Essential Infrastructure as Code teaches patterns for scaling systems and supporting infrastructure for mission-critical applications. The book is fullof flexible automation techniques and universal principles that are easy toapply to almost any use case, from data centers, to public cloud, to software-as-a-Service. The book is full of techniques that work whether you're managing your personal projects or making live network changes across a large enterprise. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) replaces time-consuming manual provisioning and configuration with automation via configuration managers or provisioning tools like Hashicorp Terraform. Managing your infrastructure as code makes it easy to test changes and implement new features, scale systems without downtime or operational toil, and rapidly roll back mistakes.

The first course in software engineering is the most critical. Education must start from an understanding of the heart of software development, from familiar ground that is common to all software development endeavors. This book is an in-depth introduction to software engineering that uses a systematic, universal kernel to teach the essential elements of all software engineering methods. This kernel, Essence, is a vocabulary for defining methods and practices. Essence was envisioned and originally created by Ivar Jacobson and his colleagues, developed by Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) and approved by The Object Management Group (OMG) as a standard in 2014. Essence is a practice-independent framework for thinking and reasoning about the practices we have and the practices we need. Essence establishes a shared and standard understanding of what is at the heart of software development. Essence is agnostic to any particular method, lifecycle independent, programming language independent, concise, scalable, extensible, and formally specified. Essence frees the practices from their method prisons. The first part of the book describes Essence, the essential elements to work with, the essential things to do and the essential competencies you need when developing software. The other three parts describe more and more advanced use cases of Essence. Using real but manageable examples, it covers the fundamentals of Essence and the innovative use of serious games to support software engineering. It also explains how current practices such as user stories, use cases, Scrum, and micro-services can be described using Essence, and illustrates how their activities can be represented using the Essence notions of cards and checklists. The fourth part of the book offers a vision how Essence can be scaled to support large, complex systems engineering. Essence is supported by an ecosystem developed and maintained by a community of experienced people worldwide. From this ecosystem, professors and students can select what they need and create their own way of working, thus learning how to create ONE way of working that matches the particular situation and needs.

In today's unforgiving business environment where customers demand zero defect software at lower costs-it is testing that provides the opportunity for software companies to separate themselves from the competition. Providing a fresh perspective on this increasingly important function, Software Testing as a Service explains, in simple language, how to use software testing to improve productivity, reduce time to market, and reduce costly errors. The book explains how the normal functions of manufacturing can be applied to commoditize the software testing service to achieve consistent quality across all software projects. This up-to-date reference reviews different software testing tools, techniques, and practices and provides succinct guidance on how to estimate costs, allocate resources, and make competitive bids. Replete with examples and case histories, this book shows software development managers, software testers, testing managers, and entrepreneurs how proper planning can lead to the creation of software that proves itself to be head and shoulders above the competition.

Whether you are inheriting a test team or starting one up, Manage Software Testing is a must-have resource that covers all aspects of test management. It guides you through the business and organizational issues that you are confronted with on a daily basis, explaining what you need to focus on strategically, tactically, and operationally. Using a risk-based approach, the author addresses a range of questions about software product development. The book covers unit, system, and non-functional tests and includes examples on how to estimate the number of bugs expected to be found, the time required for testing, and the date when a release is ready. It weighs the cost of finding bugs against the risks of missing release dates or letting bugs appear in the final released product. It is imperative to determine if bugs do exist and then be able to metric how quickly they can be identified, the cost they incur, and how many remain in the product when it is released. With this book, test managers can effectively and accurately establish these parameters.

Aligning an organization's goals and strategies requires specifying their rationales and connections so that the links are explicit and allow for analytic reasoning about what is successful and where improvement is necessary. This book provides guidance on how to achieve this alignment, how to monitor the success of goals and strategies and use measurement to recognize potential failures, and how to close alignment gaps. It uses the GQM+Strategies approach, which provides concepts and actionable steps for creating the link between goals and strategies across an organization and allows for measurement-based decision-making. After outlining the general motivation for organizational alignment through measurement, the GQM+Strategies approach is described concisely, with a focus on the basic model that is created and the process for creating and using this model. The recommended steps of all six phases of the process are then described in detail with the help of a comprehensive application example. Finally, the industrial challenges addressed by the method and cases of its application in industry are presented, and the relations to other approaches, such as Balanced Scorecard, are described. The book concludes with supplementary material, such as checklists and guidelines, to support the application of the method. This book is aimed at organization leaders, managers, decision makers, and other professionals interested in aligning their organization's goals and strategies and establishing an efficient strategic measurement program. It is also interesting for academic researchers looking for mechanisms to integrate their research results into organizational environments.

Electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) is revolutionizing the billing process by offering online and real time presentment of bill content and payment choices. EBPP is the easy way of viewing billing status, remittance items, and presenting balances using a universal browser from any location. In contrast to paper-based bills, electronic billing enables service providers to combine billing with advanced customer care and improved customer relationship management. Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment presents the essentials about this new way of viewing and paying bills. The author defines basic business models, such as biller direct and various consolidator model options, allocates the right tools to each of the models, and differentiates between the needs of principal industries. The text describes how to build and implement value added capabilities such as personalization, up-selling, online dispute management, and better control of the accounts payable and receivable process can significantly improve customer care and customer relationship management on behalf of service providers. About the Author: Kornel Terplan is a telecommunication expert with more than 30 years of highly successful multi-national consulting experience. He has provided consulting, training, and product development services to over 75 national and international corporations on four continents. He has served on the editorial board for over 140 articles, 22 books, and 115 papers. Dr. Terplan has designed five network management related courses and conducted over 80 seminar presentations in 15 countries.

Modeling complex systems is a difficult challenge and all too often one in which modelers are left to their own devices. Using a multidisciplinary approach, The Art of Software Modeling covers theory, practice, and presentation in detail. It focuses on the importance of model creation and demonstrates how to create meaningful models. Presenting three self-contained sections, the text examines the background of modeling and frameworks for organizing information. It identifies techniques for researching and capturing client and system information and addresses the challenges of presenting models to specific audiences. Using concepts from art theory and aesthetics, this broad-based approach encompasses software practices, cognitive science, and information presentation. The book also looks at perception and cognition of diagrams, view composition, color theory, and presentation techniques. Providing practical methods for investigating and organizing complex information, The Art of Software Modeling demonstrates the effective use of modeling techniques to improve the development process and establish a functional, useful, and maintainable software system.

Delivering successful projects means the ability to produce high quality software within budget and on time-consistently, but when one mentions quality to software engineers or project managers, they talk about how impossible it is to eliminate defects from software. This assumption is passed on and on until it becomes accepted wisdom, with the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when a project fails to arrive on time or up to standards, team members will turn on each other. The project got delayed because the engineers did a poor job in development or too much was promised upfront for this short of a timeline. In Delivering Successful Projects with TSPSM and Six Sigma: A Practical Guide to Implementing Team Software ProcessSM, you will learn how to effectively manage the development of a software project and deliver it in line with customer expectations. This refreshing volume - Offers real-world case studies about the author's experience at Microsoft successfully implementing TSP to achieve higher quality software Empowers software developers to take responsibility for project management Explains how Six Sigma and TSP combined can dramatically reduce software defects By applying these principles put forth by one of the most respected names in software development, your software team will learn how to function as a team and turn out products where zero defects and on-time delivery are the norm.

A developer's knowledge of a computing system's requirements is necessarily imperfect because organizations change. Many requirements lie in the future and are unknowable at the time the system is designed and built. To avoid burdensome maintenance costs developers must therefore rely on a system's ability to change gracefully-its flexibility. Flexible Software Design: Systems Development for Changing Requirements demonstrates the design principles and techniques that enable the design of software that empowers business staff to make functional changes to their systems with little or no professional IT intervention. The book concentrates on the design aspects of system development, the area with the most flexibility leverage. Divided into four parts, the text begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of flexibility, explaining the reality of imperfect knowledge and how development participants must change their thinking to implement flexible software. The second part covers design guidelines, stable identifiers, stable information structures, the Generic Entity Cloud concept, and regulatory mechanisms that give business staff control over system modifications. Part three relates strategic information systems planning to flexible systems. It examines the elicitation of requirements and the relevance of agile methods in a flexible systems environment. It also discusses practical aspects of stable identifier design and compares the testing of traditional and flexible software. In part four, the book concludes with details of the flexible UniverSIS system and an explanation of the applications and extensions of the Generic Entity Cloud tools. The combination of smart design and smart work offered in Flexible Software Design can materially benefit your organization by radically reducing the systems maintenance burden.

Characterized by lightning quick innovation, abrupt shifts in technology, and shorter lifecycles, the marketing of IT products and services presents a unique set of challenges and often requires IT managers and developers to get involved in the marketing process. Marketing IT Products and Services is written to help busy IT managers and marketing managers get up to speed quickly and easily on what's needed to develop effective marketing strategies and campaigns. Focusing on the unique issues involved, this one-stop resource provides everything needed to understand the roles, responsibilities, and management techniques essential for the development of successful strategies. It covers strategic market planning, targeting markets, researching markets, understanding the competition, integrating market and sales strategies, nuances of global markets, developing marketing budgets, pricing, and implementing marketing campaigns. A plethora of appendices included on the book's downloadable resources allow you to get up and running right away. Aside from a complete marketing glossary, two complete marketing plans-one for a hardware product; the other for a software product-enable you to bypass the "scut" work of developing a marketing plan so you can focus on the creative aspects of marketing. Because a marketing plan is closely aligned with an organization's business and strategic plans, this book provides you with templates for both of these, as well as a template for that all-important business plan executive summary. The downloadable resources also feature loads of fill-in templates including customer and competitor analysis surveys, sample press releases, letters of agreement, demographic and target market worksheets, and cost benefit forms. If you have a marketing need, this book has an effective template to meet that need.

Modeling Software with Finite State Machines: A Practical Approach explains how to apply finite state machines to software development. It provides a critical analysis of using finite state machines as a foundation for executable specifications to reduce software development effort and improve quality. This book discusses the design of a state machine and of a system of state machines. It also presents a detailed analysis of development issues relating to behavior modeling with design examples and design rules for using finite state machines. This volume describes a coherent and well-tested framework for generating reliable software for even the most complex tasks. The authors demonstrate that the established practice of using a specification as a basis for coding is wrong. Divided into three parts, this book opens by delivering the authors' expert opinions on software, covering the evolution of development as well as costs, methods, programmers, and the development cycle. The remaining two parts encourage the use of state machines: promoting the virtual finite state machine (Vfsm) method and the StateWORKS development tools.

Based on an extensive research project done by the author in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria from December 1999 to June 2001, Enterprise Architecture and New Generation Information Systems focuses on four main themes: Next Generation Information Technology The Likely Technologies of this Decade Enterprise Computing The Internet as the 21st Century's Answer to Merchandising While the majority of books presently available on information systems are written from the viewpoint of system analysis, programming, or common applications, this text: Brings to the reader's attention the importance of organization and infrastructure Presents a wealth of case studies to explain the need for reengineering and restructuring Details the latest advances which influence the implementation of advanced technology Written in a simple, comprehensive manner without specific prerequisites and data processing jargon, with concepts and case studies properly explained, this book addresses itself to practitioners in computer technology, telecommunications and software development, who are interested in acquiring skills through knowledge of the most advanced applications, tools, and methods, both present and coming. Enterprise Architecture and New Generation Information Systems will prove appealing to every person charged with planning, developing, applying, and delivering advanced information systems, architectural solutions, and programming products.

Not connecting software project management (SPM) to actual, real-world development processes can lead to a complete divorcing of SPM to software engineering that can undermine any successful software project. By explaining how a layered process architectural model improves operational efficiency, Process-Based Software Project Management outlines a new method that is more effective than the traditional method when dealing with SPM. With a clear and easy-to-read approach, the book discusses the benefits of an integrated project management-process management connection. The described tight coupling of the process world to the SPM world provides a high degree of completeness and accuracy necessary for effective project management. The author shows you that this process-based approach to SPM increases product quality, shortens time-to-market, reduces life cycle costs, facilitates short system test times, and increases developmental supply chain management (SCM) controls and total repeatability. This underlying process approach also actively involves SCM, software quality assurance (SQA), engineering, and accounting as part of your integrated SPM team for total success. Through examples and detailed explanations, Process-Based Software Project Management illustrates how this novel SPM approach is more profitable and time-efficient when compared to traditional SPM methods. The software manager, along with the support team, will finally all be on "the same page" to achieve SPM/engineering success.

This book introduces all the relevant information required to understand and put Model Driven Architecture (MDA) into industrial practice. It clearly explains which conceptual primitives should be present in a system specification, how to use UML to properly represent this subset of basic conceptual constructs, how to identify just those diagrams and modeling constructs that are actually required to create a meaningful conceptual schema, and how to accomplish the transformation process between the problem space and the solution space. The approach is fully supported by commercially available tools.

This text provides a very simple, initial introduction to the complete scientific computing pipeline: models, discretization, algorithms, programming, verification, and visualization. The pedagogical strategy is to use one case study - an ordinary differential equation describing exponential decay processes - to illustrate fundamental concepts in mathematics and computer science. The book is easy to read and only requires a command of one-variable calculus and some very basic knowledge about computer programming. Contrary to similar texts on numerical methods and programming, this text has a much stronger focus on implementation and teaches testing and software engineering in particular.

From start to finish, you'll see what it takes to develop a successful agile project. Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban to modernize their department--and learn how you can apply those same principles to your own workplace. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: * Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. * Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. * Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. * Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches yourself as you apply those same techniques to your own software development projects.

The aim of this book is to provide a platform to academicians, practitioners, and researchers to understand current and future trends in software reliability growth modeling. Emphasis will be on qualitative work relevant to the theme with particular importance given to mathematical modeling for software reliability and various methods and applications of multi attributed decision making in governing the software performance. Presents software quality and security models Offers reliability analysis, assurance techniques for software systems Covers methodologies, tools, and practical applications of software reliability modeling and testing resources Includes robust reliability design techniques, diagnostic, and decision support Discusses stochastic modelling for software systems

UML for Developing Knowledge Management Systems provides knowledge engineers the framework in which to identify types of knowledge and where this knowledge exists in an organization. It also shows ways in which to use a standard recognized notation to capture, or model, knowledge to be used in a knowledge management system (KMS). This volume enables knowledge engineers, systems analysts, designers, developers, and researchers to understand the concept of knowledge modeling with Unified Modeling Language (UML). It offers a guide to quantifying, qualifying, understanding, and modeling knowledge by providing a reusable framework that can be adopted for KMS implementation. Following a brief history of knowledge management, the book discusses knowledge acquisition and the types of knowledge that can be discovered within a domain. It offers an overview of types of models and the concepts behind them. It then reviews UML and how to apply UML to model knowledge. The book concludes by defining and applying the Knowledge Acquisition framework via a real-world case study.

To achieve consistent software project success under the pressures of today's software development environment, software organizations require achievable plans including viable estimates of schedule, resources, and risks. To estimate realistically, you must understand how to apply sound estimation processes, tools, and data. Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Management: When Performance is Measured Performance Improves is a practical, hands-on discussion of the software estimation, planning, and control process. This includes critical factors that impact estimates, methods for selecting and applying appropriate measures to projects, proper software sizing, and processes to identify and manage risk. The authors use their expertise in sizing, estimation, process engineering, and risk management to clearly demonstrate problems that make many estimates crumble and solutions that provide successful project plans. The book offers insight not available anywhere else, enabling you to recognize and avoid downstream impacts resulting from poor estimates.

This book reviews existing operational software failure analysis techniques and proposes near-miss analysis as a novel, and new technique for investigating and preventing software failures. The authors provide details on how near-miss analysis techniques focus on the time-window before the software failure actually unfolds, so as to detect the high-risk conditions that can lead to a major failure. They detail how by alerting system users of an upcoming software failure, the detection of near misses provides an opportunity to collect at runtime failure-related data that is complete and relevant. They present a near-miss management systems (NMS) for detecting upcoming software failures, which can contribute significantly to the improvement of the accuracy of the software failure analysis. A prototype of the NMS is implemented and is discussed in the book. The authors give a practical hands-on approach towards doing software failure investigations by means of near-miss analysis that is of use to industry and academia

If you look around you will find that all computer systems, from your portable devices to the strongest supercomputers, are heterogeneous in nature. The most obvious heterogeneity is the existence of computing nodes of different capabilities (e.g. multicore, GPUs, FPGAs, ...). But there are also other heterogeneity factors that exist in computing systems, like the memory system components, interconnection, etc. The main reason for these different types of heterogeneity is to have good performance with power efficiency. Heterogeneous computing results in both challenges and opportunities. This book discusses both. It shows that we need to deal with these challenges at all levels of the computing stack: from algorithms all the way to process technology. We discuss the topic of heterogeneous computing from different angles: hardware challenges, current hardware state-of-the-art, software issues, how to make the best use of the current heterogeneous systems, and what lies ahead. The aim of this book is to introduce the big picture of heterogeneous computing. Whether you are a hardware designer or a software developer, you need to know how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. The main goal is to bring researchers and engineers to the forefront of the research frontier in the new era that started a few years ago and is expected to continue for decades. We believe that academics, researchers, practitioners, and students will benefit from this book and will be prepared to tackle the big wave of heterogeneous computing that is here to stay.

If you look around you will find that all computer systems, from your portable devices to the strongest supercomputers, are heterogeneous in nature. The most obvious heterogeneity is the existence of computing nodes of different capabilities (e.g. multicore, GPUs, FPGAs, ...). But there are also other heterogeneity factors that exist in computing systems, like the memory system components, interconnection, etc. The main reason for these different types of heterogeneity is to have good performance with power efficiency. Heterogeneous computing results in both challenges and opportunities. This book discusses both. It shows that we need to deal with these challenges at all levels of the computing stack: from algorithms all the way to process technology. We discuss the topic of heterogeneous computing from different angles: hardware challenges, current hardware state-of-the-art, software issues, how to make the best use of the current heterogeneous systems, and what lies ahead. The aim of this book is to introduce the big picture of heterogeneous computing. Whether you are a hardware designer or a software developer, you need to know how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. The main goal is to bring researchers and engineers to the forefront of the research frontier in the new era that started a few years ago and is expected to continue for decades. We believe that academics, researchers, practitioners, and students will benefit from this book and will be prepared to tackle the big wave of heterogeneous computing that is here to stay.

With recent advances in natural language understanding techniques and far-field microphone arrays, natural language interfaces, such as voice assistants and chatbots, are emerging as a popular new way to interact with computers. They have made their way out of the industry research labs and into the pockets, desktops, cars and living rooms of the general public. But although such interfaces recognize bits of natural language, and even voice input, they generally lack conversational competence, or the ability to engage in natural conversation. Today's platforms provide sophisticated tools for analyzing language and retrieving knowledge, but they fail to provide adequate support for modeling interaction. The user experience (UX) designer or software developer must figure out how a human conversation is organized, usually relying on commonsense rather than on formal knowledge. Fortunately, practitioners can rely on conversation science. This book adapts formal knowledge from the field of Conversation Analysis (CA) to the design of natural language interfaces. It outlines the Natural Conversation Framework (NCF), developed at IBM Research, a systematic framework for designing interfaces that work like natural conversation. The NCF consists of four main components: 1) an interaction model of "expandable sequences," 2) a corresponding content format, 3) a pattern language with 100 generic UX patterns and 4) a navigation method of six basic user actions. The authors introduce UX designers to a new way of thinking about user experience design in the context of conversational interfaces, including a new vocabulary, new principles and new interaction patterns. User experience designers and graduate students in the HCI field as well as developers and conversation analysis students should find this book of interest.

Reliable test design is important in software testing; without it, defects in software may remain undetected. This book presents the key test design techniques, in line with ISTQB, and explains when and how to use them, including in combination, with practical, real-life examples. Automated test design methods are also explored. Tips and exercises are included throughout the book, allowing you to test your knowledge as you progress.

Programmers who endure and succeed amidst swirling uncertainty and nonstop pressure share a common attribute: They care deeply about the practice of creating software. They treat it as a craft. They are professionals. In "The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, " legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. This book is packed with practical advice-about everything from estimating and coding to refactoring and testing. It covers much more than technique: It is about attitude. Martin shows how to approach software development with honor, self-respect, and pride; work well and work clean; communicate and estimate faithfully; face difficult decisions with clarity and honesty; and understand that deep knowledge comes with a responsibility to act. Readers will learn

• What it means to behave as a true software craftsman
• How to deal with conflict, tight schedules, and unreasonable managers
• How to get into the flow of coding, and get past writer's block
• How to handle unrelenting pressure and avoid burnout
• How to combine enduring attitudes with new development paradigms
• How to manage your time, and avoid blind alleys, marshes, bogs, and swamps
• How to foster environments where programmers and teams can thrive
• When to say "No"-and how to say it
• When to say "Yes"-and what yes really means