Even leading organizations with sophisticated IT infrastructures and teams of lawyers can find themselves unprepared to deal with the range of issues that can arise in IT contracting. Written by two seasoned attorneys, A Guide to IT Contracting: Checklists, Tools, and Techniques distills the most critical business and legal lessons learned through the authors' decades of experience drafting and negotiating IT-related agreements. In a single volume, readers can quickly access information on virtually every type of technology agreement. Structured to focus on a particular type of IT agreement, each chapter includes a checklist of essential terms, a brief summary of what the agreement is intended to do, and a complete review of the legal and business issues that are addressed in that particular agreement. Providing non-legal professionals with the tools to address IT contracting issues, the book: Contains checklists to help readers organize key concepts for ready reference Supplies references to helpful online resources and aids for contract drafting Includes downloadable resources with reusable checklists and complete glossary that defines key legal, business, and technical terms Costly mistakes can be avoided, risk can be averted, and better contracts can be drafted if you have access to the right information. Filled with reader-friendly checklists, this accessible reference will set you down that path. Warning you of the most common pitfalls, it arms you with little-known tips and best practices to help you negotiate the key terms of your IT agreements with confidence and ensure you come out on top in your next contract negotiation.

The Maintenance Management Framework describes and reviews the concept, process and framework of modern maintenance management of complex systems; concentrating specifically on modern modelling tools (deterministic and empirical) for maintenance planning and scheduling. It will be bought by engineers and professionals involved in maintenance management, maintenance engineering, operations management, quality, etc. as well as graduate students and researchers in this field.

Developing today's complex systems requires "more" than just good software engineering solutions. Many are faced with complex systems projects, incomplete or inaccurate requirements, canceled projects, or cost overruns, and have their systems' users in revolt and demanding more. Others want to build user-centric systems, but fear managing the process. This book describes an approach that brings the engineering process together with human performance engineering and business process reengineering. The result is a manageable user-centered process for gathering, analyzing, and evaluating requirements that can vastly improve the success rate in the development of medium-to-large size systems and applications.
Unlike some texts that are primarily conceptual, this volume provides guidelines, "how-to" information, and examples, enabling the reader to quickly apply the process and techniques to accomplish the following goals:
* define high quality requirements,
* enhance productive client involvement,
* help clients maintain competitiveness,
* ensure client buy-in and support throughout the process,
* reduce missing functionality and corrections, and
* improve user satisfaction with systems.
This volume clearly details the role of user-centered requirements and knowledge acquisition within Scenario-Based Engineering Process (SEP) and identifies SEP products and artifacts. It assists project personnel in planning and managing effective requirements activities, including managing risks, avoiding common problems with requirements elicitation, organizing project participants and tools, and managing the logistics. Guidelines are provided for the following: selecting the right individual and group techniques to elicit scenarios and requirements from users; subject matter experts, or other shareholders; and ensuring engineers or analysts have the necessary skills.

Developing today's complex systems requires "more" than just good software engineering solutions. Many are faced with complex systems projects, incomplete or inaccurate requirements, canceled projects, or cost overruns, and have their systems' users in revolt and demanding more. Others want to build user-centric systems, but fear managing the process. This book describes an approach that brings the engineering process together with human performance engineering and business process reengineering. The result is a manageable user-centered process for gathering, analyzing, and evaluating requirements that can vastly improve the success rate in the development of medium-to-large size systems and applications.
Unlike some texts that are primarily conceptual, this volume provides guidelines, "how-to" information, and examples, enabling the reader to quickly apply the process and techniques to accomplish the following goals:
* define high quality requirements,
* enhance productive client involvement,
* help clients maintain competitiveness,
* ensure client buy-in and support throughout the process,
* reduce missing functionality and corrections, and
* improve user satisfaction with systems.
This volume clearly details the role of user-centered requirements and knowledge acquisition within Scenario-Based Engineering Process (SEP) and identifies SEP products and artifacts. It assists project personnel in planning and managing effective requirements activities, including managing risks, avoiding common problems with requirements elicitation, organizing project participants and tools, and managing the logistics. Guidelines are provided for the following: selecting the right individual and group techniques to elicit scenarios and requirements from users; subject matter experts, or other shareholders; and ensuring engineers or analysts have the necessary skills.

Until now, business systems have focused on selected data within a certain context to produce information. A better approach, says Thierauf, is to take information accompanied by experience over time to generate knowledge. He demonstrates that knowledge management systems can be used as a source of power to outmaneuver business competitors. Knowledge discovery tools enable decision makers to extract the patterns, trends, and correlations that underlie the inner (and inter-) workings of a company. His book is the first comprehensive text to define this important new direction in computer technology and will be essential reading for MIS practitioners, systems analysts, and academics researching and teaching the theory and applications of knowledge management systems.

Thierauf centers on leveraging a company's knowledge capital. Indeed, knowledge is power--the power to improve customer satisfaction, marketing and production methods, financial operations, and other functions. Thierauf shows how knowledge, when developed and renewed, can be applied to a company's functional areas and provide an important competitive advantage. By utilizing some form of internal and external computer networks and providing some type of knowledge discovery software that encapsulates usable knowledge, Thierauf shows how to create an infrastructure to capture knowledge, store it, improve it, clarify it, and disseminate it throughout the organization, then how to use it regularly. His book demonstrates clearly how knowledge management systems focus on making knowledge available to company employees in the right format, at the right time, and in the right place. The result is inevitably a higher order of intelligence in decision making, more so now than could ever have been possible in even the most recent past.

Align IT projects strategically to achieve business goals and objectives Project management and leadership to seize opportunities and manage threats Build and follow a roadmap to implement strategic governance Assess and improve project management capabilities Includes templates and case studies

Although the potential of information technology (IT) is beyond dispute, it proves to be very difficult to evaluate its true business value. In the present competitive business arena, modern IT provides the enabling infrastructure for efficient and effective business operations, leveraging business improvements and securing a competitive edge. Capturing the value of this IT-based infrastructure is often considered as the most critical and yet the most complex part of managerial decision-making. Many managers do not try to justify their expenditure or measure whether their money was well spent. This situation has become unacceptable in the light of the rising costs and uncertain benefits of this increasingly important type of business investment. The call for more financial returns and more ‘value for money’ can no longer be ignored. Making the right investment evaluations will make the vital difference between business success and failure.

This book provides a unique perspective on assessing and creating business value from investments in IT-based infrastructure and, more importantly, it shows how the role of IT-based infrastructure is critical to obtain the full benefits of IT.

Information Security Policies, Procedures, and Standards: A Practitioner's Reference gives you a blueprint on how to develop effective information security policies and procedures. It uses standards such as NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, and COBIT, and regulations such as HIPAA and PCI DSS as the foundation for the content. Highlighting key terminology, policy development concepts and methods, and suggested document structures, it includes examples, checklists, sample policies and procedures, guidelines, and a synopsis of the applicable standards. The author explains how and why procedures are developed and implemented rather than simply provide information and examples. This is an important distinction because no two organizations are exactly alike; therefore, no two sets of policies and procedures are going to be exactly alike. This approach provides the foundation and understanding you need to write effective policies, procedures, and standards clearly and concisely. Developing policies and procedures may seem to be an overwhelming task. However, by relying on the material presented in this book, adopting the policy development techniques, and examining the examples, the task will not seem so daunting. You can use the discussion material to help sell the concepts, which may be the most difficult aspect of the process. Once you have completed a policy or two, you will have the courage to take on even more tasks. Additionally, the skills you acquire will assist you in other areas of your professional and private life, such as expressing an idea clearly and concisely or creating a project plan.

Advances in information technology (IT) have influenced how organizations do business. With IT playing such a pivotal role in the operations and success of an organization, it is imperative that it be used strategically. As a repository of cases, Cases on E-Readiness and Information Systems Management in Organizations: Tools for Maximizing Strategic Alignment contains research that readers can use to assess the e-readiness of their own organizations. This book presents principles, tools, and techniques about e-readiness, while also offering in-depth perspectives on applying the e-readiness model for the purpose of aligning IT with organizational strategies.

Verification isjob one in today's modem design process. Statistics tell us that the verification process takes up a majority of the overall work. Chips that come back dead on arrival scream that verification is at fault for not finding the mistakes. How do we ensure success? After an accomplishment, have you ever had someone ask you, "Are you good or are you just lucky?"? Many design projects depend on blind luck in hopes that the chip will work. Other's, just adamantly rely on their own abilities to bring the chip to success. ill either case, how can we tell the difference between being good or lucky? There must be a better way not to fail. Failure. No one likes to fail. ill his book, "The Logic of Failure," Dietrich Domer argues that failure does not just happen. A series of wayward steps leads to disaster. Often these wayward steps are not really logical, decisive steps, but more like default omissions. Anti-planning if you will, an ad-hoc approach to doing something. To not plan then, is to fail.

In this book, Edosa explores common challenges which limit the value that organisations can get from data. What makes his book unique is that he also tackles one of the unspoken barriers to data adoption-fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the intangible, fear of the investment needed and, yes, fear of losing your job to a machine. With his talent for distilling clarity from complexity, Edosa tackles this and many other challenges. -Tim Carmichael, Chief Data Officer, Chalhoub Group This book offers fresh insight about how to solve the interactional frictions that hamper the flow of data, information and knowledge across organisations. Yet, rather than being stuck with endless polarising debates such as breaking down silos, it shifts focus back towards the ultimate "to what end." -Jacky Wright, Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Microsoft US If you care about AI transformation, empowering people or advancing organisational success in an increasingly digital world, then you should read this book. -Yomi Ibosiola, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Union Bank A retail giant already struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic was faced with a disastrous situation when-at the end of a critical investment in an artificial intelligence project that had been meant to save money-it suddenly discovered that its implementation was likely to leave it worse off. An entire critical service stream within an insurer's production system crashed. This critical failure resulted in the detentions of fully insured motorists for allegedly not carrying required insurance. Making Data Work details these two scenarios as well as others illustrating the consequences that arise when organizations do not know how to make data work properly. It is a journey to determine what to do to "make data work" for ourselves and for our organisations. It is a journey to discover how to bring it all together so organisations can enable digital transformation, empower people, and advance organisational success. It is the journey to a world where data and technology finally live up to the hype and deliver better human outcomes, where artificial intelligence can move us from reacting to situations to predicting future occurrences and enabling desirable possibilities.

The Lean Approach to Digital Transformation: From Customer to Code and From Code to Customer is organized into three parts that expose and develop the three capabilities that are essential for a successful digital transformation: 1. Understanding how to co-create digital services with users, whether they are customers or future customers. This ability combines observation, dialogue, and iterative experimentation. The approach proposed in this book is based on the Lean Startup approach, according to an extended vision that combines Design Thinking and Growth Hacking. Companies must become truly "customer-centric", from observation and listening to co-development. The revolution of the digital age of the 21st century is that customer orientation is more imperative -- the era of abundance, usages rate of change, complexity of experiences, and shift of power towards communities -- are easier, using digital tools and digital communities. 2. Developing an information system (IS) that is the backbone of the digital transformation - called "exponential information system" to designate an open IS (in particular on its borders), capable of interfacing and combining with external services, positioned as a player in software ecosystems and built for processing scalable and dynamic data flows. The exponential information system is constantly changing and it continuously absorbs the best of information processing technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. 3. Building software "micro-factories" that produce service platforms, which are called "Lean software factories." This "software factory" concept covers the integration of agile methods, tooling and continuous integration and deployment practices, a customer-oriented product approach, and a platform approach based on modularity, as well as API-based architecture and openness to external stakeholders. This software micro-factory is the foundation that continuously produces and provides constantly evolving services. These three capabilities are not unique or specific to this book, they are linked to other concepts such as agile methods, product development according to lean principles, software production approaches such as CICD (continuous integration and deployment) or DevOps. This book weaves a common frame of reference for all these approaches to derive more value from the digital transformation and to facilitate its implementation. The title of the book refers to the "lean approach to digital transformation" because the two underlying frameworks, Lean Startup and Lean Software Factory, are directly inspired by Lean, in the sense of the Toyota Way. The Lean approach is present from the beginning to the end of this book -- it provides the framework for customer orientation and the love of a job well done, which are the conditions for the success of a digital transformation.

Welcome to 1M 2003, the eighth in a series of the premier international technical conference in this field. As IT management has become mission critical to the economies of the developed world, our technical program has grown in relevance, strength and quality. Over the next few years, leading IT organizations will gradually move from identifying infrastructure problems to providing business services via automated, intelligent management systems. To be successful, these future management systems must provide global scalability, for instance, to support Grid computing and large numbers of pervasive devices. In Grid environments, organizations can pool desktops and servers, dynamically creating a virtual environment with huge processing power, and new management challenges. As the number, type, and criticality of devices connected to the Internet grows, new innovative solutions are required to address this unprecedented scale and management complexity. The growing penetration of technologies, such as WLANs, introduces new management challenges, particularly for performance and security. Management systems must also support the management of business processes and their supporting technology infrastructure as integrated entities. They will need to significantly reduce the amount of adventitious, bootless data thrown at consoles, delivering instead a cogent view of the system state, while leaving the handling of lower level events to self-managed, multifarious systems and devices. There is a new emphasis on "autonomic" computing, building systems that can perform routine tasks without administrator intervention and take prescient actions to rapidly recover from potential software or hardware failures.

When a $145 million IT project failure pushes Los Angeles to the edge of financial meltdown, the County CEO asks Max McLellan, a harried IT project manager, aka The Integrator, for help. The County Board gives Max 30 days to identify the problem and find a solution. At first Max finds the usual missteps, but something bigger and darker beckons, an explosive source of project failure. He must do something different, rattling ghosts of previous County IT failures, uncloaking crookedness, and exposing truths that shatter careers. With some people rooting for his failure, Max battles to fit all the pieces together with the County team, applying his proven framework to define the problem, plan a solution and execute it successfully. It's common knowledge that barely 50% of IT projects succeed, per a 2017 Project Management Institute report. Equally well-known, approximately 70% of large-scale change management initiatives fail according to a 2017 McKinsey & Co. report. Given the challenge to overcome these low success rates, The Integrator offers a proven narrative on the organizational change framework for achieving Agile IT project management success based on the author's 45+ year client experiences and published research. The Integrator defines change management as the single overarching methodology integrating Agile IT and project management. It does this because all projects are about change - significant organizational and personal change. The people involved - their participation in and understanding and support of these changes - ultimately determine IT projects success or failure. In fact, while all IT projects are about change, successful projects change human behavior. The methodologies included in the framework, described in The Integrator, include: * Change management as defined by AIM (Accelerating Implementation Methodology). * Project management as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) standard. * IT management as derived from the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) standard. * Agile as defined by the Agile Alliance's Agile Manifesto. Written by a certified Project Management Professional and accredited change management practitioner, The Integrator chronicles the challenges involved in applying this framework in a real-world setting to achieve successful project implementation.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Gabriella Pasi and Gloria Bordogna for the work they accomplished in preparing this new book in the series "Study in Fuzziness and Soft Computing." "Recent Issues on the Management of Fuzziness in Databases" is undoubtedly a token of their long-lasting and active involvement in the area of Fuzzy Information Retrieval and Fuzzy Database Systems. This book is really welcome in the area of fuzzy databases where they are not numerous although the first works at the crossroads of fuzzy sets and databases were initiated about twenty years ago by L. Zadeh. Only five books have been published since 1995, when the first volume dedicated to fuzzy databases published in the series "Study in Fuzziness and Soft Computing" edited by J. Kacprzyk and myself appeared. Going beyond books strictly speaking, let us also mention the existence of review papers that are part of a couple of handbooks related to fuzzy sets published since 1998. The area known as fuzzy databases covers a bunch of topics among which: -flexible queries addressed to regular databases, -the extension of the notion of a functional dependency, -data mining and fuzzy summarization, -querying databases containing imperfect attribute values represented thanks to possibility distributions.

Knowledge discovery is an area of computer science that attempts to uncover interesting and useful patterns in data that permit a computer to perform a task autonomously or assist a human in performing a task more efficiently. Soft Computing for Knowledge Discovery provides a self-contained and systematic exposition of the key theory and algorithms that form the core of knowledge discovery from a soft computing perspective. It focuses on knowledge representation, machine learning, and the key methodologies that make up the fabric of soft computing - fuzzy set theory, fuzzy logic, evolutionary computing, and various theories of probability (e.g. naive Bayes and Bayesian networks, Dempster-Shafer theory, mass assignment theory, and others). In addition to describing many state-of-the-art soft computing approaches to knowledge discovery, the author introduces Cartesian granule features and their corresponding learning algorithms as an intuitive approach to knowledge discovery. This new approach embraces the synergistic spirit of soft computing and exploits uncertainty in order to achieve tractability, transparency and generalization. Parallels are drawn between this approach and other well known approaches (such as naive Bayes and decision trees) leading to equivalences under certain conditions. The approaches presented are further illustrated in a battery of both artificial and real-world problems. Knowledge discovery in real-world problems, such as object recognition in outdoor scenes, medical diagnosis and control, is described in detail. These case studies provide further examples of how to apply the presented concepts and algorithms to practical problems. The author provides web page access to an online bibliography, datasets, source codes for several algorithms described in the book, and other information. Soft Computing for Knowledge Discovery is for advanced undergraduates, professionals and researchers in computer science, engineering and business information systems who work or have an interest in the dynamic fields of knowledge discovery and soft computing.

The growing complexity of projects today, as well as the uncertainty inherent in innovative projects, is making obsolete traditional project management practices and procedures, which are based on the notion that much about a project is known at its start. The current high level of change and complexity confronting organizational leaders and managers requires a new approach to projects so they can be managed flexibly to embrace and exploit change. What once used to be considered extreme uncertainty is now the norm, and managing planned projects is being replaced by managing projects as they evolve. Successfully managing projects in extreme situations, such as polar and military expeditions, shows how to manage successfully projects in today's turbulent environment. Executed under the harshest and most unpredictable conditions, these projects are great sources for learning about how to manage unexpected and unforeseen situations as they occur. This book presents multiple case studies of managing extreme events as they happened during polar, mountain climbing, military, and rescue expeditions. A boat accident in the Artic is a lesson on how an effective project manager must be ambidextrous: on one hand able to follow plans and on the other hand able to abandon those plans when disaster strikes and improvise new ones in response. Polar expeditions also illustrate how a team can use "weak links" to go beyond its usual information network to acquire strategic information. Fire and rescues operations illustrate how one team member's knowledge can be transferred to the entire team. Military operations provide case material on how teams coordinate and make use of both individual and collective competencies. This groundbreaking work pushes the definitions of a project and project management to reveal new insight that benefits researchers, academics, and the practitioners managing projects in today's challenging and uncertain times.

Organizations cannot continue to blindly accept and introduce components into Information Systems without studying the effectiveness, feasibility and efficiency of the individual components of their information systems. Information Systems may be the only business area where it is automatically assumed that the latest, greatest and most powerful component is the one for our organization and must be managed and developed as any other resource in organizations today. Human Computer Interaction Development and Management contains the most recent research articles concerning the management and development of Information Systems, so that organizations can effectively manage information systems growth and development. Not only must hardware, software, data, information, and networks be managed people must be managed. Humans must be trained to use information systems. Systems must be developed so humans can use the systems as efficiently and effectively as possible.

ERP Systems for Manufacturing Supply Chains: Applications, Configuration, and Performance provides insight into the core architecture, modules, and process support of ERP systems used in a manufacturing supply chain. This book explains the building blocks of an ERP system and how they can be used to increase performance of manufacturing supply chains. Starting with an overview of basic concepts of supply chain and ERP systems, the book delves into the core ERP modules that support manufacturing facilities and organizations. It examines each module's structure and functionality as well as the process support the module provides. Cases illustrate how the modules can be applied in manufacturing environments. Also covered is how the ERP modules can be configured to support manufacturing supply chains. Setting up an ERP system to support the supply chain within single manufacturing facility provides insight into how an ERP system is used in the smallest of manufacturing enterprises, as well as lays the foundation for ERP systems in manufacturing organizations. The book then supplies strategies for larger manufacturing enterprises and discusses how ERP systems can be used to support a complete manufacturing supply chain across different facilities and companies. The ERP systems on the market today tend to use common terminology and naming for describing specific functions and data units in the software. However, there are differences among packages. The book discusses various data and functionalities found in different ERP-software packages and uses generic and descriptive terms as often as possible to make these valid for as many ERP systems as possible. Filled with insight into ERP system's core modules and functions, this book shows how ERP systems can be applied to support a supply chain in the smallest of manufacturing organizations that only consist of a single manufacturing facility, as well as large enterprises where the manufacturing supply chain crosses multiple facilities and companies.

The book summarizes the results of the projects of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) for the year 2000. The most significant contributions have been selected in a scientific review process. Together they provide an overview of recent developments in high performance computing and simulation. Reflecting the close cooperation of the HLRS with industry, special emphasis has been put on the industrial relevance of the presented results and methods. The book therefore becomes a collection of showcases for an innovative combination of the state-of-the-art modeling, novel numerical algorithms and the use of leading edge high performance computing systems.

In a world that is awash in ubiquitous technology, even the least tech-savvy know that we must take care how that technology affects individuals and society. That governments and organizations around the world now focus on these issues, that universities and research institutes in many different languages dedicate significant resources to study the issues, and that international professional organizations have adopted standards and directed resources toward ethical issues in technology is in no small part the result of the work of Simon Rogerson. - Chuck Huff, Professor of Social Psychology at Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota In 1995, Apple launched its first WWW server, Quick Time On-line. It was the year Microsoft released Internet Explorer and sold 7 million copies of Windows 95 in just 2 months. In March 1995, the author Simon Rogerson opened the first ETHICOMP conference with these words: We live in a turbulent society where there is social, political, economic and technological turbulence ... it is causing a vast amount of restructuring within all these organisations which impacts on individuals, which impacts on the way departments are set up, organisational hierarchies, job content, span of control, social interaction and so on and so forth. ... Information is very much the fuel of modern technological change. Almost anything now can be represented by the technology and transported to somewhere else. It's a situation where the more information a computer can process, the more of the world it can actually turn into information. That may well be very exciting, but it is also very concerning. That could be describing today. More than 25 years later, these issues are still at the forefront of how ethical digital technology can be developed and utilised. This book is an anthology of the author's work over the past 25 years of pioneering research in digital ethics. It is structured into five themes: Journey, Process, Product, Future and Education. Each theme commences with an introductory explanation of the papers, their relevance and their interrelationship. The anthology finishes with a concluding chapter which summarises the key messages and suggests what might happen in the future. Included in this chapter are insights from some younger leading academics who are part of the community charged with ensuring that ethical digital technology is realised.

Up to date with the fourth edition of PMI's Program Management Standard, PgMP (R) Practice Test Questions: 1000+ Practice Exam Questions for the PgMP (R) Examination contains more than 1,000 practice questions to help readers hone their knowledge and test their skills. It covers all five of the program management domains: Strategic Program Management, Program Management Life Cycle, Benefits Management, Stakeholder Management, and Governance. It also examines all of the sub domains of the lifecycle domain. With an easy-to-use format, this is an ideal resource for those preparing to take the PgMP (R) exam.

DataOps is a new way of delivering data and analytics that is proven to get results. It enables IT and users to collaborate in the delivery of solutions that help organisations to embrace a data-driven culture. The DataOps Revolution: Delivering the Data-Driven Enterprise is a narrative about real world issues involved in using DataOps to make data-driven decisions in modern organisations. The book is built around real delivery examples based on the author's own experience and lays out principles and a methodology for business success using DataOps. Presenting practical design patterns and DataOps approaches, the book shows how DataOps projects are run and presents the benefits of using DataOps to implement data solutions. Best practices are introduced in this book through the telling of a story, which relates how a lead manager must find a way through complexity to turn an organisation around. This narrative vividly illustrates DataOps in action, enabling readers to incorporate best practices into everyday projects. The book tells the story of an embattled CIO who turns to a new and untested project manager charged with a wide remit to roll out DataOps techniques to an entire organisation. It illustrates a different approach to addressing the challenges in bridging the gap between IT and the business. The approach presented in this story lines up to the six IMPACT pillars of the DataOps model that Kinaesis (www.kinaesis.com) has been using through its consultants to deliver successful projects and turn around failing deliveries. The pillars help to organise thinking and structure an approach to project delivery. The pillars are broken down and translated into steps that can be applied to real-world projects that can deliver satisfaction and fulfillment to customers and project team members.

This book records the author's years of experience in the software industry. In his own practices, the author has found that the distributed work pattern has become increasingly popular in more and more work environments, either between vendors and customers or between different teams inside a company. This means that all practitioners in the software industry need to adapt to this new way of communication and collaboration and get skilled enough to meet the greater challenges in integrating the distributed work pattern with agile software delivery. By centering on the difficulties in communication and collaboration between distributed teams, this book digs into the reasons why so many remote delivery projects end up anticlimactic and provides solutions for readers' reference. It also cites successful cases in promoting agile development in distributed teams, which has been a vexing problem for many software development companies. In addition, readers can find suggestions and measures for building self-managing teams in this book. Remote Delivery: A Guide to Software Delivery through Collaboration between Distributed Teams is a very practical guide for software delivery teams with their members distributed in different places and companies engaged in software customization. Developers, QAs, product managers, and project leaders can also be inspired by this book.

The book provides the complete strategic understanding requisite to allow a person to create and use the RMF process recommendations for risk management. This will be the case both for applications of the RMF in corporate training situations, as well as for any individual who wants to obtain specialized knowledge in organizational risk management. It is an all-purpose roadmap of sorts aimed at the practical understanding and implementation of the risk management process as a standard entity. It will enable an "application" of the risk management process as well as the fundamental elements of control formulation within an applied context.