Books Guide: Personal Improvement

This book is written for the technical test analyst who wants to achieve advanced skills in test analysis, design, and execution. With a hands-on, exercise-rich approach, this book teaches you how to define and carry out the tasks required to put a test strategy into action.

Learn how to analyze the system, taking into account the technical aspects and quality characteristics. Additionally, learn how to evaluate system requirements and designs as part of formal and informal reviews, using an understanding of the underlying technology. You will be able to analyze, design, implement, and execute tests, using risk considerations to determine the appropriate effort and priority for tests. You will also learn how to report on testing progress and provide necessary evidence to support your evaluations of system quality.
With a quarter-century of software and systems engineering experience, author Rex Black is President of RBCS; is a leader in software, hardware, and systems testing; and is the most prolific author practicing in the field of software testing today. He published several books on testing that sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide. He is President of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) and is a Director of the American Software Testing Qualifications Board (ASTQB).

This book will help you prepare for the ISTQB Advanced Technical Test Analyst exam. Included are sample exam questions, at the appropriate level of difficulty, for most of the learning objectives covered by the ISTQB Advanced Level syllabus. The ISTQB certification program is the leading software tester certification program in the world. With about 100,000 certificate holders and a global presence in 50 countries, you can be confident in the value and international stature that the Advanced Technical Test Analyst certificate can offer you.

Agile approaches are business practices with a proven track record for helping organizations achieve greater efficiency, higher-quality outputs and increased customer satisfaction. They enable organizations to avoid the trappings of extensive up-front planning and up-front budget commitments by encouraging staff to regularly produce high-value business outputs; and by basing ongoing financial and resource commitments on the delivered outcomes.

The new editorial of this respected text continues to provide students the information they need to fully grasp the complex issues in cyberethics that computer and noncomputer professional alike need to navigate the challenging waters of cyberspace. Each chapter is updated with new examples and scenarios to provide the most current information.

Here’s all the information you need to jumpstart your software career: the best ways to get hired, move up, and blaze your way to the top!

Are you doing all you can to further your career as a software developer? With today's rapidly changing and ever-expanding technologies, being successful requires more than technical expertise. To grow professionally, you also need soft skills and effective learning techniques. Honing those skills is what this book is all about. Authors Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye have cataloged dozens of behavior patterns to help you perfect essential aspects of your craft.

What's it like to work on a great software development team facing an impossible problem? How do you build an effective team? Can a group of people who don't get along still build good software? How does a team leader keep everyone on track when the stakes are high and the schedule is tight? Beautiful Teams takes you behind the scenes with some of the most interesting teams in software engineering history.

As the technology leader at a small software company, you need to focus on people, products, processes, and technology as you bring your software to market, while doing your best to put out fires and minimize headaches.

How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.

Great management is difficult to see as it occurs. It's possible to see the results of great management, but it's not easy to see how managers achieve those results. Great management happens in one-on-one meetings and with other managers--all in private. It's hard to learn management by example when you can't see it. You can learn to be a better manager--even a great manager--with this guide.

Since you picked up this book, we assume that you've tried to introduce something new into your organization. Maybe you were successful or maybe you were not completely happy with the result. Change is hard. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the people, just like you, those "powerless leaders," who have had some success in their attempts to introduce a new idea, could sit down with you and share their secrets? This book will provide the next best thing.

If you develop systems or software for a living, you know that communication is essential for success.

Developers, managers, and testers have to understand each other clearly in order to meet client requirements, build work-related relationships, and survive time pressures and market demands. So often, though, communication breaks down, and we shout at each other across communication gaps that widen into yawning chasms.

This revised and updated edition offers step-by-step guidelines for creating a cost-effective mentoring program that will foster employee learning and growth. Shows how these programs can be rewarding for mentors and can contribute measurably to both individual and organizational performance.

This book is intended for software developers and managers. Ed Yourdon addresses the projects that people never want to join but are often asked, cajoled, or ordered to participate in--death-march projects that are "doomed to fail." If you have ever been on one, you know what a death-march project is. This book describes the reasons these projects continue to happen, suggests which ones to avoid, and explains how to survive if you become part of one.

Constantine on Peopleware presents more than thirty essays and articles. Larry Constantine draws on diverse experiences as an educator, family therapist, and systems expert. He covers a broad range of issues, including quality and productivity, teamwork, group dynamics, personality and programming, project management and organizational issues, interface design and human-machine interaction, cognition, psychology, and thought processes.