Risking life and limb
May 5, 2008 at 10:05 pm 2 comments
No this isn’t another story of me nearly falling off an escalator. It is actually the title of a new book released under a Creative Commons License by two experienced software technology professionals. Authored by Ansar Muhammad and Rahim Hasnani, this book tries to explain, in a story-telling style, the key concepts of managing large software development projects.
Ansar Muhammad holds a BCS from FAST-ICS and an MS-IT from Hamdard University. He has been developing and managing large information systems for more than a decade. He has worked on both sides of the fence as a software vendor and a software customer. Currently he is working at a large healthcare institution.
Rahim Hasnani has more than 14 years of experience in the software industry most of it relating to large software projects. He is currently working as Chief Technology Officer at Itim Systems in Karachi. He holds a BCS from FAST-ICS and an MBA from IBA.
Although I have yet to go through the book, the mere fact that our entrepreneurs and technologists are now beginning to publish their experiences, is a good sign for the industry. The first daring dive into authoring was taken by Jawwad Ahmed Farid when he wrote The Blue Screen of Death – a book regarding new venture failures. The book has been used to run workshops at various universities in the country and is available as a download from the BSD website.
Risking Life & Limb has taken a few themes and specifically focused on just those areas. Some of the themes include Dividing a project to manage it better, Managing scope creep, Managing productive teams, Writing good requirement specifications, etc.
The authors say that you should be able to read this book in a few hours and that is exactly the idea; to keep it short and simple. It is part of a series so if you like this one, watch out for the next. Fawzia Salahuddin has already started the wait.
Entry filed under: Posts.
In the Line of Wire 
1.
Okash | May 20, 2008 at 11:33 am
After reading through more than half of the book, I must appreciate this brilliant effort! Although I am mid-level programmer, but the concepts are comprehensible and very interesting too. The story-telling style is fascinating as well!
Well done guys, we should have more such stuff from Pakistani IT professionals!
2. Risking Life and Limb - Book Review : Green & White | October 22, 2009 at 3:26 am
[…] Hi new visitor! At Green & White we discuss startups, business models, new media marketing, usability and more.You can subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe for email alerts so that you keep up to date with the latest content. Now, on with the regular content…A couple of day ago I was thinking, why aren’t there any books on IT issues by local authors. It can’t be that our techie guru’s aren’t all that good at writing. Afterall, quite a few of them now run blogs and the output is more than decent. So what exactly was holding them back? While I still dont have the answer to that issue, i did come across this wonderful gem of a book from Ansar Muhammad and Rahim Hasnani titled Large Software Projects: Risking Life and Limb on Jehanara’s blog. […]