Eating the IT Elephant

I started reading Eating the IT Elephant two weeks ago based on its subtitle: “Moving from Greenfield Development to Brownfield.”

I am interested in anything regarding Brownfield development after reading Brownfield Application Development and finding it to be a great book.  Unfortunately, the word ‘Brownfield’ is the only similarity between the two books. 

Eating was written by a couple of IBM folks – and I have a pretty dim view of IBM’s products after being forced to use them on my day job (the fact that IBM’s growth strategy is in product development next year makes me laugh – they better keep feeding that Mainframe/Consulting Service monster…).  Undaunted about IBM black mark, I cracked it open.  I quickly became lost in their dense prose (almost academic paper-like quality), obscure points, and convoluted connective rational.  The authors might have some great things to say, but I could find any. They identify the common problems of why software projects fail (pretty much the same as all of the other software development books out there) and then devise some solutions (Views, Hilbert Space, buy more IBM products?) that I can’t understand. 

If you need to get something done, don’t read this book.  If you want to expand your mind in some kind of academic gymnastic exercise and have already done the crossword this morning, then have a go.