Book: Release It!
Release It! is one of those books that remind you of the pain of releasing software, and thing not going quite to plan because the original plan had forgotten about the “real world” stability and capacity scenarios. I suspect on your current project, whatever your stance on TDD/Unit Testing/Acceptance testing, whether it’s automated or manual, this book will highlight the need for improvements in engineering, otherwise there could be pain further down the road. Integration Points (Page 35) should provide some though to all the Single Bank Platform (SBP) projects that are happening today. Test Harness (page 125) provide thoughts that can aid the “multi-integration point” projects we are seeing more of over the last few years.
“Building somethings to pass tests, not to run in production” (page 139) summaries the unfortunate problem of not thinking about the end game, and how the application will run and be monitored in production.
AJAX Overkill (page 172) probably offer some appropriate reading for the HTML5 world.
Chapter 11 (Networking) offer some good information that is often forgotten about by software engineers – multi-homed servers, routing, VIP’s. Likewise “Transparency” (page 263).
One issue that most projects encounter in the initial period is the client wants functionality, but doesn’t see the benefit in investing in some simple and essential engineer practices. Availability (page 223) offer some interesting $ values.
“Does QA Match Production?” (page 236) is a question I have asked so many projects over the years, and the answer usually always worries me.
