economics-software

the book brings together two recently updated, important standards for (software) quality management: CMMI and ISO 9001.
the book is thoroughly set up and structured, easy to interpret and navigate with all the necessary mappings and tables, and
systematic considerations of process improvement approaches.
also of interest for people only focussing on the CMMI and not ISO. well done!

This book is also available as an e-book (see ISBN B0000AJ68G). Regardless of which format you choose, the content is one of the best descriptions of ISO 9001:2000 and the CMMI - and how to use them as an integrated approach to achieve a high level of capability maturity.

The authors provide a summary of process improvement approaches, including frameworks and interrelationships among them. There is excellent background information on the CMMI and how it evolved from the older CMM. This also includes early work by the FAA with its iCMM approach.

In the parts of the book dealing with ISO 9001 the authors show the key differences between ISO 9001:94 and ISO 9001:2000, and provide a context and value proposition for them. The significant changes between the 1994 and 2000 versions of ISO 9001 are covered in detail. W

Another key feature of this book is the section on making the transition from legacy standards. This is where the differences between CMM and CMMI, and ISO 9001:1994 and ISO 9001:2000 are clearly highlighted. If you are currently operating under either the older CMM or ISO 9001:94 framework, this section of the book also provides clear guidance for making the transition to the CMMI and ISO 9001:2000. This guidance is in the form of a five-step approach for either implementing anew, or making the transition from a legacy framework - (1) initiating, (2) diagnosing, (3)establishing, (4) acting, and (5) learning. The authors also provide ISO 9001:2000->CMMI and CMMI->ISO 9001:2000 document mapping, which will cut through the maze and show how to reduce unnecessary documentation by integrating documentation where possible.

The authors have produced a book that is exceptionally well written, clarifies two complex frameworks, and shows how they can be used in conjunction with one another.

[I'm stingy in my ratings. I could easily give this book 5 stars, but I try to use the entire rating scale.]

This book is the best available complement to the free HTML documentation (which is available online, or on CD in many books, including this one). I like the latest version of the Welch book, with its vastly improved index, but I find the explanations to be a bit sparse.

For example, I am an experienced programmer in several languages, but I still had a lot of questions about local scoping vis-a-vis namespaces after reading Welch and the docs. Flynt made this topic transparent, with diagrams and examples. I also liked his example of building a tree data structure, which demonstrated to me better than anything that Tcl is simply the wrong language for building trees.

That brings me to what I dislike about this book. The code examples are sometimes too long. In my opinion, long code should be only on the CD, to save paper space. And as the book is shorter than Welch's latest, I think the space should not have been wasted.

About 1/3 of the book is devoted to Tk, similar to Welch. I have no interest in Tk anymore, so that is all a waste for me. (If you ARE interested in Tk, Effective Tcl/Tk programming is a great source.)

There is a fair amount of info on the C library, but I think that Ousterhout's old book is still the best place for that. However, Flynt provides great advice on practical ways of interfacing with C/C++ (SWIG, Starkits, Starpacks).

He also details the pro and cons of various Tcl tools, some free. This sort of information goes out of date quickly. For example, the author already mentioned privately to a friend that "nagelfar" is now his own favorite syntax checker. But at the moment, most of his info is current.

In short, this is the best book for Tcl developers. But please consider Lua as an alternative interfacing language.

This book covers the Tcl language and the Tk toolkit in exhaustive detail. It works very well as an introduction to Tcl/Tk and as a reference guide for developers more experienced with Tcl/Tk.

All companies, from the largest to the smallest, perform technology acquisitions. There are definite steps in the sequence, from the determination of need to the final step in the integration. For example, even the basic choice of a compiler for development has stages of determining the needs, performing research, acquiring the compiler and integrating it into the enterprise. The key to success is to consider the purchase of new technology to be a process, subject to rules that control the decision making structure. BR> Each step is clearly defined with instructions on how to do it well. While the advice is often an apparent statement of the obvious, that is not a drawback. In business, the best advice one can often hear is a simple, accurate remark repeated over and over. All too often, technology decisions are made on emotional attachment rather than environmental or economic fit. By following the advice laid out in this book, the influence of emotions and politics can be reduced.
Making the right decisions concerning what technology to use is a decision that all businesses are required to make. If you follow the rules in this book, it will not be made any easier, in fact it may be made harder. However, they will increase your chances of making the correct one, and that is far more important than making the easy one.

Technology Acquisition: Buying the Future of Your Business is a great book for establishing procurement best practices or confirming existing practices. This book is not a high-level overview but provides you with detailed step-by-step procedures, case studies, and a wealth of examples. As a consultant, each company that I work with is different and this book has helped me to establish a complete procurement cycle with the client. Many companies, it seems, do not have a cradle to grave procurement practice and therefore do not understand what a project manager should be responsible for. This book gives you a starting place. Also, it is evident that the author is speaking from experience - he has done what is in the book and the examples demonstrate a real working knowledge of the topic. I highly recommend this to any person starting a new project.

The language is easy to read and the style contributes to fast and smooth reading. The book can also be read very fast because there is not enough new facts in the book to slow you down.

The book mainly explains the obvious (although too often ignored) practices that helps your development project: stay focused, avoid distractions, avoid interruptions, avoid wasting time, avoid unnecessary meetings (meetings are interruptions and far too often a waste of time), fix bugs early. The book has some stories to explain the above practices. But, the book has no hard facts to help you fight for the above practices in case you have a "pointy haired" boss.

In my opinion "Rapid Development" by Steve McConnel is a far better book. "Rapid development" has all the hard facts that "Debugging the development process" lacks. "Rapid development" also describes more practices and has a broader view of the development project that "Debugging the development process".

I recommend this book to anyone managing (or thinking of managing) a development team. It contains practical advice, good examples, and a real world feel for how developers work (and can improve their work) and how managers can "stay out of their way" so that they can get their work done. This is one of the only Microsoft Press books that I read from cover to cover. Highly recommended!

This is really a very good book. I wanted to use it as a textbook for a Software Engineering class I am teaching, but now that it is out of print I felt I couldn't.

Anyone who needs to manage programmers, or is dependent on programmers should read this book. It is also a good read for anyone looking to help improve the overall productivity of "information workers." Simple things like how and why you schedule your meetings make a big impact.

As IT professional I found little surprises in this book about technology and the author visions how it will further influence (change) our daily lives.

Why? Because the issue Mr. Gates is writing about with such passion is really an old story nowadays. Let me explain. We have an "old" IT infrastructure in some places that is not good enough to support companies in a new economy, fortunately most of the corporate world also possess "new" PC and PC based devices connected to the Internet that are (according to Mr. Gates) fully capable and optimal way of supporting business in the 21st century. Hmm...I know at least couple of people that will strongly disagree with that (Larry and Scott where are you :-). The result is that corporate management is desperately looking for clues how to make the best use of this "new" technology to succeed in a new economy.

This book will help you get most of the answers, but (as usually) don't buy everything you read!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not negative about the book, in fact I learned a lot from Mr. Gates as businessperson. With his enthusiastic writing style, he kept me constantly rethinking from chapter to chapter about existing solutions in my company from business perspective and NOT from IT as usually!

Another good reason to read this book are real world examples from different companies, including Microsoft Corporation itself, on how you can gain business advantage with proper use of digital tools.

Last but not least, if you think that you know Mr. Gates and his company well then think again or better yet, read this book!

We found the concepts in Gates & Hemingway (2000) "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy" interesting and helpful for business planning and development. Creating a "digital nervous system" seems a lofty ideal and a little too technical and impersonal though.

We would have liked to see more business examples outside of the Microsoft examples they cited.

What we also liked about this book is that it offers a brief glimpse into the mind and thinking of one of the most successful businessman in history. For anyone interested in business/leadership biography, this is a worthwhile read.

The digital nervous system is built using PC technologies, low cost software, and internet protocols. Specialized companies give choice in terms of chips, system software, business applications, networking, and service. COM/.Net Object technology allows the developer to use the component without having to know the inner workings, extends usefuliness through reusability, and communicates across different networks as three tiered architecture. For example, Merill Lynch presents fifty separate applications as one single interface on the desktop.

Middleware serves the purpose too make different applications and systems integrate together. Middleware has the potential to keep all data consistent between different systems. Leaps in PC performance have eliminated the need to deploy incompabile middleware applications. High end PC hardware is compability and the software is a 100 percent compabile. The homogeneous platform is the reason PCs are being accepted as servers. ERP companies are moving to PC technology realizing support for more internet user pools at lower costs. The internet protocol allows software running on PC servers to provide information analysis and business transactions.

Out of the box software provides easy to customize applications to meet business needs. Using a three tiered architecture combined with customized software makes customization more possible. Companies of all sizes have PC technology. Microsoft next generation of 64 bit operating system will give Microsoft a larger stake of Unix servers. Microsoft NT has already scaled by Unisys as a Mainframe power equivalent operating system. Microsoft and telecom technology will allow voice and data networks to pass information over fiber lines and be internet based.

Savings on infrastructure are significant. Listed companies realizing savings were: McDonalds - predicted savings of 18 percent, Dayton Hudson ($100 million and save at least that amount in operation savings), Lockheed and Martin Marietta (cut IT spending by $700 million over five years - realized in two years),

Horizonally integrated computer industry based on PC technology attracts more software development. Software developer build software components reducing the cost of business and providing a rich layer of functionality. Windows standardize operating system insulates the developer from the variablity of the hardware. Selecting PC technology safe quards your software investment and retains hardware preference.

In summary, cheap harddrives, massive amounts of memory, faster processors have reduced the cost of PC technology. Rich internet applications can be streamed to browser or client applications using internet protocols. More cities will invest in fiber optic infrastructure bring media, voice, and video to businesses and homes. Combining these two factors: cheap PC technology and standardize Internet Protocols will allow software developers to provide rich business functionality and result in "Free capitalism". We are just beginning to discover what the computer can do for us. There will be many more billionaries in the next generation.

This is a well-written, interesting book. However, in my opinion, it tells only part of the story. It looks at how Netscape formulated its strategy, but not at how (or whether) this strategy was executed.

This is like explaining a football game entirely on the basis of the diagrams that the coaches drew on the chalkboard. What actually happened on the field gets no attention.

For example, the authors claim that one of Netscape's strategies was to leverage Internet standards. However, the reality is that with its browser Netscape thumbed its nose at Internet standards, particularly when it dominated the market. Even today, its browser generally is seen as less compliant with standards than is Microsoft Explorer.

Another alleged Netscape strategy was to "eat your own dogfood," which means using your own products. The reality is quite different. For example, Netscape released a production version of Enterprise 3.0 and kept its own web site on Enterprise 2.0 for several months afterward.

In 1996, a key component of Netscape's web server was something they called LiveWire, which provided scripting and database connectivity. I adopted it for my web site in the second half of 1996. However, after several months of trying to get it to work reliably, we had to abandon it, moving to Java servlets instead.

Meanwhile, as of late 1997 (when I stopped following it), Netscape's web site still had not adoped LiveWire. They let other users suffer with the bugs and problems in LiveWire, while they ran their own site using the older technology of CGI/Perl. That means they spent at least 1-1/2 years in real time (multiply by 7x to get Internet time) NOT eating their own dogfood. In contrast, Microsoft used their competing Active Server Page technology immediately on their sites.

To return to the football analogy, my epitaph for Netscape is that it is a company that told the press and its shareholders that it was aiming to play in the Super Bowl, but disdained to practice blocking and tackling.

While Netscape's executives were formulating these nifty strategies, Sun and Microsoft were getting their code in shape. In my opinion, that is most of the story.

Probably fine as a business tome, but as an entertaining read, I found this a failure. I hardly got through the first few pages; the books starts with a long, obvious and patronising exposition about how internet has transformed our lives and what a revolution it's been. It reminded me a lot of "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates.
Microsoft has been commercially successful, but at the cost of integrity. It has none whatsoever. This may indeed be Microsoft's downfall in the end, because the hatred towards this company is reaching a fever pitch. More and more users will realise that they can get by using other operating systems and products, supported by companies who have a less selfish vision for the future of computing.

One thing that I especially enjoyed about this book is that it almost completely avoided any gratuitous Gates/Microsoft bashing that appears to be vogue these days. Instead, Cusumano and Yoffie take the reader on a detailed yet interesting dissection of the organizations and decision making processes of the top brass at both Microsoft and Netscape. I also liked the way the authors would candidly point out where bad decisions/strategies were made, but fairly analyzed why they failed, and why they might have seemed like good decisions at the time. The allusions and comparisons to judo strategy in business were interesting as well.

I'm not really a marketing weenie but I've gotten stuck with the task of acting as a marketing manager for a new release in our product line. We're a software company who builds GPS program. We've been having a lot of problems with the new release as a lot of our customers have been expressing confusion about what the new product does and why it's different from our existing program, which is selling pretty well.

A friend of mine visited the website that has excerpts of this book up and thought I might find it useful. I bought a copy and the first chapter I began reading deals with a company called "Wordstar." I've never heard of them but it was the description of what happened to them that caught my attention. Apparently they built two Wordstars, priced them the same, gave them similar features and tried to sell them to the same people.

I went into the office the next day and sat down with the company founder and read the chapter. When he was done, he looked at me and said "that's what we are doing, isn't it." And we are. Now I have to fix this mess, but at least I understand what's been going on.

I'm having this book bronzed.

I bought this book after it was recommended to me by a friend who I'd worked with at Novell during the period that Merril Chapman describes, during the 90s when Microsoft was tearing the guts out of NetWare and taking away our leadership in LANs. A lot of people from Novell have bought the book since it's about the only one that analyzes what happened at Novell and Chapman has just about nailed it. I'm still wondering who told him about our closing down our 3rd party development operation in Austin.

I'm the president of a new startup and I've bought a couple of copies of In Search of Stupidity and I've asked my entire management staff to read it. Afterwards, I asked some of my people to tell me what they learned. A couple of my managers just shrugged and said they didn't think the book applied to them. I find that interesting because these are my weakest people. My best hires discuss the book constantly and have begun to take another look at some of our marketing programs based on some of the analysis in Stupidity. For us, the book is a very valuable guide, we've started running some of our marketing plans against the stories to make sure we're not repeating history. Chapman says he's planning a sequel and no one wants to be in it.

What's also interesting about this book is the strong reactions it generates. You can tell by reading some of the reviews here. For instance, the comments by some people that the book deals only with dead companies or that the author worked for all these companies. Stupidity describes the problems at companies like Novell, Borland, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and lots of others who are clearly still in business. And while Chapman worked for a couple of the companies he writes about, he doesn't claim to have worked for them all. Some of these reviews seem odd to me, like the person writing them hadn't actually read the book. This book seems to make some people very uncomfortable. I can imagine why.

This book IS timely. The DotCom busts were easy to analyze, even at the time (D'uh!) - no brick and mortar, no estute business plans, just vapor, b.s. and a temporary momentum that abruptly ended up sending everyone back down to reality. Geez, who'da guessed businesses without a tangible product couldn't survive? Go figure. Who even worries about using those stupid models now?

But every student of business and business leader should learn from the obvious mistakes of others. The industry of subject in this book (IT) is still full plenty of people capable of making those mistakes. But the mentality is in every other industry as well and the lessons are applicable outside of IT and computers.

A must read for every marketing major. I taught at university from the book as soon as I got it. Students sucked it up. This book gives you a great chance to learn and an enjoyable story to follow, too. BTW, I giggled when I read it. Get the book. now.

The major problem with this book is that ER NEVER really
discusses the "business model" used by the "software" industry
which is more of a form racketeering and money laundering
than any legitimate model. Since he does not do this and
does not offer a viable alternative business model - he
doomed open source to a quick death. Had he taken this
issue more seriously,Enron,WorldCom,Auther Andersen and Perigrine
debacles might have been avoided.

The cult-like status of this book and its Web antecedents in the Linux community isn't surprising. But even for those of us who aren't staunch open-source partisans, it's a surprisingly well-argued (if a bit scattered) and concise collection.

Taken as a whole, the book makes a series of good business cases for when opening the source code to software is appropriate and potentially profitable -- as well as maximally efficient. I was pleased that Raymond acknowledges that open source is _not_ always the best way to go, even while noting that it will probably be more prevalent over time.

Raymond's fervour about open source shows through, particularly late in the book, but it doesn't detract from the largely objective analyses he makes -- so his arguments carry force.

Worth reading for anyone who's a programmer, a hacker, or interested in the politics of the software business. Or anyone else, for that matter.

I read it in one evening. It was extremely well written. Eric Raymond is a hacker with a tremendous command of the English language. He imparts information and his beliefs in a way that even non-geeks should understand. I gave it to my boss and he was fascinated also. This book is an important work that juxtaposes the traditional "Cathedral" style of software development (i.e. Microsoft) with the contemorary "Bazaar" style in which open source software is written (i.e. Linux). It explains how hackers all over the world somehow came together to form a formidable revolution of open source software. Linus Torvalds started it. Eric Raymond explained it. Long live the revolution! I have been using Linux for 2 years so I am partial of course. But ask yourself - Why would you pay for mediocre software, created by good people with bad deadlines, when you can get better software, created by good people for the love of it, for free, that is better supported?

Larry is the man. I admire the way mike wilson
portrays larry so candidly and shows that
ruthlessness and agressiveness are what larry
leveraged to success.

this book is compelling and chilling. lawrence joseph
ellison's ride to the top was not as easy like william gates
but he showed exemplary management skills and devoted his life
to Oracle and its growth

a must read for anyone who likes sheer brilliance
and vision

Larry portrays no emotions at all known to man except greed

and the desire to win at by making others fail.Lawrence Ellison
shows that even a second generation immigrant can reach the
highest levels of power in corporate america by sheer effort and vision

Business schools should make a case study of larry and his success story and this book is a good study into winning at any cost

If Larry were in Microsoft,it would be 10 times larger than what it is

The book also portrays the intense hatred larry has for william
gates,simply because gates didn't think larry was important enough. Gates bashing is also part of Larry's style

All in all I became a great fan of larry after reading this book.
But then again I am a fan of any book or movie that portrays the intense burning desire of man to succeed at any cost

Having worked for Oracle as a technical support rep, back when there were only five of us in the US and seven worldwide (we kept our support database on paper because the database was too slow and prone to corruption!), I too recommend book.

"The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison" is a 'must-read' for anyone considering buying a relational database management system, working in the industry, or for anyone who is simply wants to mercilessly crush their competition with mediocre products and high pressure sales tactics. Larry Ellison makes Machievelli look like Saint Francis. However, like Ghengis Khan, you have to admire his accomplishments.

Very good read, I couldn't put this book down until I was finished, larry is the man.

In high risk information based businesses people use names and reputations to make decisions. Fashion and Movies are two examples where the name "Aramani" or "Julia Roberts" will make a product or company a success.

In the "New New Thing" Lewis shows that this process has happened in the buying and selling of High Tech companies (if not their products) and he shows how Jim Clark got rich based upon his reputation.

The book gives a good and fairly candid view of Clark. I felt that Lewis kept his distance from the subject and avoided being swept up in the hype of Clark driven companys. Lewis's writing is fresh and enjoyable. The stories about how High Tech companies get started and how VC's and engineers work together to create companies were interesting and informative.

Lewis focuses entirely on Clark, so it is difficult to tell if Clark's ability to make money based on his name is limited to him, or if there are others who are achieving the Rock Star status he has.

Overall well worth reading.

Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, cashed in $3 million of his stock to build a house. If kept, that stock would have grown to $300 million, "the fastest money ever made legally." No wonder people followed Clark into his new venture, Heatheon, which was supposed to overhaul the paperwork processing of the medical industry with Clark's company in the middle of the flow. Along the way to success, Clark collected many driving, flying and sailing machines, which he loved to operate and fix, but mostly tear down and upgrade. To Clark the future was a continual search for the new new thing.

"The New New Thing" is the story of how three multi-billion dollar business enterprises were not enough for a man who's vision of the future pushed engineers, accountants, venture capitalists, the rest of the computer industry, as well as the general public, into taking a flying leap into the future. Michael Lewis will entertain you with a cast of colorful characters who brought computers and Internet access into nearly every American household and with the hanger-ons who became millionaires in the process. Your eyes will open wide to how Silicon Valley operates on the theory of planned obsolescence, and you'll see enough back stabbing and espionage to conclude that modern businesses are still old-fashioned when piles of money are involved.

I really enjoyed the story line here. Jim Clark was portrayed as a man who had vision, yet the desire to never be "locked in" to something for too long. One might wonder if all of the time spent dealing with the Board of Silicon Graphics made him change his behavior.

I do not agree with some of the posts here stating that the author lives and breathes on the words of Jim Clark. He was a business man that believed there were opportunities and quickly acted upon them. Like everything else, there will always be great and poor business decisions from a leader. No one is an exception here; including Mr. Gates.

So, back to the review; this is an excellent book to give folks an insight into the crazy late 90's, where business vision was accelerated 10 fold. Some big successes and many failure stories.