In case you're curious, the Table of Contents are listed below:<p>Copyright<p>About the Author<p>Preface<p>Part I: Models of Designing<p>Chapter 1. The Design Question<p>Chapter 2. How Engineers Think of Design -- The Rational Model<p>Chapter 3. What's Wrong with This Model?<p>Chapter 4. Requirements, Sin, and Contracts<p>Chapter 5. What Are Better Design Process Models?<p>Part II: Collaboration and Telecollaboration<p>Chapter 6. Collaboration in Design<p>Chapter 7. Telecollaboration<p>Part III: Design Perspectives<p>Chapter 8. Rationalism versus Empiricism in Design<p>Chapter 9. User Models -- Better Wrong than Vague<p>Chapter 10. Inches, Ounces, Bits, Dollars -- The Budgeted Resource<p>Chapter 11. Constraints Are Friends<p>Chapter 12. Esthetics and Style in Technical Design<p>Chapter 13. Exemplars in Design<p>Chapter 14. How Expert Designers Go Wrong<p>Chapter 15. The Divorce of Design<p>Chapter 16. Representing Designs' Trajectories and Rationales: In collaboration with Sharif Razzaque<p>Part IV: A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses<p>Chapter 17. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Mind to Machine<p>Chapter 18. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Machine to Mind<p>Part V: Great Designers<p>Chapter 19. Great Designs Come from Great Designers: Not from Great Design Processes<p>Chapter 20. Where Do Great Designers Come From?<p>Part VI: Trips through Design Spaces: Case Studies<p>Chapter 21. Case Study: Beach House "View/360"<p>Chapter 22. Case Study: House Wing Addition<p>Chapter 23. Case Study: Kitchen Remodeling<p>Chapter 24. Case Study: System/360 Architecture<p>Chapter 25. Case Study: IBM Operating System/360<p>Chapter 26. Case Study: Book Design of Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution<p>Chapter 27. Case Study: A Joint Computer Center Organization: Triangle Universities Computation Center<p>Chapter 28. Recommended Reading<p>Acknowledgments<p>Bibliography
I'm eagerly awaiting my copy. Brooks' previous work, 'The Mythical Man-Month', is <i>still</i> one of the best books ever written about building software. I re-read it every few years, just to keep those lessons fresh.<p>For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, Brooks was the manager of IBM's huge OS/360 project in the 60s. The system eventually shipped, but it was massively overbudget and late. He took the lessons he learned from the debacle, and wrote 'Mythical Man-Month' in 1975.<p>It's shocking how many of his insights still apply: Adding people slows down projects. Keep teams tight, and structured around your most productive programmers. It often pays to think deeply about a problem before you tackle it. Don't overbuild.<p>It's true that dynamic programming languages, tools like git, and rapid prototyping have made some of his examples feel dated. However, the underlying principles are still solid.<p>Hopefully 'The Design of Design' is a similar goldmine. Even if it's only half as good as MMM, it's still earned a slot on my bookshelf.
Fred Brooks, for those who don't know, is the author of the software engineering book The Mythical Man Month ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month</a> )