economics-software

I was dissatisfied with this book for the following reasons:

- Inefficient as a PMP study guide. Although the book calls itself a PMP study guide, it is much more of a project management tutorial. Too much material devoted to training and theory, not enough focus on specific test topics.

- Excessively verbose and formulaic structure. At least 35% of the text in this book is useless fluff with no new or actionable knowledge. Many of the chapter sections appear to exist simply to follow a preset outline that was applied uniformly to most chapters, even though there was nothing new or actionable to say
in that section.

- Excessively repetitive. The amount of repetition is mind-numbing. It is very hard to sift out the bits of new information when they are surrounded by so much information that has already been adequately presented several times before.

- Unacceptable number of errors in the material. I found at least 3 definite errors in the practice exam answers (e.g. the calculation of PV in Chp. 7, Q. 12). And there were also errors and inconsistencies in some explanations (e.g. definitions of Optimal Quality and Marginal Analysis in Chp 8).

Bottom line: After finishing this book, I do feel prepared for the test, but it caused a lot of wasted time and frustration with the style and errors. I think studying the PMBOK alone would have been much more effeicient and effective.

This Book in one of the best book, I cleared my PMP exam with this book, the way I prepared was read PMBOK and read this book side by side. Sample Questions are very good.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to pass the PMP exam on the 1st try. Well written and good questions.

Any organization that outsources development projects, buys package solutions, or contracts for other services will find "Request for Proposal" valuable. Filling a significant void in the literature, this book provides a wealth of practical guidance to help buyers describe their needs clearly and completely. In turn, these descriptions enable prospective vendors to prepare comprehensive and meaningful responses that will let a buyer get the best solution for its money. The book emphasizes writing RFPs for software-related projects, but the principles and practices apply to any acquisition activity.

The book addresses the process of developing RFPs and evaluating proposals. It also describes in detail the sections of a well-constructed RFP and offers guidance as to how to prepare each section. Instead of presenting a simplistic prescription, the book addresses both sides of issues that are not clear cut, such as whether to include the details of the proposal evaluation criteria in the RFP. These discussions help readers understand the various points of view so they can select for themselves the appropriate course to take in each situation. The book includes many checklists, forms, examples, and practical tips. It is clearly written, easy to read, and comprehensive.

I found this book very helpful as I developed a software subcontract management process recently. Every time I pick it up I spot another tidbit to consider adding to the process. "Request for Proposal" is a gold mine of useful ideas for anyone who has to ask vendors to describe how they propose to satisfy a buyer's requirements.

RFP Handbook is a great addition to any IT project manager's bookshelf. It is clear that the author is writing based on real-world experience. The book offers a good foundation for creating RFP's and offers practical advice that will keep you from making costly mistakes. It also provides examples and templates for writing an RFP. I wish I had this book ten years ago. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is responsible for, or contributing to, the creating of an RFP.

There are literally hundreds of good books on proposal writing, but only a tiny handful on writing RFPs. From among the handful this book stands out for a number of reasons:

(1) It clearly described the RFP process from start to finish - and RFP development is a process with a defined life cycle.

(2) The author goes well beyond the immediate objective of writing an RFP and managing the process by including thought-provoking material on post-award vendor management. This material sometimes escapes the RFP development team who is more focused on getting to the award milestone without thinking about the post-award ramifications.

(3) It's not boring - the writing is lively, and the material is presented at a fast pace. The pace, however, does not leave gaps. Every facet of the RFP process is covered in sufficient detail.

In addition to the above, the approach set forth in this book is consistent with best practices in RFP development. I especially like the copious checklists, the RFP roadmap, and the way illustrations are skillfully used to reinforce concepts and advice.

Note that the focus of this book is information technology and software acquisition. Some of the material is unique to those domains; however, the basic principles and RFP process can be used for virtually any type of RFP, from office services to purchasing furniture.

Overall, this is the one book I recommend for RFP development. If you are an IT professional, regardless of role, the chances are you will be involved in this process at some point in your career, making this book a valuable addition to your library. If you have recently been assigned to an RFP team you should get this book as soon as possible, and use it as your compass and blueprint if your organization does not already have a formal RFP process in place.

Norm Kerth has given us a wise and practical book on project retrospectives. It is destined to be a classic in our software engineering and project management literature.

If you are curious, courageous, care about yourself and your teammates, and you are interested in personal and professional growth, read this book.

Beginning with his "prime directive", you will learn why and how to conduct project retrospectives. Norm makes a compelling case for the ritual of retrospectives, openly and honestly presenting the opportunities and dangers. There are many engaging features in this book: fables that make a point, a detailed description of an example retrospective, numerous true stories from real retrospectives that grab your interest, cartoons to illustrate the text, and recipes which provide facilitators with the structure, group processes and rationale for conduct successful retrospectives activities.

Who should read this wonderful book? The book's voice addresses the retrospective facilitator ("must" readers) along with anyone else who wants to learn about retrospectives. This audience includes project managers and their managers, along with team members.

Why these readers? Because software project success is all about people, not technology. How we interrelate, use technology, communicate, and are affected by project history impacts our work. And if we don't learn from our successes and mistakes, we can't grow, do better and have our work bring value to our organizations and ourselves. Project retrospectives are an essential tool toward that end. Norm Kerth's book helps us use this wonderful tool.

Anybody thinking seriously about management should work on introducing retrospectives in their organizations. Without a retrospective, a large body of knowledge in which the organization has already invested throughout the project goes down the drain. Project Retrospectives covers the background material you need to know to understand the mechanics, provides a comprehensive set of exercises for leading a retrospective or a postmortem, and tells you how to become a skilled facilitator.

The first part of the book explains the need for ritual, how to tailor a retrospective to various situations, how to make a business case for having a retrospective, and how prepare for it. The case study Norm presents in the second chapter (Anatomy of a Retrospective) provides a holistic picture of the things to follow. The third and fourth chapters tell you how to tailor retrospectives to particular projects (Engineering a Retrospective: Making Choices) and how to talk groups who are interested in improving their processes into having a retrospective (Selling a Retrospective). These are important topics which determine if the people will be given the opportunity to learn from their own experience, and how to focus on the things that will make the retrospective effective. Chapter 5 (Preparing for a Retrospective) covers the groundwork required to have the facts and information for the retrospective, from initiating contact with the managers to arriving at the site. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses a wide array of exercises for the retrospective. Norm presents each exercise in a way that makes it easy to decide whether it is appropriate for a particular project. The pattern includes (among others): Purpose, When to use, Duration, Procedure, Background and theory, and References for further reading.

The second part of the book discusses postmortems, a special case of retrospectives. Postmortems correspond to failed projects. In Chapter 7 (Leading a Postmortem) Norm explains the differences between postmortems and retrospectives, and how to transform the failed-project experience into a learning opportunity. Chapter 8 (Postmortem Exercises) provides exercises designed to handle various circumstances typical of failed projects. In Chapter 9 (On Becoming a Skilled Retrospective Facilitator) Norm shares six lessons learned "through the school of hard knocks," and discusses several procedures that good facilitators should keep in their back pocket. Finally, Chapter 10 (After the Retrospective) explains what to do with the information that surfaces during the retrospective.

Norm has sprinkled the entire book with True Stories. They complement nicely the material and provide additional insight into how retrospectives work and what you should expect. I've also enjoyed the annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter; without Norm's summary the chances of my reading Sharon Loeschen's "The Magic of Satir" were slim. Finally, the book's illustrations are funny and to the point.

I've used Norm Kerth's Project Retrospectives in my Software Project Management class. My students have learned important lessons from it. I trust that once they become managers, they will keep the learning process going through wrapping up their projects with retrospectives.

Norman L. Kerth is a professional with twenty years' experience in leading project retrospectives. In Project Retrospectives: A Handbook For Team Reviews, Kerth draws upon his extensive body of experience and expertise to crate an excellent and thoroughly "reader friendly" guidebook showcasing the process of reviewing, and revealing how to learn from the successes and failures of completed business projects. Case studies, preparing for a retrospective, leading a postmortem, and the skills for best learning and sharing knowledge gained from past ventures fill the pages of this down-to-earth and highly accessible guide which is especially recommended to those charged with the responsibility of improving corporate departmental and project team performances.

As others have said, MG is a good introductory text for Information Retrieval. However I think it spends a little too much time on compression techniques and lacks a good discussion of incremental or on-line indexing. The book tends to assume that the set of texts to be searched is static - if new documents can be added or old ones deleted it makes the whole problem much harder and many of MG's techniques are no longer relevant. That said, I strongly look forward to Managing Terabytes (if it ever appears).

MG gave a good introduction to the components of practical Information Retrieval (IR). You can clearly see that the authors have a genuine interest in the field! But, I would like some more theoretical analysis of the algorithms used(i.e. O-notation), and more focus on parallell implementations of IR systems. Another book related to the same area worth mentioning is "Modern Information Retrieval".

This is the only book there is that will actually teach you how to build an information retrieval system (aka search engine). It discusses all the algorithms and tradeoffs, and comes with free downloadable source code to experiment with. Some of the material is standard, but covered in more implementation detail here than anywhere else. Some of the material is novel: you won't find better coverage of compression unless you hand-assemble twenty research papers, and reverse-engineer them to figure out how they're implemented. But with "Managing Gigabytes", it's all here. (Although, after a particularly envigorating discussion of how to string together a bunch of techniques to compress their corpus and save a couple 100MB, I did a check and found you could buy 512MB of RAM for less than the cost of the book. Knowledge is Power, but sometimes a little cash is more powerful.) The only negative is that this book is not called "Managing Terabytes", as the first edition promised/threatened it might be. RAM and disk are cheap, but not that cheap, and for now terabytes (and sometimes petabytes) are managed only by NASA, Google, and a few others. I can't wait to see the third edition!

The most pragmatic book on developing the software I have read yet. Brilliant. If you want to gather some experience collected by these who really done some OO projects, both successful and failing, if you want to hear very helpful comments on how to manage with the people- and organization-side of the software development - buy it!

It is amazing that a single person can produce such a large amount of sound, insightful and useful advice. Alistair Cockburn presents principles, patterns and case studies for managing projects that use object oriented techniques, choosing "just enough process" and separating hype from reality.

Even though it was written in 1998, the advice in this book has not diminished with age. There are many claims made about the advantages of moving to object-oriented technologies (OOTs), and while most are true, the difficulties are almost always understated. Not in this book. Cockburn is very explicit in his descriptions of how complex the move is and how valuable training can be, as well as the many inherent limitations that it has.
As the title explains, this is not for developers, but for the manager who is either contemplating the use of OOTs or is faced with the tasks of implementing them after the decision has been made. Several projects are examined, some of which were successes, others which were simply survived by the participants and a few that crashed and burned. In my experience with working with developer teams, the hardest task of all in moving to OOTs is not making the decision to make the move or in getting the initial training. The fact that there are benefits is clear and trainers are relatively easy to find.
The hardest part is choosing where to begin the transfer of their legacy systems to an object-oriented form. This is something that is difficult even for those experienced in the transfer and for someone still unfamiliar with OOTs it can be intimidating. It is this group of people who will obtain the most benefit from the book. Cockburn clearly has a great deal of consulting experience in helping people make the transition and he passes that on using a very readable style. He also is very explicit in pointing out potential problems with the move.
Moving to any new technology is difficult, and nearly everyone needs help to make it successful. While reading this book will not guarantee that your move to OOTs is successful, it will make it more likely.

ACT6! for Dummies is not only extremely informative, it is fun and easy to read. It is a great starting place to learn the many aspects of the program and it is a great reference once you are using the program regularly. If you can figure out how to use this program to its fullest by using the book supplied by ACT, you are probably not in sales, you have a lot of extra time on your hands, and you love to watch paint dry. Unless you are selling real estate in South Florida and one of my competitors, buy ACT6! for Dummies and get yourself on track fast.

I'm not a computer buff so I bought this book and was gratefully taken through an overview of the basics of Act! 6 and then the details. It not only showed how to use Act! 6, but also how to maximize the use of Act! 6.

The important thing about the book is that it is written for the reader (not in tech-speak), with a wonderful sense of humor. In fact, it's as if the author is right there with you as you go through and learn/use the program. After having used Act! 6 for a while, if I have more sophisticated needs, I look them up in the book and have the answer quickly and painlessly.

I hesitated buying Act! 6 for a while, but once I bought the program, I also bought this book. Now I am a confident and effective user.

As one of the leading ACT! trainers in the United States, I know what it takes to really teach people the program. And this book has it all. It's clear and concise, and the features are laid out in a logical fashion for incremental learning. The graphics are perfect references to the written text, and readers will have no trouble following along as they learn the features of the program. The author uses plain, descriptive language and doesn't get bogged down in "tech talk." If you want to learn ACT! on your own, this is the book for you!

The accounting-based framework for assessing the value contributions of a team seem like an effective way of measuring Agile products and whether or not they're good for the company.

Unfortunately, the book was full of distracting grammar and even *spelling* errors. It also had a serious tendency to use a lot of acronyms / variables for concepts, but didn't bother to even quickly re-expand the name when they hadn't been used for a couple of chapters and jumped back up again. Plodding from chapter to chapter, it builds up formulae with just enough description to bury you in the details of the relationships between the variables, without actually conveying examples of what the variables represent in real life projects.

For being as formula-oriented as this book was, I would've expected to see a detailed example of a project, assessment of it as it went along, and the calculations of the value being delivered by the project. There were a few hypothetical examples, but nothing that actually sounded like a real evaluation of a project as it progressed.

Finally, they might as well have cut out SCRUM and XP. I would've been much happier if this book had just been an application of TOC (Theory of Constraints) to FDD (Feature-Driven Development) and if it had concentrated more on real examples of the two in practice, rather than trying to extract some theory and try to convey how one might apply it to other methodologies.

I just couldn't say that, having read all of it, I could correctly measure what they state, compute the numbers the the way they suggest, and then have any confidence in any decisions I made based on those numbers.

Agile Management for Software Engineering is targeted for managers and executives working in the software industry. Its focus is on introducing a technique called Throughput Accounting for measuring and tracking software projects. The author basically shows how traditional cost accounting based methods lead to suboptimal business results and how to correct that situation by applying principles of Lean Production and the Theory of Constraints.

The author covers different aspects of management in the software industry one by one--including project management, project planning, production metrics, staffing, resource planning, and product management--explaining how the concepts of Throughput Accounting fit into the picture.

The latter half of the book is dedicated to showing how the theory presented can be applied to a number of agile software processes, namely Feature Driven Development, Extreme Programming, and Scrum.

The first part of the book is a bit difficult to follow due to slightly repetitive text and never-ending acronyms. I wouldn't count this as a defect, however, as the subject of introducing financial measures inevitably requires a certain amount of equations in between beautiful words. Luckily, the latter part, where these measures are applied, flows much better. What I see missing in this book is more concrete examples beyond the arguably theoretical discussion about real-world application. I also noticed that I was constantly waiting for the author to connect the dots and bind the theories presented in a more or less waterfall context into modern, iterative and incremental processes.

All in all, I find Agile Management for Software Engineering to be a book with a solid message: how to better manage a software business. Considering the state of practice in the industry, I'd say this is a must buy for any manager or executive.

I found this book highly informative and relevant.

As an agile advocate, this additional perspective is what I have been looking for. The explanations of the Theory of Constraints has proven valuable to me in my interactions with customers already.

I was sorely disappointed in this book. I went by other reader's recommendations and I'm at a loss as to why it's got a 5-star rating. I was, and still am, looking for a source that will get past the theory & history and describe how to complete the process: What do you do after you've baselined & have to produce a build?

Good introduction to the topic of software configuration management. The field attracts those who (there is no way to say this kindly) have rather dry writing styles, but this was more accessible than most.

The book focused on preparing for a CM system, and provided adequate food for thought on some of the relevenat topics. However, details of implementation, and actual CM system use were neglected. Also would have been nice to include some appendices providing model CM plans and model suporting processes / procedures, but the book did provide a thorough list of resources.

All-in-all, a quick, accomodating read. Good introduction to SCM.

This book is not like the other books on SCM. It is written in an easy-to-read and jargon free style and explains the SCM concepts, advantages and benefits of SCM. It also tells you how to implement SCM and what are the problems that you should be aware off. The chapter on SCM tools is excellent and so is the chapter on SCM in very large projects. Overall a very practical and user-friendly book. As a project manager of a large development project (more than 60 people), I have greatly benefitied from this book.

Considering that that the "UML Toolkit", although now dated, is a useful book, I was expecting quite a lot from "Business Modeling with UML". However, it seems like the authors couldn't make up their mind about what to focus on. The core of the book, the Eriksson-Penker business extensions, make up for a mere twenty pages of the book, and the rest of the book is spent discussing various patterns, business rules and the UML in general. Many of the subjects discussed are based upon earlier works, and treated a bit too lightly, imho. Similar to just watching the highlights on sportscenter, it just doesn't tell the whole story. There are also a number of (minor) syntactical errors in the chapter dealing with OCL, which somewhat confuses things for the reader. Despite this, not all is bad with the book. The E-P Business Extensions are useful, and their creation of four business views (similar to the 4+1 view of software architecture) is indeed a good one. The book also fills a void in the UML and RUP, which is well needed, so by all means, take a look at it.

One of the weaknesses of the Unified Modelling Language is its relatively limited support for modelling at the Enterprise level, especially to accurately model business processes. The UML purists believe that everything should be reduced to Use Cases, while these authors recognise that much more is necessary.

The book covers five quite distinct topics:
1. An introduction to business modelling and UML, explaining the problems the authors want to help solve, and describing each of the relevant techniques of UML,
2. A proposal for a group of extensions to UML (using that language's own established extensibility mechanisms) so that that it can better model business processes,
3. A description of the variety of views and models which will be required to establish a comprehensive understanding of the business, or at least part of it,
4. A repository of "business patterns", which you can use to model the business,
5. A comprehensive worked example.

Each of these is quite detailed. In particular, the book contains probably the best introduction to the Object Constraint Language (OCL), and its use to model business rules, that I have read anywhere. The sections on how to do business modelling are also very good, as are the introductions to the relevant UML techniques.

The "Eriksson-Penker extensions for business modelling" are important because several UML-based case tools have now implemented them as an emerging standard for business process modelling with UML. If you want to fully understand how these work, this is the book to read.

The business patterns are more of a "curates egg". Some are extremely useful, and others innovative which could easily solve your problems where there is an accurate match. That said, some are less good and seem to state the obvious, although with patterns it is always difficult to know if you are judging some harshly simply because you are so familiar with them and other readers will get more value. Some of the pattern explanations are a bit repetitive, and the "examples" often sound very artificial, but overall they are useful, and a single one which solves a real business modelling problem for you will justify the rest.

At over 400 pages, some of which is occasionally slightly slow and ponderous this is not an ideal book to read from cover to cover. But it is definitely one to study, focusing on whichever topic is most relevant to you at any time, and I can happily recommend it.

Sometime ago I have been wondering if somebody will try to bridge the gap between business modeling (the one used by consultants) and software engineering. It would certainly make it easier for people to understand and explain business operations.

This book is an application of the UML into the realm of business modeling. It is very good in the sense that it explains and goes through the patterns that form business models. The introduction on UML is pretty short and concise, so if you are new to it try using "Applying UML..." book to get an introduction. Be prepared to sit down and spend some time reading, since the material can be a little bit daunting to try to understand and remember all the patterns available. Overall, I wish I had this book for Systems Analysis instead of the outdated software engineering books that we used.

Key word here is "essentials" since it never gets past commentary that is just trivial. The best part of the book is the suggested readings and resources that I should had bought instead of this brochure.

Dont waste your money on this one. As someone pointed out , it should be titled 'Software Product Management Topics'. Instead i found 'Product Managers Handbook' more detailed and relevant.

This book is chuck full of tips, templates and overall great advice. It is definitely a must-have resource for any software product manager. The numerous professional endorsements back up the fact that Dver has deep expertise in the subject and is able to deliver a clearly written explanation of complex processes to make the job of product manager as easy and efficient as possible. Excellent book and something I wish I had sooner in my career