economics-software

As a recent computer science graduate, it won't suprise anyone to say that I've been a little disappointed with the opportunities available to me, especially after seeing my peers just a few years ahead of me with all kinds of options. So I bought this guide, with a certain amount of skepticism.

However, upon opening up to the Industry Overview, I was reassured to find that the guide was actually quite current: "2002 is a different world than 1999, or even 2001. Gone are the days where simply flashing a Computer Science (CS), Electrical Engineering (EE) or MBA degree was enough to start the flow of lucrative job offers." Yah!, I thought, so what do I do now? This guide went on to answer just that question. Now I have a much better idea of which areas of the industry are the most promising right now, and where I should focus my job search, as well as an overview of the main (and still-existing) companies to look at.

The "Getting Hired" section was especially helpful because it broke down information for Undergrads, Advanced Degrees, and Midcareers, rather than just giving general instructions that may or may not apply to you directly. I also found the following Interview Tips helpful for any interview situation.

as a programmer at a small start-up in the SF bay area, i've been thinking i'd like to get into a (larger) company with more stability. but which ones are likely to stick around for the long term (at least more than a couple years)? well, a friend recommended i check out wetfeet's library to see what it had on computer programming, and i found this guide. it was not only extremely informative, but it was clearly written by someone in the industry. i now have a good idea about who i should be gunning for....my top 10 list has solidified since reading this book. it also helped to read the real people profiles of people who are ahead of me in their career track and see myself in one of those roles.

This was a great read--I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek writing style, and the let's-not-look-at-this-industry-through-rose-colored-glasses approach. It certainly didn't turn me off to wanting to get into computer software once I graduate with my EECS degree; instead, it helped me narrow down my list of future employers so that i can continue my research in a more focused and efficient manner. Thanks Wetfeet, for a job well-done.

There are several typos in this book, but don't let that get you down. This is an excellant review of business math. It begins with the basics of operations, and then progresses to more complex formulas. It will help everyone from business majors to consumers to better manage their money.

I think this book is great, becareful not to get the instructors edition, I got that edition by mistake then ordered a student editon used, it did not come with the cd like it said it would.

This book was incredibly helpful for a college class in Business Math. Many of the adults in my class had not studied any sort of math in years. This book made the subject easy with great examples succinct and thorough summaries. Recommend it for other teachers in the same area.

We used this book as a text for our class. The textbook is well organized and completed in itself. The reason of 4 stars instead of 5 is too much "ROW LAYOUT", which I think it's the only special case and rarely found in real-world application. Otherwise, this is one of the great books for student and professional.

This book is the Bible for facility design, layout, relayout, analysis, and modeling. An essential book for anyone interested in these topics.

This is a great textbook in modeling. Even though, some chapters need a high level of maths to be understood and advanced models are really "hard stuff".

I think this is one of the best books on this topic available. I have purchased many in an effort to merge statistical knowledge with the Excel application. While Excel is a powerful tool it can be tough to figure out how to harness all that power. It is an expertly written, no-frills book. The author clearly knows how frustrating most of the other Excel books on the market can be so he takes great care to walk you though the steps to success. A one star hit for a few noticeable things missing. One topic I really would like to have seen is creation of boxplots (very tough to do in Excel). A minor issue though because this book is loaded with great infromation and step-by-step approaches.

It is a bit pricey at [$], but I think well worth the price. If you can find it second hand then all the better because there is no data or sample disc included. I usually find the lack of a disc for such an expensive book annoying; however, there is a web site for you to download the data files referenced in the book so everything makes sense. As the title suggests the focus is business statistical applications. Bottom line: great book.

This is one of the best text books in Business Statistics that I have come across which not only is theoretically excellent but also helps you master Excel. I think this author should seriously think of adding some more chapters like Conjoint analysis so that it is helpful to PhD students like me.
On a whole, an excellent text book for all graduate students. A must for all graduate business students.

This is great book that I have ever read. It helps me to solve a lot of problems in my MBA courses.

Hi Friends, I was introduced to SPSS package during my MBA in Agri-business at MANAGE Institute-Hyderabad, India.And I was amazed with its capabilities. It can do wonders for any organization. And the book which I'm writing about just helps you to master necessary skills. But before you open the book or SPSS software, I strongly recommend you to brush up with concepts of Statistics and more importantly which tool is best for analysis. This avoids confusion in interpreting the output.

My suggestion to SPSS Inc., would be to include student version of SPSS Base free of cost to increase it's popularity. This software is not used efficiently by several organisations. The real power of SPSS lies in Syntax reference. So next time you open SPSS be prepared to explore as much as you can. wirte your queries and opinions to me at gopinathkoneti@yahoo.com

This is the required text for an SPSS class I am taking. The book is well written and clear. It has proven to be a helpful and useful support text to what we cover in class, especially to go deeper on certain topics. If you want to (have to) learn SPSS, I recomment this book. Take courage, SPSS is not that hard and I am even finding myself enjoying it (thanks in part to this book)!

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This is one of the three best introductory books on SPSS that I am familiar with. The others are Data Analysis by Jeremy Foster and Discovering Statistics by Andy Field. SPSS is a powerful statistical tool and an exceptionally fine software package, its customer support is the best I have ever dealt with. Unfortunately their user manuals are not user friendly. SPSS 10.0 Guide to Data Analysis fills a gap. Norusis's book is written in a light, humerous style but addresses complex statistical concepts in an easy to understand manner. Statistics and SPSS are an arcane and diffcult subject, somehow Norusis has made her subject friendly and funny. This is not to say this is an easy book. One of the things I look for in software manuals is exercises that demonstrate the concepts of the software. The book includes a disk. There are 23 chapters in the book and exercises for 21 of those chapters. I have also seen this book on the book shelves of some of SPSS's training staff. I think that speaks highly of the quality of this book.

It is very good reference for all analyst to have this book. It explain the detail configuration to achieve optimum supply chain effectiveness. At the end of this book, it introduces also solutions for advance planning by several high-end vendors such as J.D. Edwards etc.

This book will give every reader a very good view of the Supply Chain Management concepts. It will take the reader from the Strategic point of view, through the Demand Planning Systems to the Advance Planning Systems. A very good book to put every concept into a global perspective, with some case studies that will help the reader to make the transition from the theory to the pratical aspect of Supply Chain Information Systems.

I was pleasantly surprised and impressed with the high quality and standard of the book, Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning. It reflects state-of-the-art thinking as well as current views, and contains up-to-date case studies of supply chain management and advanced planning systems. There is no doubt that the authors are working at the cutting edge of the supply chain management field. They show intimate knowledge of practical advanced planning applications as well as implementation issues around a variety of commercially available software systems.

Recent information technology developments have changed modern manufacturing organizations dramatically. We have witnessed the introduction of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, such as SAP and BAAN, aimed at integrating internal processes in an organization. These systems cut across multiple functional areas and provide a corporate wide database with all the relevant data of an organization. Many believed that these systems would address all the problems and lead to drastic improvements of business performance. This focus on internal processes, however, was not sufficient since, in a sense, it was not able to cope with the exceptions and with the variability that confront organizations on a daily basis. State-of-the-art planning procedures, provided by Advanced Planning Systems (APS), are required to allow organizations to reduce the amount of exceptional situations. An APS exploits the environment created by ERP systems and this has created major breakthroughs in enterprise wide planning. The impact has spread wider to collaborative planning amongst supply chain partners. This book is devoted to Advanced Planning Systems, the concepts underlying these, the current limitations of APS, how it links and interacts with ERP systems, what is required for successful implementation, etc. Through using, testing and implementing APS modules developed by companies such as i2 Technologies, J.D. Edwards and SAP A.G., the authors gained many insights. Practical real-world experiences are captured in the various chapters of the book.

This book covers an immense quantity of Supply Chain Management material. It is presented in a logical and easily understandable way. Here and there it is obvious that the authors are not fully comfortable with English but it is not very distracting. The book is comprehensive and the different aspects of supply chain management are outlined in great detail. I found the book a real pleasure to work through. What impressed me most was the ease with which the authors of the various chapters dealt with complex and sometimes very interrelated supply chain aspects. From a personal point of view, the emphasis on quantitative tools to assist and improve planning was very encouraging. This is something that is not recognized and appreciated enough. This book is a must for every logistics professional. Buying this book will be a worthwhile investment!

Troubled IT Projects
Prevention and turnaround

John M Smith, IBM

The Institution of Electrical Engineers
Professional Application of Computing Series 3

2001, ISBN 0 85296 104 9

In this useful book John Smith has combined his significant experience in engineering, defence and technology with an excellent commercial sense to produce a very comprehensive project health checking volume. He simultaneously manages to entertain and yet present essential project structure material, not usually known for its entertainment value. This is achieved with a fair number of anecdotes and pertinent allusions to the real world, all done with the occasional understated wit and a sprinkling of pertinent pieces of IT industry history and commercial perspective.

The book is in four sections; Why Projects Fail, Preventing Troubled Projects at the Planning Stage, Reviewing Troubled Projects in Delivery and finally, Project Turnaround and Organisational Learning. It starts with a definition of a troubled project and presents 40 root causes of troubled IT projects drawn from research and the author's own practical experience. These 40 root causes are clearly tabulated and subsequently used as the basis of analysis in a variety of contexts to add insight to the business of problem identification and rectification.

The book will most appeal to vendors of IS and IT services, although buyers of such may also find it a useful insight, if nothing else, by seeing into the sales processes of the services provider. In fact Section 2 on Prevention of Troubled Projects at the Planning Stage starts with a chapter entitled 'A Professional Services Sales Primer'. The book will nevertheless be of interest to internal IS and IT departments and internal project management. It clearly and strongly addresses the importance of a well-defined specification, which is as pertinent to in-house projects as it is to Vendor/Customer situations. It also focuses strongly on the subject of roles, responsibilities and reporting lines; vital in whatever Vendor/User/IT Departmental structure may be in effect.

Highly comprehensive, the book contains many fulsome checklists and ends each chapter with a summary. In the chapters themselves there are many tables as well a variety of mini case studies to keep it all practically focused. Each chapter also ends with a few exercises which the author points out are intended to ensure the reader gets value, which I believe will undoubtedly be the case.

For those who seek to improve revenue or gross profit from the industry the author is evidently experienced in nurturing the essential relationship between vendor and buyer and gives many useful tips in that area for maximizing the value of that union although noticeably leaning towards the vendor's interests.

The aspects pertaining to project management covered in the book should be of interest to all readers. Techniques covered include the use of Function Points to help quantify the tasks in hand; Risk Management to open the reader's mind to the need to recognise that risks often (maybe always) accompany a major project, whether it be I.T....or building the GWR railway nearly two centuries ago - a very topical case study (ask Mr Byers)! The author also recognises the advantages of the 'less is more' concept of delivering basic functionality in a highly useable and robust system, early on.

Finally, following Section 3 on the review of troubled projects in delivery, the Project Turnaround material comes a little later than I would have preferred but is nevertheless welcome. I would also like to have seen a little more on IS/IT project success criteria being based on more than 'on time, budget and to user requirement' since user satisfaction appears increasingly to be a non bipolar entity. However, in all, my feeling is that John M Smith has several more interesting books up his sleeve for the IS and IT communities and I look forward to the next being not too far away.

David P Jacobs
Director
Profit from Information Ltd
"Maximising business value from information systems"

This is a great book, betraying in-depth experience of IT and project management. The thing I like most about it is the large number of checklists, hints and tips, which help you to apply the content of the book to your own situation and really make a difference. I thoroughly recommend this book if you are involved in a bid for a major IT project, or if you are taking on a challenging PM role and want to maximise your chance of success.

I have just finished reading my copy of this book and would thoroughly recommend it to all IT project managers.

Most projects of any substance that I have been involved with seem to fit the 'troubled IT projects' tag defined in the book, and the author presents a clear strategy for avoiding problems before and once they occur. I was particularly interested in the discussion of getting the initial proposal right before proceeding which is where, in my experience, problems often occur and we are then trying to catch up throughout the rest of the project.

I wouldn't say that the book necessarily taught me anything I didn't already know and to a large extent the material covered is really just common sense. However it is really useful and illuminating to see it all encapsulated in the one book.

The past 100 years have been truly remarkable from the standpoint of human advancement through unprecedented technological breakthroughs. The emergence of the computer industry represents perhaps the most significant aftereffect of these recent discoveries, with nearly every innovation since the industry's inception proving to be more awe-inspiring that the last. As sudden as the waves of technological change have transpired upon us, however, the history explaining their materialization has spread its roots into countless factors and interrelated topics that make acquiring a cognizance of the IT revolution and the reasons for today's computer industry structure an irrefutably perplexing task. To David Moschella's credit, such an undertaking is more easily attainable with the help of his text "Waves of Power."

Regardless of the era, the technology, or the company being studied, the structure of the IT industry in the U.S. has been subject to the invisible hand of a capitalistic society. Surprisingly, this has not made predicting future business models or sources of power any less challenging. A free, democratic marketplace did not prevent the formation of "monopolies" IBM and Microsoft. The unique aspects of the IT industry, with the enormous economies attributable to some of its sectors and with computer technology still in its infancy compared to most other long-standing products, combine to make it almost immune to natural market forces that typically disrupt monopolistic powers. Success in breaking up those corporate giants that have accumulated an alarming share of an industrial market is often attributable to government intervention or to the corporate giants themselves. This is why the Justice Department's handling of the antitrust case against Microsoft is important to the formation of a technological future that even vaguely resembles the global connectivity envisioned by Moschella in the year 2010. Software subordination to new network-centric devices and peripherals is less likely to happen if more companies (new and old) do not expand the presence of Microsoft independent operating systems or Intel-compatible microprocessors. No one makes this more clear than David Moschella himself who, since the printing of this book, has chastised IT vendors for failing to make a dent in Microsoft's empire.

Nevertheless, the network-centric era does present plentiful opportunities for many businesses. Moschella points out that the pace with which network computing transforms a particular industry's business processes is directly related to the industry's proportion of information based products (bits) as opposed to tangibles (atoms). It thus makes sense that the banking industry is one of the first to adopt the network-centric approach out of necessity even as current bandwidth technology remains wanting. But before any company, bit or atom-based, looks to invest in IT to improve its business, Moschella strongly advises that an effective strategic plan be the driving force behind such endeavors rather than peer pressure from industry rivals to acquire and implement a hot new system. Adherence to such principles facilitates wise business strategies. It is precisely this type of philosophy that Moschella believes will ensure a healthy and competitive marketplace where the ideals of a content-centric society are more inclined to be met and the regulatory actions of government agencies deemed less necessary. Such are the overriding points that "Waves of Power" attempts to convey.

This is a great book to keep around as a reference. It discusses the early history of the IT industry as well as its future. The author does a great job of rooting out all of the Internet hype and hysteria also.

David Moschella has brilliantly interweaved a historical perspective of the global info/tech industry into a very insightful forecast that can be used by both info/tech and non-info/tech professionals.

David's historical perspective includes: well-defined market-based outcomes, insightful global trends, concise strategic consequences, and clear summaries of most important points in time. His global framework helps us to understand countries' competitive strengths and their abilities to adapt to the coming changes in the info/tech industry. Finally, his forecast of the info/tech industry, which has to take into account the ever-changing landscape and the unforeseen innovations, appears to have strong grounding in the history of the info/tech business and other industries that have gone through innovative and strong growth periods.

To conclude, Waves of Power is an excellent education in the information technology industry, and will provide insight and ideas to managers and investors alike.

John Bagazinski

I was looking for a comprehensive study on testing methods, when I bought this book. I have an academic background, so after looking into the table of contents and skimming through pages in local bookstore, I though I had found right publication. The book has quite solid research foundations and each section provides number of references. Problem is that topics covered in most chapters are too theoretical to be relevant in practice. This book could provide a good background for somebody interested in pure research or writing a PHD thesis, but if you are looking for a clear and well research references in quality assurance it is going to be a waste of 90$ (plus tax). When reading this book, you may want to skip first hundred pages to avoid being exposed to nationalistic arrogance of authors. But, in the same time it was a source of amusement for me; have a read and you will se what I mean :)

I've had this book since 1997 and find myself referring to it often. It can be used as a clear explanation of software quality control and software quality assurance for professionals entering the field, as well as an off-the-shelf quality manual.

The reason I find it so useful is that it also serves as an encyclopedia of software quality that covers every facet ranging from methods to software maintenance. I find myself constantly referring to Chapter 13, Methods for Quantitative Measurement and Evaluation of Quality, which is complete and filled with formulae. In that respect, the material in this book will fit nicely into an organization that uses SPICE, ISO 9000-3, or Bootstrap as a quality framework. Moreover, if you're in a CMM level 3 or above organization you'll find the quantitative methods described in this book useful, particularly at levels 4 and 5.

My favorite chapters were 11, Quality Function Deployment for Software, and 12, Examples of Quality Measurement Systems. Both of these chapters went into great detail and both provided information and insights that have deeply influenced my approach to quality and metrics.Chapter 14, Production Planning for Software Products was another excellent source of information because this is the bridge between development and operations, and the quality approach in this chapter is the best I've encountered.

If you're an SQA practitioner, software testing professional or member of a software engineering process organization or team this book should be on your shelf. It has served me well in one consulting engagement and project after another and is possible one of the best books in which a serious practitioner should invest.

I discovered this wonderful book when I visited a friend last summer and was so impressed that I immediately invested in a copy. The chapters ranging from quality control methods to processes to testing to software maintenance are comprised of papers written by members of the Japanese Standards Association. Each paper is clearly written, beautifully illustrated and, most importantly, provide some of the best insights into software quality that I've ever read.

This book can be immediately used to develop an effective quality program that will be based on proven practices and techniques. The section of software maintenance alone is worth many times the price of this book. Also, if you are striving for CMM Level 5 this book has all of the ingredients for meeting the process areas associated with optimizing and continuous improvement.

If you are an advanced SQA professional or responsible for a large software engineering organization this book is essential reading. I also recommend it for test and QA professionals and release managers.

SPSS is the most user-friendly of the major statistical packages, and in general I'm a big fan, having taught graduate statistics with SPSS and being a regular user in my own research. The student version, however, has one very serious limitation not mentioned in the promotional materials: it won't let you write in programming code ("SPSS syntax"). Most of us don't want to program, anyway, but the full version of SPSS allows you to set up your analyses in dialog boxes (which are great), and then save those analyses to a syntax window. Then, if you ever want to repeat your analyses, you don't have to go through all the bother again - you just re-run your syntax code. While this may sound like a minor issue, it's not - for the student, it means that three hours of homework might have to be repeated from scratch if the computer freezes; for the professional, it means you can't replicate your analyses easily. SO . . . all in all, sincerely high marks for SPSS, but low marks for this version.

Its a very powerful books but the programs need changes as you all have and old computer cannot use this version. I think spss should think the old model or put the label outside the cds that this programs need a better computer or speed or new monitor.

This book explain in very good way how to use efficiently statistical techniques, stating from description of data, plotting and examining them in order to notmalize them and then help to build the Multiple Regration Model. I used SPSS in my research and it is a very helpfull tool. And I think this book would be interesting for post graduate students and teachers.