Wartime Software Book Available

I've been threatening to release my book on Wartime Software. It is now available as a Kindle book.

Wartime Software is all about writing software when competition and speed matter. It's about releasing more often. It's about using new methods, as different as building bridges in peacetime and in time of war.

Here is the introduction, which should give you the idea.

Most people assume there is one “right” way to build software, and that’s that. While there are various fashion trends that infect software from time to time, none of them are as different as they like to think they are.

There are some important but little-discussed facts about the mainstream consensus of software development:

• It is mostly organized to give non-technical people confidence that things are OK, meaning on-time and on-budget. Its highest principle is predictability. Not speed.
• It mostly doesn’t work. Studies support what everyone in the field knows: most projects fail outright, or have their goals changed to avoid admitting failure.

So what we have are methods that are slow – and produce crappy results! What happened to slow but sure, or slow but steady? What we’ve got is slow and stupid.

If everyone you compete against uses the same crappy methods, you’ll be OK. Your projects will be perpetually late and disappointing, but so will everyone else’s, so you’ll be performing “up to standard.”

But what if you’re not? What if you’re competing against a group that gets way more done in much less time? I’m not talking 10 or 20% here; I’m talking many whole-number factors, like 10, 50 or more. What’s going to happen? It’s simple: you’re going to lose! If that’s OK with you, stop reading right now, close your eyes, and get lost in your muzak. You’ll be happier.

If your goal is to learn the standard, accepted techniques of software as widely practiced, don't waste your time with this book. But if you're pioneering or really under the gun and need to find a way to program the way software ninjas program, you'll find some useful information in this book.