Rating: 
Summary: Based on reviewing the draft, this will be a good one...
Review: I had the pleasure of participating in the review process for this book over the Web. I think it will serve an important purpose in aiding non-I/S people with understanding what goes into running a software project.The main approach that this book uses is the staged delivery model, which Steve covers in his book Rapid Development. The areas on estimating project length estimation are invaluable in explaining that you just can't pick a date out of thin air at the start of a project and then expect to be held to it for the life of the project. I'm looking forward to seeing the published version and using it regularly in my current position. Tom Duff
Rating: 
Summary: "Best Practice" is not the same as "Survival"
Review: I was disappointed in this book - perhaps it was a problem with expectations. McConnell's previous books - Code Complete and Rapid Development -were very well written and provided valuable insights into best practices in the computer industry. By attempting to do the same thing here, the author missed the mark. The Software Project Survival Guide presents a road map marked with good practice applied in a mature organization that understands the nature of software and responds rationally, providing the resources and time required to do the job right. The overwhelming majority of people who are taking on their first project management job will have few, if any, of the benefits that this book takes for granted. Don't get me wrong. This is a great collection of really good ideas and it's really well written, but it doesn't give much guidance to the first-time project manager who needs to deal with misdirection and misunderstanding from those who he or she reports to. The book presents a fine set of suggestions on "Techniques for Really Good Project Management," but there isn't much on "Survival."
Rating:
Summary: Good but Light
Review: This was good, but a little light. I have really liked the author's other works and so I expected a lot from this. Maybe that was part of it. I could not give this five stars because it was a little light on details, especially at the end. However, there is a lot of good project information here, from years of experience. Just the fact that it is not huge is a good thing -- too many 40-page books are turned into 600-page tomes so they give an aura of respectability. If you are new to software project management, this is an excellent book to start with (five stars). If you want to get a quick refresher on good ways to run a project, with some modern-day approaches, this is also good. Give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Good intro / light reading
Review: Good intro / light reading McConnell's "Software Project Survival Guide" (SPSG) is a good intro to application development projects using the phased-release waterfall methodology. Unlike other software engineering overviews, he does not assume that his audience is sold on process in general, so he spends some time arguing and presenting facts and stats to support structured project management and software development. The author presents most of the integral concepts of the discipline and maintains a companion website with templates and checklists. He shares his experience on what development managers should expect from their developers, testers, corporate culture and customers. I read SPSG when it first came out and recently completed it again for a refresh. Although the book is now six years old, the material is still relevant because of the level at which it is presented, even in today's landscape of customized COTS and web services applications. It gets four stars rather than five because in the last third of the book he takes arbitrary dives into detail before he exhausts the breadth of the subject. For instance, he only once refers in passing to regression-testing and never mentions the concept of SDLC environments, yet offers up formulas for estimating defects using pooling and seeding. Chapters seem to get shorter as if he was in a hurry to finish. As SPSG is relatively short at 250 pages, it seems the author could have easily included another 50 pages to hit those missed topics at a high-level. SPSG is great for the new manager but is less useful for the experienced manager or as a reference. Fortunately, he includes an annotated bibliography on resources that provide more detail.
Rating: 
Summary: The perfect addition to McConnell's trilogy
Review: McConnell's released books on good construction practises, and good development practices. Now he finishes the circle with a book on good management practices. McConnell has a very good way of integrating the thoughts of many prominent industry gurus into a readible comprehensive format. His talent is to recognize the best ways that improve people as software workers. The thoughts and techniques from his previous work, Rapid Development, were excellent, and it is "the Software Project Survival Guide" that puts those techniques into concrete perspective. He concentrates on only a few of his published techniques, those that are most tried and true, but also provides a framework well suited to young and upcoming technical students hoping to become managers. (Like myself 8-D) A great companion to this book is Tom Demarco's "The Deadline", as it adds the human-element of managing projects that sometimes seems missing from McConnell's book. This is not to the detriment of McConnell's work, it is just that his approach is different. McConnell's books are readible, interesting, and are the _best_ comprehensive books on improving yourself as a software worker. He's the guru of the 90's.
Rating:
Summary: Good intro / light reading
Review: Good intro / light reading McConnell's "Software Project Survival Guide" (SPSG) is a good intro to application development projects using the phased-release waterfall methodology. Unlike other software engineering overviews, he does not assume that his audience is sold on process in general, so he spends some time arguing and presenting facts and stats to support structured project management and software development. The author presents most of the integral concepts of the discipline and maintains a companion website with templates and checklists. He shares his experience on what development managers should expect from their developers, testers, corporate culture and customers. I read SPSG when it first came out and recently completed it again for a refresh. Although the book is now six years old, the material is still relevant because of the level at which it is presented, even in today's landscape of customized COTS and web services applications. It gets four stars rather than five because in the last third of the book he takes arbitrary dives into detail before he exhausts the breadth of the subject. For instance, he only once refers in passing to regression-testing and never mentions the concept of SDLC environments, yet offers up formulas for estimating defects using pooling and seeding. Chapters seem to get shorter as if he was in a hurry to finish. As SPSG is relatively short at 250 pages, it seems the author could have easily included another 50 pages to hit those missed topics at a high-level. SPSG is great for the new manager but is less useful for the experienced manager or as a reference. Fortunately, he includes an annotated bibliography on resources that provide more detail.
Rating:
Summary: Easy read - for newcomers to the software project field.
Review: Steve McConnell is better known for his two bestsellers - Rapid Development and Code Complete. While those two books are more detailed, this book has the necessary preliminary coverage of what it takes to make a software project succeed. It's a very easy book to read and can probably be read in a matter of a few hours. Steve assumes that the intended audience belongs to one of three groups of people - first group consists of 'top managers, executives, clients, investors, and end-user representatives', the second group consists of 'project managers', and the third group consists of 'technical leaders, professional developers, and self-taught programmers'. Or as he puts it 'anyone who has a stake in the software project's outcome'. But mostly he is assuming that you may not be exposed to many successful software project techniques and looking to rapidly get up to speed on a simple technique like the one outlined in this book. The book addresses projects that have team sizes between 3 and 25 and schedules of 3 to 18 months. The plan is supposed to work for various types of software systems like client-server or scientific but I didn't see web design projects mentioned explicitly. It could be because of the time this book was published. I plan on trying the techniques on a couple of non-critical web design projects and analyze the outcome. The book is 19 chapters, 250 pages and 4 sections. The four main sections are The Survival Mind-Set, Survival Preparations, Succeeding by Stages, and Mission Accomplished. The book starts out with a short welcome chapter on software project survival training and followed by another short chapter on assessing the state of your own project from a survival perspective (you take a test and get a score that indicates where your project is). The next three chapters focus on the survival concepts, survival skills, and the profile of a successful project. The book then goes into the core of how to make a software project succeed. This book is no substitute for the author's other book 'Rapid Development' though it is probably a good start if you aren't willing to cover the much larger book (other 600+ pages). Considering how few books have been written on software projects (that are not an exposition of SEI's CMM or the Rational Unified Process), I think this is a worthwhile book to read. At the bare minimum, it doesn't hurt to skim through the various topics and take away a good technique or two that you can immediately apply to your own software project. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: If you need to read this You're in the wrong business
Review: No statment in this book is incorrect, or even inaccurate. The problem with it is it goes on and on about a number of simple, if not trivially obvious facts about how to manage a project. The main one which occupies hundreds of pages is "PLAN YOUR PROJECT". So if you could not have thought of these on your own, or ever did anything more complicated than playing tic-tac-toe without discovering this book's type of advice, you have no business managing a software project. However, if you skip all the obvious advice (averaging about 1/70 pages) and enjoy reading phrases like "Executive Sponsorship", "Mushy Milestones", and "inch pebbles" this book is for you. But please buy mine... cheap!
Rating:
Summary: Project Management Review
Review: This book was required for one of my graduate courses. However, I found it to be very useful reference book for software development project management. Boring read, but mandatory for anyone who wants to learn more about project management.
Rating:
Summary: Go~~~~od
Review: I've read this book when I was in my university.
And I'm reading this book again...
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