Bücher der Reihe Practitioner Series

In Electronic Business Communications, Mike Chesher and Ricky Kaura tell you all that you need to know about electronic commerce over the Internet. All the major topics are covered: - How electronic business communications can give you the edge over your competitors; - How you can develop effective business strategies for electronic commerce;

Why This Book, Why Now? It is now widely recognized that in the development of IT systems, the technology­ driven focus of the past has been eclipsed by a concern for user satisfaction and user productivity. It is well known that usability engineering helps make systems easier to use and more relevant to business needs. The benefits of producing usable computer systems have been proven in careful dollar or pound calculations and any computer user who has interacted with a system designed for usability will enthuse about the benefits and refuse to go back to the bad old days. More and more organizations are starting to take usability seriously. Along with Microsoft and Apple and other IT organizations, we now find banks, insur­ ance companies, multi-national pharmaceuticals and many other non-IT corpora­ tions starting to "do something about usability". It seems as if there is plenty of material explaining how to do it. HCI (Human Computer Interaction - or CHI, Computer Human Interaction in the USA) has been studied in academia for several years and there are a range of books on usability engineering for practi­ tioners from systems engineering and user interface design to usability evaluation. However, as many practitioners have found, although you do need to understand the theories and be familiar with the techniques, applying them in a commercial context is not a straightforward matter.

Software Design - Cognitive Aspects covers a variety of areas including software analysis, design, coding and maintenance. It details the history of the research that has been conducted since the 1970s in this fast-developing field before defining a computer program from a computing and cognitive psychology viewpoint. Detailed treatment is given to the two essential sides of programming; software production and software understanding and throughout the book parallels are drawn between studies on processing texts written in natural language and processing computer programs.This book will be of particular interest to researchers, practitioners and graduate students in Computer Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Cognitive Ergonomics.

This is one of the shorter books in the 21 volume Practitioner Book Series, but this is entirely appropriate for a text on the ubiquitous topic of Quality. The book is written in a concise, precise no-nonsense style by two interna- tional authors. They are supported in their approach by relevant personal practical experience and by peer-review of other researchers obtained whilst disseminating their research in the academic literature. The authors base their book around their Objective/Principles/ Attributes (OPA) Framework, developed in the first place for assessment and prediction of software quality. After OPA was developed as a procedure for evaluating software development methodologies, it was expanded to include software quality measurement with the inclusion of statistical indicators and a systematic basis for deriving them. The OPA is an holistic approach to soft- ware quality and prediction. The approach has been validated through experience gained on a 4-year on-site project, which has also led to improve- ments to the framework.

Right context, software reuse promises high value to businesses that develop software, opening the door to radical improvements in their software capability (productivity, cost, time to market). Attempts to adopt reuse without a sound understanding of the range of issues involved, however, can lead to expensive failure. This book is for those who are wondering whether they should adopt reuse and how, and also to those who have already started to adopt it but are wondering where they may be going wrong and how they could do better. It consistently emphasizes the practical issues that influence success or failure in reuse; and it offers a concise and balanced coverage of the essentials of the subject, rather than going into undue depth or detail on some topics at the expense of others. It occupies the central ground between being on the one hand an academic textbook and on the other hand a cookbook with ready-made recipes for exactly "e;how to do it"e;. The authors have drawn on their extensive experience of reuse and of software process improvement to provide a readable and balanced coverage of the subject. This book is suitable for business executives, software managers and software developers, regardless of whatever kind of software or applications are developed by their organisations, and whatever the size of those organisations. A special feature of the book is the frequent use of experience notes, drawn from the real-life experience of organisations that have embarked on the reuse adventure.

Successful and experienced IT solutions providers talk about their actual practical experiences in IT risk management. Tony Moynihan has asked successful IS/IT project managers to compare and contrast their recent projects in terms of the various important and different factors they had to deal with in each project. The issues and concerns explored in the text include: how to handle unrealistic client expectations; deciding on the 'ownership' of a project; and setting targets that work in practice! The result is a very well-written, interesting book, which will be enormously helpful to any professional who needs to cope with the many and varied problems which can be encountered in IS/IT risk management.

Written for professionals this easy-to-read text provides down-to-earth practical advice for those involved with training and skill development in technical software development jobs.

Many antiquated or legacy systems are still in operation today because they are critical to the organizations continued operations or are prohibitively expensive to replace. The book helps managers answer two critical decisions: What is the best way to evolve a particular legacy system?

An example of how a global project was managed is one in which Malaysia's International Shipping Corporation (MISC) implemented MISC*Net, a networking project to link online all of its shipping agents worldwide to its HQ in Malaysia.

In today's rush towards e-Business many organizations have failed to recognize that the responsibilities of IT Managers have significantly changed.

As a follow-up to the successful Politics of Usability, this book deals with the ways in which HCI experts apply their knowledge within the pressured environment of the modern organisation.

Coverage details Internet-based virtual worlds that have been widely used by the public as well as networked VR systems that have been primarily used in pilot studies and research.

More and more, the shape of the IT organization is critical to business systems delivery, yet all too often this definition is approached in a haphazard fashion - often based on old theory and out-dated experiences rather than being moulded to the realities of the world in which we work.

The first book to provide practical guidance on how to get the most from an outsourced IS service and written specifically for IS and IT professionals and not senior business managers.

An introduction to Entity-Relationship-Modeling, showing how the technique can be applied to interface issues. Bridging the gap in the development of interactive systems, ERMIA provides a set of concepts which can be used equally easily by software developers and interface designers alike.

This easy-to-read guide to portal/electronic services development will help organizations achieve more proficient project management in developing gateways to electronic services. While most books address the technical, managerial, or economic issues, Managing Electronic Services adopts an organizational perspective.

Information technology decisions are usually made by IT experts who often lack the finance and accounting skills to fully understand the financial implications of this capital spending. how to build a financial case for IT investment; how to use investment appraisal techniques, as well as how to use numerous financial tricks of the trade.

There has been a phenomenal growth in autonomous business services, fuelled largely by the internet and e-business. Component-Based Business constitutes a radical challenge and tries to help improve how we think through the practical difficulties and opportunities of the component based business.