The emphasis on new and changing technologies and process models in today s software development obscures the fact that software engineering is still primarily a human-based activity and that the success of a software project largely depends on the decisions made by humans during engineering. Rationale management is concerned with making these design and development decisions explicit to all stakeholders involved.

Dutoit, McCall, Mistrik and Paech begin their book with a historical survey of different rationale approaches. It is followed by four parts describing: the fundamental problems and possible solution approaches in rationale management, rationale management during requirements engineering, rationale management during software architecting, and rationale management for organizing reusable bodies of knowledge.

The result is a detailed summary of research on design rationale. It provides researchers with an excellent state-of-the-art overview, and professional software engineers will find many examples, resources and incentives to enhance their ability to make decisions during all phases of the software lifecycle.

Allen Dutoit, Ray McCall, Ivan Mistrik and Barbara Paech have done an excellent job of this in "Rationale management in software engineering." The chapters in this volume show how design rationale can be incorporated into the heart of the software development process - into requirements engineering, software architecture, and code design. (John M. Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University, USA, ACM CHI Lifetime Achievement Award)

The authors describe in detail the capture and use of design rationale in software engineering to improve the quality of software. Their book is the first comprehensive and unified treatment of rationale usage in software engineering. It provides a consistent conceptual framework and a unified terminology for comparing, contrasting and combining the myriad approaches to rationale in software engineering. It is both an excellent introductory text and a uniquely valuable reference.

Many decisions are required throughout the software development process. These decisions, and to some extent the decision-making process itself, can best be documented as the rationale for the system, which will reveal not only what was done during development but the reasons behind the choices made and alternatives considered and rejected. This information becomes increasingly critical as software development becomes more distributed and encompasses the corporate knowledge both used and refined during the development process. The capture of rationale helps to ensure that decisions are well thought out and justified and the use of rationale can help avoid the mistakes of the past during both the development of the current system and when software products (architecture and design, as well as code) are reused in future systems.

Burge, Carroll, McCall, and Mistrik describe in detail the capture and use of design rationale in software engineering to improve the quality of software. Their book is the first comprehensive and unified treatment of rationale usage in software engineering. It provides a consistent conceptual framework and a unified terminology for comparing, contrasting and combining the myriad approaches to rationale in software engineering. It is both an excellent introductory text for those new to the field and a uniquely valuable reference for experienced rationale researchers. The book covers the use of rationale for decision making throughout the software lifecycle, starting from the first decisions in a project and continuing through requirements definition, design, implementation, testing, maintenance, redesign and reuse."

The emphasis on new and changing technologies and process models in today s software development obscures the fact that software engineering is still primarily a human-based activity and that the success of a software project largely depends on the decisions made by humans during engineering. Rationale management is concerned with making these design and development decisions explicit to all stakeholders involved.

Dutoit, McCall, Mistrik and Paech begin their book with a historical survey of different rationale approaches. It is followed by four parts describing: the fundamental problems and possible solution approaches in rationale management, rationale management during requirements engineering, rationale management during software architecting, and rationale management for organizing reusable bodies of knowledge.

The result is a detailed summary of research on design rationale. It provides researchers with an excellent state-of-the-art overview, and professional software engineers will find many examples, resources and incentives to enhance their ability to make decisions during all phases of the software lifecycle.

Allen Dutoit, Ray McCall, Ivan Mistrik and Barbara Paech have done an excellent job of this in "Rationale management in software engineering." The chapters in this volume show how design rationale can be incorporated into the heart of the software development process - into requirements engineering, software architecture, and code design. (John M. Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University, USA, ACM CHI Lifetime Achievement Award)