In the fourth and last volume Jerry introduces the Satir Change Model. Since an anticipating culture relies heavily on change artists, this model comes in handy in forming such an organizational culture. Weinberg explains in great detail how people react upon foreign elements in the organization, and that too many threating external influences may result in people hiding in their basement. In addition he walks the reader along the change model and explains how to get from an old status quo to a new status quo and actually make and foster the necessary change.
Weinberg continues further how an anticipating organizations works through the overall software development process. Starting from meta-planning, tactical change planning, over to planning as an software engineer, this volume conducts how to make change stick in the organization. In addition he writes about process and process improvements. He lists processes commonly in practice by the time he wrote the book (1997), and discusses why it is important to know several process models as a change artist. Weinberg describes the differences between a process vision, the process model, and the process.
Finally, he gives a compelling view on things that are still relevant nowadays. Taking a closer look on how to terminate projects, and how to know that you should terminate or re-plan them, he gives a thorough overview of do's and don'ts in software development for the project manager. He discusses that requirements documents and design documents should be placed in a version control system alongside with the code. Considering that he wrote this book more than ten years ago, it struck me when I encounter multiple teams which are still not using any version control mechanism at all. Finally, Weinberg takes a look on tools, and how and when to introduce them.
The biggest gift in this volume are the lists of do's and don'ts in software projects alongside with the eleven commandments of Technology Transfer. His comparison of the waterfall model to other software development models may be seen as a bit outdated, but most of it is still relevant. Weinberg even touches the spiral model in this discussion, so portions of it also apply for modern Agile methodologies. Of course, the principle to know about many models and to know when they apply and should be used, is the key lesson to take away here.
