Crunch Mode: Building Effective Systems on a Tight Schedule

by John Boddie

This book looks at ways of handling "Crunch Mode." It does so by presenting a real project-the development of the first on-track account betting system in the U.S. If you are familiar with structural design and structured programming methods, you will probably recognize some of the tools discussed in this book, although it might seem they are used in unusual ways. But the book goes beyond these methods to look at some new developments as well.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Lauri Kotilainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pleasantly short in length but not in substance. Depressing in that it shows how little we have progressed in the last couple of decades.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike what you might expect from the title, or one of the reviews on Amazon, this book largely isn't encouraging "crunch mode". Chapter 7 does spend some time downplaying the stress on the workers, and I don't think you can reconcile some of the author's statements about the importance of design and testing with modern research on the effects of sleep deprivation.

Generally the book takes a tight schedule as a given, and tries to give advice on achieving success despite the limited calendar time available. And I think it makes clear that if the planning process determines that success isn't likely, the project should not proceed in crunch mode.

Most of the advice would apply to any project which doesn't have infinite time available to it. There's a bit on encouraging workers to make the sacrifices necessary for crunch mode, but I think most of those suggestions (things like honesty, and explaining to workers why the project matters to the company) are reasonable regardless.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my circa 1988 notes
A fascinating book on how to lead a "rush" project. Lots of wonderful tips and penetrating observations on how the cascade model is impacted by real world constraints.

Chapters include:

1. Theory and practice
2. Going in [role of the customer, specs as ongoing activities, limits of the possible]
3. The first cut [initial presentation, presentation tools, geography of the system]
4. Schedules and estimates
5. Programming under pressure
6. The Light Brigade [pressure on individuals, project leaders, project managers, selling the project, hired guns, benefits now]
7. Floating in the rapids [overtime, testing process...]
8. Dealing with disaster [missed milestones, floating specs, people problems, burnout, strategic withdrawal]
9. Arriving on time [documentation, testing, training, installation, maintenance, feedback]

Every chapter is crammed with useful nuggets. Highly recommended

Observations from 2016
I loved this slim, very well written book when I read it and would love to reread it almost thirty years later to see how it well it has aged. It seems to have anticipated agile methodologies -remember Boehm's first paper on the spiral model was published in 1986, it was not until the 90s that lightweight software development methods gained traction, agile methodologies began appearing circa 1995 and the Agile Manifesto is from 2001.