A comprehensive, practical book on software management that dispels real-world issues through relevant case studies Software managers inevitably will meet obstacles while trying to deliver quality products and provide value to customers, often with tight time restrictions. The result: Software War Stories. This book provides readers with practical advice on how to handle the many issues that can arise as a software project unfolds. It utilizes case studies that focus on what can be done to establish and meet reasonable expectations as they occur in government, industrial, and academic settings. The book also offers important discussions on both traditional and agile methods as well as lean development concepts. Software War Stories: Covers the basics of management as applied to situations ranging from agile projects to large IT projects with infrastructure problems Includes coverage of topics ranging from planning, estimating, and organizing to risk and opportunity management Uses twelve case studies to communicate lessons learned by the author in practice Offers end-of-chapter exercises, sample solutions, and a blog for providing updates and answers to readers' questions Software War Stories: Case Studies in Software Management mentors practitioners, software engineers, students and more, providing relevant situational examples encountered when managing software projects and organizations.

"Looking back, it was a time of madness: an era when billions of dollars - and even more faith - was placed in dotcom startups with inexperienced management and "Swiss cheese" business plans. Robert Glass's ComputingFailure.com is a powerful chronicle of those years, and something more: a cautionary "worst practices" guide for every entrepreneur and e-Business professional." "Glass carefully chooses his case studies for the insights they impart. The executives quoted and profiled in this book have learned hard, expensive lessons - about building compelling business models, about building compelling business models, about managing growth, and about when to ignore the venture capitalists. They've learned surprising lessons about integrating with bricks-and-mortar parent companies and about what it takes to get marketing, tech, and everyone else on the same page."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Ship That Pig: Software Horrors. Learning from real-life software development horror storiesThis book has two main sections of war stories: the back stories, from before I started to keep a regular log of things that happened, and the stories after that. All of the war stories are based on true events. I hope that this book both provides for numerous new ideas in computing, as well as to provide some insight as to how it is that the mind of a typical IT person reacts in response to stressful work situations. I believe it will be of interest to anyone who has encountered a stressful event in their life and had the urge to tell people about how they thought things should be done in light of that event. I also chronicle my experiences and thoughts to show how I came to develop some of the computer ideas that are noted in this text. I see myself as the average IT worker. I often rehash old situations and scenarios in my mind, playing through all the details. I look for things I can learn from, and things that didn't make any sense. I produce tons of ideas every day, many are repeats of other ideas but some are brand new. I feel that I should write them all down, no matter how insignificant, because I believe that even the simplest idea can really help the right person. What I hope to illustrate is that even by attempting to avoid conflict, it still finds us because of how poorly managed these projects are. Something has to be done, and I suggest various ways that these issues could be resolved. However, I don't imagine a true solution is coming anytime soon, so long as the forces that are creating these conflicts are still around. My own grandmother recently recounted to me a story that, aside from the technology used, almost exactly matched the scenarios I have encountered... but her story dates to the 1940's! From this fact alone, it is clear that the same mistakes have been repeated for long enough.

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

“An important, disturbing, and gripping history” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), the never-before-told story of the computer scientists and the NSA, Pentagon, and White House policymakers who invent and employ cyber wars—where every country can be a major power player and every hacker a mass destroyer. In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a teenager unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the scenario was plausible. The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security. From the 1991 Gulf War to conflicts in Haiti, Serbia, Syria, the former Soviet republics, Iraq, and Iran, where cyber warfare played a significant role, Dark Territory chronicles a little-known past that shines an unsettling light on our future. Fred Kaplan probes the inner corridors of the National Security Agency, the beyond-top-secret cyber units in the Pentagon, the “information warfare” squads of the military services, and the national security debates in the White House to reveal the details of the officers, policymakers, scientists, and spies who devised this new form of warfare and who have been planning—and (more often than people know) fighting—these wars for decades. “An eye-opening history of our government’s efforts to effectively manage our national security in the face of the largely open global communications network established by the World Wide Web….Dark Territory is a page-turner [and] consistently surprising” (The New York Times).

This self-help guide is for programmers who need to improve their management and leadership skills.