Ship It! is a collection of tips that show the tools andtechniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use themwell. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modernpractices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This bookavoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readersfind page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in thereal world.Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, Ship It! will show you:* Which tools help, and which don't* How to keep a project moving* Approaches to scheduling that work* How to build developers as well as product* What's normal on a project, and what's not* How to manage managers, end-users and sponsors* Danger signs and how to fix themFew of the ideas presented here are controversial or extreme; most experiencedprogrammers will agree that this stuff works. Yet 50 to 70 percent of allproject teams in the U.S. aren't able to use even these simple, well-acceptedpractices effectively. This book will help you get started.Ship It! begins by introducing the common technicalinfrastructure that every project needs to get the job done. Readerscan choose from a variety of recommended technologies according totheir skills and budgets. The next sections outline the necessarysteps to get software out the door reliably, using well-accepted,easy-to-adopt, best-of-breed practices that really work.Finally, and most importantly, Ship It! presents commonproblems that teams face, then offers real-world advice on how tosolve them.

Foreword Preface 1 Introduction 1.1 Habitual Excellence 1.2 A Pragmatic Point of View 1.3 Road Map 1.4 Moving On 1.5 How Should I Read This Book? 2 Tools and Infrastructure 1. Develop in a Sandbox 2. Manage Assets 3. Script Your Build 4. Build Automatically 5. Track Issues 6. Track Features 7. Use a Testing Harness 8. On Choosing Tools 9. When Not to Experiment 3 Pragmatic Project Techniques 10. Work from The List 11. A Tech Leads 12. Coordinate and Communicate Every Day 13. Review All Code 14. Send Code Change Notifications 15. Putting It All Together 4 Tracer Bullet Development 5 Common Problems and How to Fix Them 16. Help! I've Inherited Legacy Code 17. Testing Untestable Code 18. Features Keep Breaking 19. Tests? We Stopped Using Them 20. But It Works for Me! 21. It Hurts When I Integrate Code 22. Can't Build the Product Reliably 23. Customers Are Unhappy 24. You've Got a Rogue Developer 25. Your Manager Is Unhappy 26. Team Doesn't Work Well Together 27. Can't Get "Buy-in" on Essential Points 28. The New Practice Didn't Help 29. There's No Automated Testing 30. We're Junior Developers, With No Mentor 31. We're on a "Death March" Project 32. Features Keep Creeping In 33. We're Never Done A Tip Summary B Source Code Management C Build Scripting Tools D Continuous Integration Systems E Issue Tracking Software F Development Methodologies G Testing Frameworks H Suggested Reading List H.1 Bibliography