Introduction

Book cover

Book cover

There are plenty of PHP books on the market these days, but none that I’m aware of that have any coverage of abstract topics such as project organization and management, and targeted towards PHP. This book is intended to fill this gap. And it does well at the job.

What it Covers

There are a variety of topics covered in this book, from one end of the project development lifecycle to the other. Those topics include:

  • gathering requirements
  • planning
  • choosing tools
  • building
  • deploying

Each topic comes with numerous tips and suggestions gleaned from the author’s past experience. Covered are ways of gathering requirements, planning the project layout and architecture, choosing development tools to help you, actually building the project, doing quality control and documentation, and finally releasing the end result.

There are some code samples scattered throughout, but they are used to illustrate certain concepts. This book is not intended to teach you PHP.

The book finishes with a look at different development methodologies, including waterfall and agile. The descriptions are concise, and are contrasted with each other. It’s not directly relevant to the rest of the book, but was a good read nonetheless.

The material is not heavy, and can be easily read an absorbed. Being inside 300 pages, the book provides a concise overview of all the topics that it covers. The topics are not covered in great depth, but provide enough information to get started, and give a reason to do some additional research.

Bottom Line

Overall, this is a good book that should be read at least once. By programmers and managers alike. I don’t think it is reference material, but will probably be useful as a refresher or an introduction for those new to working or managing PHP projects. It is also important to note that this is not a tutorial, and will not teach you PHP. In fact, the subject is obviously PHP, but much of the discussions in the book can be applied to other languages and platforms such as Java and .NET.

The book is not a huge one, is easy to read, and will not need long to be consumed by the reader. And I believe it is worthwhile. So if you work on or manage PHP projects, go get it.