In the last years, knowledge and learning management have made a significant impact on the IT research community. ""Open Source for Knowledge and Learning Management: Strategies Beyond Tools"" presents learning and knowledge management from a point of view where the basic tools and applications are provided by open source technologies. ""Open Source for Knowledge and Learning Management: Strategies Beyond Tools"" explains an intense orientation to the critical issues of the open source paradigm: open source tools, applications, social networks, and knowledge sharing in open source communities. Open source technologies, tools, and applications are analyzed in the context of knowledge and learning, and this convergence formulates a challenging landscape for the deployment of information technology.

A major, comprehensive professional text/reference for designing and maintaining security and reliability.
From basic concepts to designing principles to deployment, all critical concepts and phases are clearly explained and presented. Includes coverage of wireless security testing techniques and prevention techniques for intrusion (attacks). An essential resource for wireless network administrators and developers.

'The Project Manager's Toolkit' provides a quick reference checklist approach to drive an IT development project as well as solve issues that arise in the process. It can be used proactively to set a project on the right course and reactively for solutions to problems. It will: * help identify what needs doing next on an IT project * provide quick reference 'to-do' lists for use throughout the lifecycle of an IT project * answer the need for material that can be used to quality-check project deliverables It has been designed so that those on the project team who are facing a problem can pick up the book, turn to a relevant checklist and use it as a "starter-for-ten" to find a solution. For example, how to analyse data for a data-conversion exercise, or how to measure the quality of a project deliverable. 'The Project Manager's Toolkit' therefore provides a fast way to reduce an insolvable problem/issue to a set of smaller solvable ones

Originally written by a team of Certified Protection Professionals (CPPs), Anthony DiSalvatore gives valuable updates to The Complete Guide for CPP Examination Preparation. This new edition contains an overview of the fundamental concepts and practices of security management while offering important insights into the CPP exam. Until recently the security profession was regarded as a "necessary evil." This book is a comprehensive guide to a profession that is now considered critical to our well-being in the wake of 9/11. It presents a practical approach drawn from decades of combined experience shared by the authors, prepares the reader for the CPP exam, and walks them through the certification process. This edition gives revised and updated treatment of every subject in the CPP exam, encourages and outlines a three-part program for you to follow, and includes sample questions at the end of each area of study. Although these are not questions that appear on the actual exam, they convey the principles and concepts that the exam emphasizes and are valuable in determining if you have mastered the information. The book also includes a security survey that covers all facets of external and internal security, as well as fire prevention. The Complete Guide for CPP Examination Preparation, Second Edition allows you to move steadily forward along your path to achieving one of the most highly regarded certifications in the security industry.

This volume explores the diverse applications of advanced tools and technologies of the emerging field of big data and their evidential value in business. It examines the role of analytics tools and methods of using big data in strengthening businesses to meet today's information challenges and shows how businesses can adapt big data for effective businesses practices. This volume shows how big data and the use of data analytics is being effectively adopted more frequently, especially in companies that are looking for new methods to develop smarter capabilities and tackle challenges in dynamic processes. Many illustrative case studies are presented that highlight how companies in every sector are now focusing on harnessing data to create a new way of doing business.

This book is about information systems development failures and how to avoid them.
It considers what goes wrong with information systems development projects and what actions may be taken to avoid potential difficulties.The reduction of the impact, or even the elimination of the problems, is discussed in terms of an information systems risk management programme.
Stop I.T.Project failure helps to ensure that IS project managers are successful in helping to deliver application systems. However, IS development risk can never be entirely eliminated and consequently the practitioner needs to bear in mind that an IS development project is never without risk, and hence there is a continuing potential for something to go wrong.
The book covers the key issues and variables and makes specific practical suggestions about the good management practice that is required to implement IS project risk processes.
Dr. Dan Remenyi has spent more than 25 years working in the field of corporate computers and information systems. He has worked with computers as an IS professional, business consultant and user. In all these capacities he has been primarily concerned with benefit realisation and obtaining the maximum value for money from the organisations' information systems investment and effort. He has worked extensively in the field of information systems project management, specialising in the area of project risk identification and management. He has written a number of books and papers in the field of IT management and regularly conducts courses and seminars as well as working as a consultant in this area. Dr.Dan Remenyi holds a B.Soc.Sc., an MBA and a PhD. He is a Visiting Professor atChalmers University of Technology in Gothenberg, Sweden and an associate member of faculty at Henley Management College in the United Kingdom.
asks what goes wrong with IT projects
shows how to perform a financial analysis for the risks looks at how to minimise the impact
shows you how to manage a risk program

1. It is a practical guide to understanding and implementation 2. It assumes no prior in depth knowledge 3. It is written in plain language and may be understood by anyone, whether or not they are qualified or involved with IT. It is therefore equally suitable for senior management, IT practitioners, students and interested individuals.

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.

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.

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

This book offers a straight-forward guide to the fundamental work of governing bodies and the people who serve on them. The aim is of the book is to help every member serving on a governing body understand and improve their contribution to the entity and governing body they serve. The book is rooted in research, including five years' work by the author as a Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

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.

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.

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.

Wireless Communication Networks Supported by Autonomous UAVs and Mobile Ground Robots covers wireless sensor networks and cellular networks. For wireless sensor networks, the book presents approaches using mobile robots or UAVs to collect sensory data from sensor nodes. For cellular networks, it discusses the approaches to using UAVs to work as aerial base stations to serve cellular users. In addition, the book covers the challenges involved in these two networks, existing approaches (e.g., how to use the public transportation vehicles to play the role of mobile sinks to collect sensory data from sensor nodes), and potential methods to address open questions.