Specification by Example review

One Minute Bottom Line

Review

Facts

• 18 chapters, 254 pages, $29.21
• This book covers Specifications by Example (you could have guessed it from the title). In effect, SBE are a way to build the right software (for the customers), as opposed to build the software right (which is our trade as engineers).

Pros

• Not all methods are adequate for each context. Each hint described is made contextual.
• Do’s are detailed all right, with their respective benefits, but dont’s are also characterized along with the reasons why you shouldn’t go down their path.
• Full of real-life examples, with people and teams talking about what they did and why.
• 6 case studies

Cons

• Missing a tooling section to explain how to put these ideas in action.

Conclusion

As software engineers, we are on the lower part in the software creation chain and it shows. We focus on building the software right… Yet, we fail to address problems that find their origin in the upper part of the chain; agile methodologies are meant to prevent this. This book comes from a simple idea: in most projects, specifications, tests and software are all but synchronized. It lists a collection of agile recipes to remedy that.

Whether you’re a business analyst, a project manager or just a technical guy who wants to build better software, this book is for you. In any cases, you’ll want to keep it under arm’s reach.