Acknowledgments

We have always disliked the acknowledgments sections of books. The authors present an incredibly humble face to the reader, which, we assume, is to make the reader think that the authors are humble, and therefore likable people. We also assume that this display of humility is intended to make the reader like the book all the more.

We now know better.

Authors are humble because writing a book is an incredibly humbling experience. Once written down, thoughts that are entirely clear and lucid appear awkward and ambiguous. Explanations that work in normal conversation become completely inappropriate when set in type. Diagrams that we are convinced are models of ingenuity and perfection are exposed as faulty and somewhat pedestrian.

What this all means is that without a lot of help, authors, or at least the authors of this book, would never publish anything readable. We therefore make these (humble) acknowledgments to the people who have helped us to bring you this book.

We acknowledge the inspiration over the years, and help with this book, given to us by our fellow principals at the Atlantic Systems Guild: Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin, and John Palmer. They all have provided us with many of the insights we present in this book.

We should also mention the major influences of DeMarco’s Structured Analysis and System Specification, McMenamin and Palmer’s Essential Systems Analysis, and Matt Flavin’s Fundamental Concepts of Information Modeling.

Drafts of this book have been reviewed and corrected by many people. We acknowledge the invaluable help given by the team working in Rich Cohen’s CompuServe forum: Darrin Chandler, Thor Christensen, James Curran, Michael Diehl, Harry Holt, Jim Hudson, Bob Koss, Jim Langendoen, Lucy Lockwood, Rud Merriam, Tom Ochs, Sue Petersen (who suffered more than most to bring you this book), Russ Ranshaw, Jeff Schweiger, Bryan de Silva, Mark Washick, and Mark Weisz. Special thanks to Rich Cohen for his Herculean efforts in keeping the group focused.

We also acknowledge contributions from our colleagues Truitt Allen, Gary Austin, Therese Lange, Gary Schuldt, Andy Smith, and Nina and Lee Snett. Their suggestions have made this a better book.

This book has seen the insides of upwards of a dozen Macintosh^® computers, starting with the first drafts on early Macintosh Plus machines, and ending with the typesetting on a Quadra. The text was written using Microsoft Word^™ and most diagrams were drawn with Aldus Freehand^™. The Piccadilly Project models were built using TurboCASE^™. We gratefully acknowledge the help given us by Shangcheng Chyou of StructSoft. His words of advice saved us many hours of work.

The original project at Associated Television provided us with the wonderful experience of working with some very talented people. We particularly want to acknowledge the work of Kenda Harris and Wendy Wakley (who is even better at her job than her Stepney Green counterpart in this book).

The design of this book and the cover is the work of Ellen Moorcraft. We think her work speaks for itself. Paula Gair helped with the preparation of the manuscript by organizing and checking its hundreds of components. Meanwhile Ian Gair kept our consulting business running so smoothly we didn’t mind taking the necessary time off to write this book. We wish to thank many of our clients for their encouragement during the book’s long gestation.

Finally, the publisher. No book would ever see the light of day without some amazing work by the publisher. David McClintock, Janice Wormington, and Tony Yip of Dorset House patiently guided us through the process, made our English readable, and, most importantly, provided encouragement and guidance during the dark hours of despair when it seemed that we would never finish.

To all of the above, a very grateful, and humble, thank you.