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The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
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Title:
DSDM
Author:
Jennifer Stapleton
ISBN:
0-321-11224-5
Publisher:
Addison-Wesley
Pages:
235pp
Price:
£29-99
Reviewer:
R N Lever
Subject:
management
Appeared in:
15-5
DSDM is the Dynamic Systems Development Method, which was created by a not-for-profit consortium that formed initially in the UK in 1994 but now includes USA, Benelux, Denmark, France and Sweden. It describes project management, estimating, prototyping, timeboxing, risk and configuration management, testing, quality assurance, roles and responsibilities, empowered team structures and so on. In short, everything you need to develop software that has active user involvement, is fit for purpose and meets business need with a frequent delivery cycle.

The book is split into four parts with the first part describing the framework; process overview, principles, time versus functionality, people working together, agile professional. Part two is a set of ten case studies that have been taken from various different types of projects and sources but share the common thread of being a DSDM based project. Finally there is additional information and appendices. This book is aimed at those involved in delivering IT focused projects and is really an introduction to what DSDM is about and some examples of where it has been used. It is not aimed at being a reference or a how to manual and those readers who already know about DSDM but wanted to go deeper will need to contact/join the DSDM consortium.

Whilst the book is readable and provides a useful introduction to DSDM it is really a taster for understanding what the DSDM consortium manuals contain and which are the real source of value. Anyone who reads this book in the expectation of being able to practice DSDM on their next project will find that whilst the book contains the 'what' there is very little 'how'. However, if it is understood and treated as an introduction then it serves its purpose well enough.Non-Programming