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What do you think of those that manage you? Good managers are worth every pound (dollar) they are paid. Unfortunately some look at their job as some sort of power game. They will not get anything from this book because it focuses on sound advice and objective information. You will not find any hype here about how OO will increase your productivity as if by magic. The local enthusiast will hate this book because it brings a touch of reality and so empowers managers to make educated decisions - some of which will be negative ones. But that is one of the things we should ask managers to do. Too much novelty too quickly can be very bad. If its not broke... applies to process as well as product.

Any department who decides to introduce OO (or revise its present use of OO) based on the ideas in this book has a high chance of success.

The book is littered with sidebars providing anecdotal evidence from a wide range of experienced managers. There are also suggested further reading and a scattering of self-tests (to be applied to your work, not your reading).

While I would expect a good programmer to be familiar with at least some books such as Object-Oriented Software Construction (Meyer), The C++ Programming Language (Bjarne Stroustrup), Design Patterns (Gamma et al.) I would expect a candidate for an IT management position to have read books such as this one.

If you are manager in the software development domain, read this book. If you are one of those being managed finding a tactful way to get your managers to read it might be the best thing you did for your employer.