As someone that has studied engineering, designing a solution is very different than managing the resources around the design and implementation of that solution. Books like The Mythical Man Month and Making Things Happen deals with the management side, (from a team level) and The Pragmatic Programmer is from a personal level.

But TFA is ignoring the actual engineering side where you have to grapple with some primitives and assemble them in a way that do something valuable. And so in a way that is cost effective. That part is always answered by hand waves.