Better Software Faster

Better Software. Faster!

The recent rise of "smart" products has been made possible through tight co-design of hardware and software. The growing amount of software and hence processors in applications all around us allows for increased flexibility in the application functionality through its life cycle. Not so long ago a device felt outdated after you owned it for a couple of months. Today, a continuous stream of new software applications and updates make products feel truly "smart". The result is an almost magical user experience where the same product can do more today than it could do yesterday.

In this book we dive deep into a key methodology to enable concurrent hardware/software development by decoupling the dependency of the software development from hardware availability: virtual prototyping. The ability to start software development much earlier in the design cycle drives a true "shift-left" of the entire product development schedule and results in better products that are available earlier in the market.

Throughout the book, case studies illustrate how virtual prototypes are being deployed by major companies around the world. If you are interested in a quick feel for what virtual prototyping has to offer for practical deployment, we recommend picking a few case studies to read, before diving into the details of the methodology.

Of course, this book can only offer a small snapshot of virtual prototype use cases for faster software development. However, as most software bring-up, debug and test principles are similar across markets and applications, it is not hard to realize why virtual prototypes are being leveraged whenever software is an intrinsic part of the product functionality, after reading this book.

Modern Software Engineering

Improve Your Creativity, Effectiveness, and Ultimately, Your Code In Modern Software Engineering, continuous delivery pioneer David Farley helps software professionals think about their work more effectively, manage it more successfully, and genuinely improve the quality of their applications, their lives, and the lives of their colleagues. Writing for programmers, managers, and technical leads at all levels of experience, Farley illuminates durable principles at the heart of effective software development. He distills the discipline into two core exercises: learning and exploration and managing complexity. For each, he defines principles that can help you improve everything from your mindset to the quality of your code, and describes approaches proven to promote success. Farley's ideas and techniques cohere into a unified, scientific, and foundational approach to solving practical software development problems within realistic economic constraints. This general, durable, and pervasive approach to software engineering can help you solve problems you haven't encountered yet, using today's technologies and tomorrow's. It offers you deeper insight into what you do every day, helping you create better software, faster, with more pleasure and personal fulfillment. Clarify what you're trying to accomplish Choose your tools based on sensible criteria Organize work and systems to facilitate continuing incremental progress Evaluate your progress toward thriving systems, not just more "legacy code" Gain more value from experimentation and empiricism Stay in control as systems grow more complex Achieve rigor without too much rigidity Learn from history and experience Distinguish "good" new software development ideas from "bad" ones Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Better Software Project Management

A complete guide to piloting a software project to success-on time and within budget This book provides novice software project managers, software developers, and anyone delivering reusable software with strategies for mastering the basics of directing a software project. Well-known management consultant Marsha Lewin uses a "been there, done that" approach designed to solve on-the-job problems quickly and efficiently. Learn how to get a project in motion immediately in the first chapter's "quick start" tutorial. This comprehensive overview outlines the ins and outs of software project management, including the expectations for a project manager, defining the project, satisfying critical needs, and leading and monitoring your team. These aspects of managing small- to medium-sized project types are detailed in the same lively, colloquial style that demystifies the complexities of the discipline. The author equips you with the tools to concurrently satisfy the triple constraints of schedule, budget, and quality within the context of risk management, and highlights potential pitfalls and their solutions to assure repeated success. To help you get under way and stay ahead, supplemental, ready-to-use forms, formats, and checklists are included, along with information on: ? Use of resources, including people and budget, the quality of software developed, and the costs and risks ? Political and technical issues affecting project success ? Risk management methodology ? Shaping yourself as a leader ? Software development methodologies, from traditional life cycle to prototyping, and how they relate to software project management ? Testing and its role in project management Dozens of real-world examples and diagrams, together with a comprehensive bibliography and glossary, render Better Software Project Management a crucial resource for anyone responsible for keeping software projects within budget and on schedule.