economics-software

With the rate of change in communications and internet, and the associated applications, Vacca has to keep his running shoes on to keep us up-to-date with it. This newest book on Electronic Commerce delves into mobile technology, catches us up with lessons learned over the past few years in e-commerce (particularly with security issues and all the creative new types of fraud), and provides good recommendations about implementing websites and shopping carts. Particularly interesting - and perhaps controversial - is the chapter on digital currencies.

This book is not one of his most technical bits-and-bytes ones; his audience would I think be more management level, and he makes a good case for outsourcing. However, he provides some good models for shopping cart implementations and client-server application decisions, and I found his comparative descriptions of web software and database interfaces the clearest I have ever read (especially with the caveats concerning their varying suitability to heterogeneous environments). And his tables, appendices, and references alone make the book a valuable resource - from e-commerce companies and providers and conferences right down to a listing of some standard EDI transaction codes.

Useful, highly informative, and very readable.

The book covers all aspects of Electronic Commerce from a theoretical to a practical level. It can be both a deskside reference or "how-to" guide to utilitizing this rapidly expanding and essential technology. I found the discussion on mobile electronic commerce and security technologies particularly useful. The authors have done all the hard work for you and presented this knowledge in a way that will quickly make you a E-Commerce expert as well.

The world of e-commerce has been flipped upside down in the past couple of years, and this book does a great job of capturing the change and getting anyone up to speed who has been out of the picture or just wants to fill in the blanks. It's easy to read, points to many resources available, is categorized in a way that makes sense and helped me quickly find the information I needed to write a winning e-commerce proposal, even though I'd been out of that game for a couple of years. Its release is perfect timing as many compaines are gearing up to finally do the e-commerce thing, or simply want to revamp systems that are beginning to show some stress and signs of age. This is, of course, not the only e-commerce book you'll ever need---things will change and lets all hope that Vacca does a fifth edition in 2005!

Great Book!!! It was extremely readable, very insightful and practical. It is obvious the author has real world experience. By using examples and events in his own career, he brings to light the tactical aspects of demonstrating and selling software. An absolute must read for anyone in the business, especially those of us in Sales. I bought copies for everyone on my staff.

While there are other books and systems that teach how to present, Demo2Win gets down to the marrow of how to put on a consistent and well ordered software demo that gets the business!
Anyone who is honest with the person in the mirror will see some of their own "demo crimes" when reading this book. Account Executives who read it will come away with a whole new respect of the hurdles faced by the Pre Sales Consultant during a demo.
This book should be read by each new Pre Sales Consultant on their first day!

I found the way to do it much better. This book is really useful for my job: it helps me identify my own errors and to prepare my meetings with prospects much properly, not just "showing" but "solving". Read it !!

This is a worthwhile and well written book. Now that the internet is so pervasive this book applies to ANY consultant who wants to provide quality services. Internal consultants and "Hired Guns" need this knowledge. If you are a consultant or use consulting services in your business this is a must read.

I have helped to create a series of eConsulting Services Companies and advise a number of consulting companies, I only wish this book could have been available sooner!

I have read both the IT Consultant and The eConsultant. They have provided me with invaluable insight towards achieving my goals. I'm in the executive sales arena and sustain a multi-milion dollar quota in a slow economy. Rick's books provide insight to the challenges my customers are facing. They also provide the approach to solving complex business issues for them with the technology I provide.

I'm keeping my eyes open for Rick's next book...

Essential reading for both experienced and novice technical consultants who want to expand the value they deliver clients. For too long technology consultants have focused almost exclusively on the intricacies of systems without paying sufficient attention to the strategic, business, and human effects of their work. This book successfully introduces IT consultants to the broader world in which their work takes place.

I recommend this book to anyone involved in software development, office design, or management of knowledge workers. A very easy read for both techies and non-techies alike. Programmers and engineers will be nodding their heads in agreement. One of the few books that deals with work-space and the impact it has on productivity (statistics are included). It also deals with the management of skills within the software development group, with approaches to handling the varied skills found in the team. Give it to your boss, your CEO, your CIO, and your technical staff.

The book was written about software development projects, but is absolutely loaded with insight not just on that subject, but on management styles and workplace conditions and rules. One can read this book and become genuinely excited about the potential explosion of productivity, hand-in-hand with employee job satisfaction, that could occur if managers would simply follow the advice given by the authors on how to be effective workplace leaders.

Alas, it probably won't ever happen. Several years ago, the large (Fortune 20) company I worked for brought in Timothy Lister to present the book and the ideas in it to management prior to the start of a major software project. Lister did an excellent job presenting his and DeMarco's philosophy. The managers nodded sagely and showed every sign of comprehending and accepting the concepts contained in the book. Then Lister left, the project started, and the managers immediately reverted to the old style: setting unrealistic deadlines, pressuring employees to deliver more and more in less and less time, and in general following every tired old management strategy that almost always leads to a failed project -- as indeed, it did in this case.

So read this book, learn from it, and enjoy it (it's an easy, entertaining read) -- even if your managers are too stupid to profit from it.

This book is as essential as everyone here makes it out to be. However, the authors' development of the notion of teamicide needs to be seriously questioned. While there is some truth to their characterization of incentive-based systems or tracking through testing having the ability to go haywire, the stated anti-postulate reads like an articulation of the doctrine of the soviet. No individuals' performances can be acknowledged to the group? At all times it must be enforced that the only goal is the group goal? This is the only dark ray in an otherwise wonderful collection of great insights. The reality is that a balance must be struck. I know balance and shades of gray are not popular in our polarizing, cartoon times, but politically, both the extreme Horatio Alger and the notion of the great state have crashed and burned. Truly, what is needed are more plural forms of organization.

Clark's book not only describes an intriguing process for the development of simulations and the future of e-learning, he does an excellent job describing a leadership model that works.

In fact, Clark's leadership model was studied and utilized by a number of my students in a team-based class. Using Clark's book, they were able to apply the concepts of balancing Power, Ideas and Tension successfully to accomplish work. Just as Clark described.

The story Clark tells is fun to read, interesting and educational. I strongly recommend it to all my students...and they love it. My instructional technology students all relate to interactive computer environments from PS2s to Xbox to Riven to SimCity and Roller Coaster Tycoon and they see no other alternative to what Clark describes in terms of how they want to learn in the future (and now for that matter). My students also appreciate the insight into the development process of a major learning initiative. The story of the success and failure of bringing the product to market.

I completely enjoyed this book because it adeptly foretells the future of learning and where academics and corporate training folks need to go. If you are involved with designing or managing learning within any type of environment, you need to read this book.

Having read this book twice, I'm struck twice by the reality of the "revolutionary" implications for learning and improved business performance. Looking at the problems with current training in the corporate setting, Clark Aldrich (and the team) have created an aperture into the future realities of learning that cannot be rationally be denied. Looking at the implications for business and improved leadership effectiveness, one is left with the distinct impression that corporate profits will ultimately be dependent upon the "true" learning offered by simulations, such as Virtual Leader, in contrast to the boring nothingness offered by most training and development efforts.
How they "did it" is a fascinating tale of creative genius at work, which by itself, would make this book extremely interesting. This tale is similar to the story told by those who discovered the "double helix" of DNA fame. But, they go beyond that.
This is a book that moves the field of "simulations" into the orbit of intense relevance for "learning" with applications to business problems and their solutions.
Don't let the hilarious and high level of humor detract you from the seriousness of the subject and the practical applications to business and learning.

David L. Hanson, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist

My exposure and subsequent interest in Mr. Aldrich's book began during the last semester of my graduate work in instructional technology. I was working with a team, which was created arbitrarily by the professor, to respond to a hypothetical Request for Proposal (RFP) to create a leadership curriculum for a large bank. We had to form a hypothetical e-Learning company, write a solution to the problem, and compete in a "showdown" against the other groups from the class in front of approximately 40 e-Learning business professionals to win the business.

My experience with this group was horrendous. We argued bitterly, produced low quality work, and interacted as a team as well as a bunch of five-year-old children playing their first game of AYSO soccer. Fortunately, after seeing a presentation on Virtual Leader during one of the classes, I was able to obtain a draft copy of Mr. Aldrich's book from my professor.

After reading the chapters on "What Would a Leadership Situation Look Like?", "Uncovering the Essence of Leadership", and "The Lure of Linear Content", our group not only began working better together, but we were also producing top-rate work. Our meetings were shorter and more productive, and even though interpersonal differences still existed, we were able to work around them toward our common goal - a sound response to the RFP and a cohesive, outstanding presentation of which we were all very proud.

Why the change? Very simply - Mr. Aldrich synthesized the voluminous materials on leadership into a "Systems Framework for Leadership." In his framework, Aldrich defines leadership as "getting a group of people to complete the right work." Unlike most leadership models which are very specific and try to teach certain skills, this model focuses on the work, not the individual. In addition, Aldrich identifies three forces, which, when used in the correct combination, lead to producing the right work. These three forces include gaining power, generating ideas, and moderating tension.

All of these forces are necessary. One cannot compensate for a lack in one by placing more emphasis on one or both of the others. In addition, each force is also a skill, which contains a subset of additional skills. For example, power skills include negotiating, writing, and communicating. Therefore, to be an effective leader, one must exercise each of these three forces and its corresponding subset of skills in the right amount, in the right combination, and in the right way to produce the right work. Too much of any one force diminishes rather that enhances leadership ability and the output of work.

In closing, this insight was helpful to me as I worked with the team to accomplish our goals. In addition, I have not only benefited from Mr. Aldrich's book during this time, but I have also grown tremendously by applying this framework of leadership in both my personal and professional experiences.

I find this book very practical. Project Management is a field where there are many concepts with dependencies on one another. The authors have managed to explain these concepts in a flow that is smooth and easy to understand, and yet with not too many words, i.e. clear and concise words. It surely gives a good foundation to someone who is learning Project Management.

An excellent book on management of IT projects. The author discusses three different kinds of project management: Traditional, Adaptive and Extreme. The book is worth the purchase price for just the discussion on the Traditional project management method. The material about "Adaptive" and "Extreme" variations are icing on the cake.

What I like about this book is that the author effectively acknowledges the shortcomings of traditional project management and does not harp on its dogma. The material on adaptive project management offers a way out for those projects where the method of implementation is so unknown that traditional full-court project management practices will only hurt and not help. Much of the information on adaptive and extreme project management is similar to the "extreme programming" methodology, but specifically targeted towards a project manager.

I think this book is an excellent purchase. It is well written and succinct (unlike the 1000 pages of bullet-points from a competing author). Other reasons to purchase the book are its reasonable price and the fact that you get a trial version of Microsoft Project 2002 with it.

I wish the author had gone into greater depth about earned value. I have found earned value difficult to do without good support from the project management tool (calculating BCWS for example is tedious to do by hand); every time I tried to do earned value for a real project using MP98 or MP2000 the tool has crashed on me.

In summary I believe that this is an excellent book, and should be read by every project manager.

There is a complete PM education in this fairly compact book. The third edition touches upon non-traditional project management. In other words, project management in real life as opposed to what is in most every textbook.

To me the value of the third edition lies in Robert Wysocki's recognition of projects where either the goal is clear but the methods aren't, or where even the goal is unclear. These types of projects seem to predominate in IT. This book is worth purchasing for the insight that the authors bring into the non-traditional non-textbook real-life projects.

The prose is clearly written and reads very tightly. Contrast this to the random collection of thoughts in Kerzner's book. This book is written for the practitioner, though someone taking a college course in project management would also benefit.

Excellent book, at an excellent price. You can't go wrong.

This book provides project management best practices integrated into the framework of Microsoft Project 2000. Not only does it tell me how to do things in MS Project, but it also tells me why!! I've met hundreds of people who use Microsoft Project, but only a handful who know how to use it properly. If you're ready to move beyond building a pretty picture of last year's project, and start building dynamic schedules that accurately reflect the status of your project, you need this book.

This is years of experience in project management and the use of Microsoft Project that's built into one easy to use book. You can either read it end to end or use it as a reference book. Either way, it's great value for money.

As a fellow PMP and trainer of MS Project 2000, I must say that I am impressed with this book. It has finally made available in a textbook, good project management principles, and how to execute them using the MS Project 2000 tool. The book explains why certain options are chosen and gives recommendations for handling various scheduling scenarios. I would highly recommend this as a valuable tool for any project manager using MSP2000.

Eric,
Thanks for a superb job on your Dynamic Scheduling book and the accompanying CD, which I make use of as well. I have been managing projects at fortune 500 companies for nearly a decade. I have read many books, I have taught and I've done some writing of my own and with out question, your book is the best I have ever read. It is obviously written from the perspective of someone who knows project management as well as Microsoft Project. Often there a slight disconnect between instructors and authors and those of us in the real-world of project management, Dynamic Scheduling shows that you have your foot firmly planted in both worlds. Some people consider me a Microsoft Project expert, but I have stolen so much useful information from your book that I probably should be paying you royalties. Thanks again and I will be on the lookout for your next book.

This a very good book. It is written by two people that together have more than 40 years of experience in project management (PM) and provides with real and usefull examples.
I strongly recommend reading to people that already know PM. Its not a basic book in PM.

If you go search on technology project management you find 140+ titles. Most of these do not address IT issues. This is one of the few that addresses IT projects specifically. It deals with all aspects of setting up, organizing, monitoring, tracking, and implementation. Specific problems and issues are addressed individually including how to avoid the problem, how to deal with the problem, and the impact. The authors have adopted an upbeat tone that stresses collaboration, the use of project templates, and lessons learned. These are key factors for success in IT projects from experience in over 40 major projects over a 15 year period. The book contains many useful guidelines for organizing the team, dealing with team member problems, management reporting, presentations of projects, how to establish the project plan quickly using templates, how to employ collaboration to define and update the work, how to do estimation and contingency planning, and how to address risk. There are chapters on dealing with specific issues. Rather than deal with fuzzy concepts, this book gets down to the nitty-gritty of doing a project. The book addresses how to allocation time between project and regular work--something that other books do not do. In addition, there is an emphasis on multiple rather single projects. In the world of IT there are very few instances where you deal with just one project. There are many interrelated projects. This is a well written, complete and innovative project management book. It is no wonder that it has been widely adopted.

This book is quite different from standard project management books. It addresses multiple projects as well as associating risk in tasks with issues related to projects. Our firm in Malaysia adopted the approach in the book. We first retrofitted over 50 project plans into templates with a standard resource list. We then defined issues for the projects. We uncovered on our own about 75 issues. Then we matched up the issues with those in the book. We found that another 35 issues applied to the projects. So far, we have constructed a data base of about 225 issues. We have now about 55 templates. We have found that the approach reduces time in doing scheduling. We are doing assignment of staff through the management of multiple projects. Overall, we have found the method to be effective. It might be useful for the authors to add more issues and guidelines as these are very helpful.

Greenberg's book features pointed advice regarding the most common CRM topics(SFA, Marketing...). Another chapter I found useful was the chapter detailing the layout of CRM implementations. Although a good read, I have some criticisms: 1. The author is a bit biased to some vendors. 2. Not the best written book. The grammar and structure is not very conducive to "demystifying" CRM. Not a great pleasure to read this book (although quite informative).

Perhaps the best feature of this book is the great CRM business ideas that it features. It gets the reader thinking "maybe I should start a company and use some of these business ideas". Case in point: read the PRM and verticals chapter. Good for people looking to start their own CRM consultancy.

When was the last time you read a business book written by an industry insider, and was so captivated by the book's content that you couldn't put the book down?? Well, author Paul Greenberg treats the reader to such a rare experience.

Whether you're the CEO of a company concerned about customer loyalty/profitability, a project leader charged with selecting and imlementing a CRM initiative, or a consultant within the CRM industry, this book is for you.

The biggest challenge the Business/CRM world faces today is understanding the delineation between CRM as a business strategy, and CRM as an enabling technology. No easy task! But Paul Greenberg clarifies this with incredible ease.

The author also, with zero techno-geek language, provides significant insights into areas of CRM such as: What IS CRM/What is it NOT?,Why your company needs CRM!!, ECRM versus CRM(a topic in the business world that seems to be strewn with much confusion), Who the real CRM players are....and why they are REAL, and What roles the internet and wireless applications are playing today, and in the future, and much, much more.

So if you're looking to become "CRM literate", or want to add to your CRM knowledge base, and want to actually have fun doing it-Paul's book is interspersed with humorous tidbits- GO BUY THIS BOOK!!

This is an excellent book for those interested in understanding the strategy behind CRM.

I enjoyed Julie Bick's new book - it's entertaining, informative and fun to read. And there are some great lessons from Microsoft in there - both thing they did right and things they did wrong. Don't miss the Super Bowl story, the star map, or the shadow competition.

This book is more of a story book, you read you laugh at the scenarios and you get a few pleasant suprises along the way. Although the title is misleading to think the book is actually a business consultancy manual or something.

If you want to find out some interesting facts about the big MS and pick up a few tips along the way then go ahead and pick up this GREAT book!

Every Leader /Manager will learn reading this book to create bench strength of their teams and be able to elavate organizational capability of their organizations.