I firmly believe in structured software development and that if a team is to function well there need to be guidlines to help them work together effeciently and make sure all pieces of the process are covered. Requirements must be gathered well, software must be developed in a way that is maintainable, and everything must be tested before given to the user. My experience has been working on teams without a formal process, but with capable programmers working together to make sure that everything that needs to take place dose within a given project.

Anyway, my company has a client with several of our programmers in its employ, mixed in with other contractors and employees. The thing is, they are totally disorganized and have no idea what they're doing. They have no idea how to extract requirements from users, test their code, or even work together in any meaningful sense. There are a bunch of junior level programemrs who seem to be intelligent but need a lot of guidence. They could benifit greatly from working with some of the more expeirenced programemrs, but since everyone is kind of one their own and the there is no lead developer, it just ends up being a chaotic mess.

The client really has no one who understands how to intelligently structure a software development team. I could probably get them to work more effectively if I could make some changes, but I can't. All I can do is make some recommendataions, which I've done. My first attempt was to tell the client to hire a Senior Developer who understands the process and can mentor a lot of the junior programmers. This almost worked, but in the end the client balked at spending the money.

So my question is this: is there a good "idiots guide to the software development lifecycle" out there? Something that would help me help this non-technical manager in structing his team a bit better. Because ritght now they are an absolute mess, putting untested code into production, breaking other projects when they do, and completely missing user requirements.

Check out Steve McConnell's books on the subject.

Awesome. These guys appear to me exactly what I was looking for. I'm going to see if I can pick up some of these books today. Thanks for the input.

Wow. I picked up the book "Rapid Development" over lunch and have gotten through the first two and a half chapters. This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I wonder if I get a copy and give it to the client if he'll read through it? Or maybe just the chapter on "Classic Mistaks". I think they make all of them. I also might have to make sure all of our program managers get a copy as well.

I'm very interseted in picking up "Code Complete" when I finish this book.

These two books (Rapid Development, and Code Complete) are probably the two books that have been most influential on my development process. Fortunately, I read them while I was still in university. Unfortunately, it was at the *end* of university. (The third most influential collection of writings, since it's not a book, are, of course, the perl man pages, and the perl newsgroups, back when they were actually useful.)

Ok, I have to give McConell points for using "code-like-hell" as an official definitation for how most organizations do software development.

I'm sure he could have come up with a more PC term, but it wouldn't have been nearly as accurate.