Managing Software for Growth: Without Fear, Control, and the Manufacturing Mindset

Table of contents

1. Copyright
2. Acknowledgments
3. Introduction
   1. The Manufacturing Mindset
   2. Bad Assumptions
   3. A New Way of Thinking
   4. Implications for Software Development
   5. This Book
4. Manufacturing Software
   1. The Manufacturing Mindset
      1. Making Cars
      2. Making Software
   2. The Way We Think
      1. Taylorism
      2. Manageable Problems
      3. Taylor's Cube
      4. Doing What “Works”
      5. Being Pavlovian
      6. Plausible Deniability
   3. Different Work
      1. Bad Logic
      2. Bad Assumptions
      3. Planning for Predictability
      4. A Different Kind of Problem
      5. Messy Problems
      6. Software Development
   4. Square Pegs in Round Holes
      1. Swingin' Shillelaghs
      2. Increasing Predictability
      3. When Control Doesn't Work
      4. Certified to Control
      5. The Software Uncertainty Principle
5. Complexity
   1. Making a Mess
      1. The Newtonian World
      2. Weird Science
      3. Disproportionality
      4. Nonlinearity
      5. Emergent Patterns
      6. Complex Problems
      7. Interacting Agents
      8. A Vast Space of Possibilities
      9. Conflicting Constraints
      10. Hope
   2. Order for Free
      1. Self-Organization
      2. The Edge of Chaos
      3. Coevolution
      4. Beyond Biology
   3. Muddling Through
      1. Dim Bulbs
      2. Muddling Through
      3. Simple, Generative, Local Rules
      4. Self-Organization
      5. Continuous Emergence
      6. Realistic Software Development
6. Growing Software
   1. Growing Software
      1. Getting What We Want at the End
      2. Self-Organization
      3. Conversation
      4. Moving in the Right Direction
      5. Right Now
      6. Unpredictability
      7. What “Done” Means
      8. Feeling Our Way
      9. Meetings
      10. “Just Enough” Plans
      11. Requirements
      12. Design
      13. Software
   2. The Lost Art of Conversation
      1. Conception
      2. Birth
      3. Growth
      4. The Kitchen Sink
      5. Just Enough-ness
      6. Starting with Just Enough
      7. Growing Just Enough
      8. Death
      9. Them's Fightin' Words
7. Change
   1. Thinking Differently
      1. Traditional Thought
      2. The Challenge of Complexity
      3. A New Way of Thinking
      4. The Living Present
      5. Relationships, Not Systems
      6. Getting Stuck
      7. Pretending
   2. Losing Control
      1. Old-Time Control
      2. “Let's Have Some Emergence Now”
      3. Nothing to Lose
      4. Giving Up Control to Gain It
   3. Managing Uncertainty
      1. From Bosses to Participants
      2. Purpose
      3. Principles
      4. Communication
      5. Power
      6. Personal Risk
   4. Starting Projects
      1. Focus on Value
      2. Asking for Money
      3. Specifically Wrong
      4. Good Enough Answers
      5. Plans
      6. Staying the Course
   5. Finishing Projects
      1. Managing Growth
      2. Being Helpful
      3. Dealing with Programmers
      4. Nudging
      5. Pressure
   6. Catalysts
      1. Starting a Revolution
      2. Taking Responsibility
      3. Manager Conditioning
      4. Confrontation
      5. Breaking the Pattern
      6. Translation
      7. Something Completely Different
   7. A Regular Lead Bullet
      1. The Complexity Trap
      2. Avoiding the Trap
      3. Arguments with Trains
      4. The New Meaning of Success
      5. Realism, Not Magic
   8. Agility
      1. What's Agile?
      2. XP in a Nutshell
      3. The XP Practices
      4. One Team
      5. Fertilizer
   9. Tomorrow
      1. Learning to Be Agile
      2. Experiment
      3. Reflect
      4. Spread the Word
      5. Keep at It
   10. Afterword
8. Annotated Bibliography