certainly, but all developers would benefit by reading. I believe that project managers would benefit from having high-level familiarity with the book's ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed the book: I found it a pleasure to read and was particularly impressed with the layout and organization of the material. Recommended." - Harry Newton, news@UK, September 2005



Book Information
ISBN 9780974514048
Author Jared Richardson
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint The Pragmatic Programmers
Publisher The Pragmatic Programmers