Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail offers a new path to success in the software industry. This book reaches out to managers, developers, and customers who use industry-standard methodologies, but whose projects still struggle to succeed. Author George Stepanek analyzes the project management methodology itself, a critical factor that has thus far been overlooked. He explains why it creates problems for software development projects and begins by describing 12 ways in which software projects are different from other kinds of projects. He also analyzes the project management body of knowledge to discover 10 hidden assumptions that are invalid in the context of software projects.

Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail offers a new path to success in the software industry. This book reaches out to managers, developers, and customers who use industry-standard methodologies, but whose projects still struggle to succeed. Author George Stepanek analyzes the project management methodology itself, a critical factor that has thus far been overlooked. He explains why it creates problems for software development projects and begins by describing 12 ways in which software projects are different from other kinds of projects. He also analyzes the project management body of knowledge to discover 10 hidden assumptions that are invalid in the context of software projects.

* No other writer on the popular topic of Agile methods and software development methods has identified project management’s best practices as a cause of software project failure. The analysis clearly shows how these best practices can create problems for software development projects. * The book assumes no technical knowledge, and is accessible to businesspeople—project managers, executives and customers—who may know nothing about software development. This book is geared towards a wide group of IT professionals and decision makers working in 2005. * This book is not just theoretical. The detailed case studies included make the material come to life. They illustrate how methodology choices influence the success or failure of software development projects.

"In Secrets of Software Success, the authors investigate the software industry's best practices in order to develop a complete picture of what it takes to build a thriving software business."--BOOK JACKET. "Drawing on an exclusive worldwide survey of more than 100 global software companies and 450 top executives, Secrets of Software Success presents the first panoramic view of the conditions that influence results for both the product and the service sides of the software industry."--BOOK JACKET.

Based on highly confidential interviews with personnel, internal memos, and top-secret company documents, this compelling portrait reveals the philosophy, style, and competitive strategies that have taken Microsoft to the heights of the high-tech industry.

A primer on the underlying technologies that allow computer programs to work. Covers topics like computer hardware, combinatorial logic, sequential logic, computer architecture, computer anatomy, and Input/Output. Many coders are unfamiliar with the underlying technologies that make their programs run. But why should you care when your code appears to work? Because you want it to run well and not be riddled with hard-to-find bugs. You don't want to be in the news because your code had a security problem. Lots of technical detail is available online but it's not organized or collected into a convenient place. In The Secret Life of Programs, veteran engineer Jonathan E. Steinhart explores--in depth--the foundational concepts that underlie the machine. Subjects like computer hardware, how software behaves on hardware, as well as how people have solved problems using technology over time. You'll learn: How the real world is converted into a form that computers understand, like bits, logic, numbers, text, and colors The fundamental building blocks that make up a computer including logic gates, adders, decoders, registers, and memory Why designing programs to match computer hardware, especially memory, improves performance How programs are converted into machine language that computers understand How software building blocks are combined to create programs like web browsers Clever tricks for making programs more efficient, like loop invariance, strength reduction, and recursive subdivision The fundamentals of computer security and machine intelligence Project design, documentation, scheduling, portability, maintenance, and other practical programming realities. Learn what really happens when your code runs on the machine and you'll learn to craft better, more efficient code.