Introduction. Software runaway war stories. Software runaway remedies. Conclusions.

Every year in the US, almost two million children run away from home. In addition, on the average, the police in our country have at any one time over 100,000 active missing-adult cases. This book will show readers how, with just a little advance preparation and insight, they can greatly increase their chances of finding a missing loved one, even after police have stopped actively looking. With sensationalized child disappearances, teenagers vanishing, and adults faking their own deaths, the challenge of finding missing persons often falls most directly on those who love them. And though in past years this involved a considerable amount of footwork, that is no longer the case. With the advent of the Internet and the many new search engines available, much of the searching and canvassing can now be done from computers. Family members and friends looking for missing loved ones need to know what programs and databases to access, though, to get the search under way. Snow, reveals to readers the process the police use when trying to locate missing people of interest, information that readers can then use to locate their own missing loved ones. Using real stories and first hand accounts, the author offers hope and guidance to those who may have given up the search for a child, a spouse, a parent, or a friend.

Regarding the controversial and thought-provoking assessments in this handbook, many software professionals might disagree with the authors, but all will embrace the debate. Glass identifies many of the key problems hampering success in this field. Each fact is supported by insightful discussion and detailed references.

An empirically based study of why software development failures happen, and the lessons we can learn. Failed or abandoned software development projects cost the U.S. economy alone billions of dollars a year. In Software Development Failures, Kweku Ewusi-Mensah offers an empirically grounded study that suggests why these failures happen and how they can be avoided. Case studies analyzed include the well-known Confirm travel industry reservation program, FoxMeyer's Delta, the IRS's Tax System Modernization, the Denver International Airport's Baggage Handling System, and CODIS. It has been estimated that one-third of software development projects fail or are abandoned outright because of cost overruns, delays, and reduced functionality. Some consider this an acceptable risk—that it is simply the cost of doing business. Ewusi-Mensah argues that understanding the factors involved in development failures will help developers and businesses bring down the rate of software failure and abandoned projects. Ewusi-Mensah explores the reasons software development projects are vulnerable to failure and why issues of management and organization are at the core of any failed project. He examines these projects not from a deterministically technical perspective but as part of a complex technical and social process; he proposes a framework of factors that contribute to the decision to abandon a project and enumerates the risks and uncertainties inherent in each phase of a project's life cycle. Exploring the multiplicity of factors that make software development risky, he presents empirical data that is reinforced by analyses of the reported cases. He emphasizes the role of the user in the development process and considers the effect of organizational politics on a project. Finally, he considers what lessons can be learned from past failures and how software development practices can be improved.

This book brings together experts to discuss relevant results in software process modeling, and expresses their personal view of this field. It is designed for a professional audience of researchers and practitioners in industry, and graduate-level students.

Betrayal! Corruption! Software engineering? Industry experts Johann Rost and Robert L. Glass explore the seamy underbelly of software engineering in this timely report on and analysis of the prevalance of subversion, lying, hacking, and espionage on every level of software project management. Based on the authors' original research and augmented by frank discussion and insights from other well-respected figures, The Dark Side of Software Engineering goes where other management studies fear to tread -- a corporate environment where schedules are fabricated, trust is betrayed, millions of dollars are lost, and there is a serious need for the kind of corrective action that this book ultimately proposes.

This is a text for those engaged in creating new, high-value software solutions for which an existing exemplar does not exist. Creating new software is not the same as replicating or doing something similar. It discusses creating software with high uncertainty about what is required, what the users will do, how the users will react, and what value will be delivered. The text addresses software similar to Class IV, V, and VI rapids, and considers how to understand the problem, determine requirements, design for uncertainty and the unknown, plan and execute a project involving innovative software, and how to form a suitable team for the activity. While these topics are sometimes touched upon in other texts, this book adopts a holistic view of the challenge and discusses how the pieces fit together and what must be done to deal with the inherent risks of innovative projects. Approximately one-half of the text is on how to understand the problem and figure out the requirements, with the other focusing on the design and implementation aspects for high-risk software.