In fact, generating accurate estimates is straightforward—once you understand the art of creating them.In his highly anticipated book, acclaimed author Steve McConnell unravels the mystery to successful software estimation—distilling academic information and real-world experience into a practical guide for working software professionals. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, this guide highlights a proven set of procedures, understandable formulas, and heuristics that individuals and development teams can apply to their projects to help achieve estimation proficiency.

    Visible Ops is comprised of four prescriptive and self-fueling steps that take an organization from any starting point to a continually improving process. MAKING ITIL ACTIONABLE Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a wealth of best practices, it lacks prescriptive guidance: What do you implement first, and how do you do it? Moreover, the ITIL books remain relatively expensive to distribute. Other information, publicly available from a variety of sources, is too general and vague to effectively aid organizations that need to start or enhance process improvement efforts. The Visible Ops booklet provides a prescriptive roadmap for organizations beginning or continuing their IT process improvement journey. WHY DO WE NEED VISIBLE OPS? The Visible Ops methodology was developed because there was not a satisfactory answer to the question: "I believe in the need for IT process improvement, but where do I start?" Since 2000, Gene Kim and Kevin Behr have met with hundreds of IT organizations and identified eight high-performing IT organizations with the highest service levels, best security, and best efficiencies. For years, they studied these high-performing organizations to figure out the secrets to their success. Visible Ops codifies how these organizations achieved their transformation from good to great, showing how interested organizations can replicate the key processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps: 1. Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response - Almost 80% of outages are self-inflicted. The first step is to control risky changes and reduce MTTR by addressing how changes are managed and how problems are resolved. 2. Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts - Often, infrastructure exists that cannot be repeatedly replicated. In this step, we inventory assets, configurations and services, to identify those with the lowest change success rates, highest MTTR and highest business downtime costs. 3. Establish Repeatable Build Library - The highest return on investment is implementing effective release management processes. This step creates repeatable builds for the most critical assets and services, to make it "cheaper to rebuild than to repair." 4. Enable Continuous Improvement - The previous steps have progressively built a closed-loop between the Release, Control and Resolution processes. This step implements metrics to allow continuous improvement of all of these process areas, to best ensure that business objectives are met.

    Recognized and respected throughout the world as the most influential leaders in the data warehousing industry, Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group have written articles covering more than 250 topics that define the field of data warehousing. For the first time, the Kimball Group's incomparable advice, design tips, and best practices have been gathered in this remarkable collection of articles, which spans a decade of data warehousing innovation.Each group of articles is introduced with original commentaries that explain their role in the overall lifecycle methodology developed by the Kimball Group. These practical, hands-on articles are fully updated to reflect current practices and terminology and cover the complete lifecycle--including project planning, requirements gathering, dimensional modeling, ETL, and business intelligence and analytics.This easily referenced collection is nothing less than vital if you are involved with data warehousing or business intelligence in any capacity.

    Our colleges and universities will soon find themselves competing for students with universities from around the world. With the advent of massive open online courses ("MOOCS") over the past two years, predictions that higher education will be the next industry to undergo "disruption" have become more frequent and fervent. Currently a university's reputation relies heavily on the "four Rs" in which the most elite schools thrive—rankings, research, real estate, and rah! (i.e. sports). But for the majority of students who are not attending these elite institutions, the "four Rs" offer poor value for the expense of a college education. Craig sees the future of higher education in online degrees that unbundle course offerings to offer a true bottom line return for the majority of students in terms of graduation, employment, and wages. College Disrupted details the changes that American higher education will undergo, including the transformation from packaged courses and degrees to truly unbundled course offerings, along with those that it will not. Written by a professional at the only investment firm focused on the higher education market, College Disrupted takes a creative view of the forces roiling higher education and the likely outcome, including light-hearted, real-life anecdotes that illustrate the author's points.

    This book claimed that through a piece of software called a "browser," which accesses "web sites," the world economy and our daily lives would change forever. Would you have believed even 10 percent of that book? Did you take advantage of the first Internet wave and get ahead of the curve? "Pull" is the blueprint to the next disruptive wave. Some call it Web 3.0; others call it the semantic web. It's a fundamental transition from pushing information to pulling, using a new way of thinking and collaborating online. Using the principles of this book, you will slash 5-20 percent off your bottom line, make your customers happier, accelerate your industry, and prepare your company for the twenty-first century. It isn't going to be easy, and you don't have any choice. By 2015, your company will be more agile and your processes more flexible than you ever thought possible. The semantic web leads to possibilities straight from science fiction, such as buildings that can order their own supplies, eliminating the IRS, and lawyers finally making sense. But it also leads to major changes in every field, from shipping and retail distribution to health care and financial reporting. Through clear examples, case studies, principles, and scenarios, business strategist David Siegel takes you on a tour of this new world. You'll learn: -Which industries are already ahead. -Which industries are already dead. -How to make the power shift from pushing to pulling information. -How software, hardware, media, and marketing will all change. -How to plan your own strategy for embracing the semantic web. We are at the beginning of a new technology curve that will affect all areas of business. Right now, you have a choice. You can decide to start preparing for the exciting opportunities that lay ahead or you can leave this book on the shelf and get left in the dust like last time.

    The book details agile principles, roles, managerial practices, technical practices and artifacts, offering a complete review that will help readers master all the important agile ideas.

    It's a tremendous opportunity for tens of thousands of IT professionals, but it's also a huge challenge: the program requires a complete makeover of archaic records systems, workflows, and other practices now in place.This book points out how hospitals and doctors' offices differ from other organizations that use IT, and explains what's necessary to bridge the gap between clinicians and IT staff.Get an overview of EHRs and the differences among medical settingsLearn the variety of ways institutions deal with patients and medical staff, and how workflows varyDiscover healthcare's dependence on paper records, and the problems involved in migrating them to digital documentsUnderstand how providers charge for care, and how they get paidExplore how patients can use EHRs to participate in their own careExamine healthcare's most pressing problem--avoidable errors--and how EHRs can both help and exacerbate it

    His profound and poetic speeches are famous around the world, evidence of the greatness of American’s most beloved leader. But did you know that the sixteenth president of the United States was also a backwoods hillbilly from America’s western frontier, with a Kentucky accent so thick you could cut it? Or that he liked wrestling matches, dirty jokes, and had a reputation for telling hilarious, R-rated stories that weren’t suitable for mixed company? From his childhood working as a virtual slave for an abusive father, to sailing a river raft to New Orleans, to the Illinois General Assembly, Congress, and the White House, the story of Abraham Lincoln’s life is the story of America. He mourned the deaths of almost everyone he loved, endured marriage to a wife whose mental health issues made her a domestic abuser, and lost more elections than he won. But Abraham Lincoln believed in one thing above all: that everyone deserved a fair shot at the American dream. Why did John Wilkes Booth really shoot Abraham Lincoln? The truth is as shocking now as it was in 1865.

    This essential resource is a complete guide to preparing for the ITIL Foundation exam and includes everything you need for success. Organized around the ITIL Foundation (2011) syllabus, the study guide addresses the ITIL Service Lifecycles, the ITIL processes, roles, and functions, and also thoroughly explains how the Service Lifecycle provides effective and efficient IT services.Offers an introduction to IT service management and ITIL V3 service strategy Highlights the topics of service design and development and the service management processes Reviews the building, testing, authorizing, documenting, and implementation of new and changed services into operation Addresses creating and maintaining value for customers through monitoring and improving services, processes, and technology Download valuable study tools including practice exams, flashcards, a glossary of key terms and more. If you prefer self-study over the more expensive training course, but you don't want to skimp on information or preparation, then this study guide is for you.

    IT expert Nicholas G. Carr offers a radically different view in this eloquent and explosive book. As IT's power and presence have grown, he argues, its strategic relevance has actually decreased. IT has been transformed from a source of advantage into a commoditized "cost of doing business" - with huge implications for business management.Expanding on Carr's seminal Harvard Business Review article that generated a storm of controversy, Does IT Matter? provides a truly compelling - and unsettling - account of IT's changing business role and its leveling influence on competition. Through astute analysis of historical and contemporary examples, Carr shows that the evolution of IT closely parallels that of earlier technologies such as railroads and electric power. He goes on to lay out a new agenda for IT management, stressing cost control and risk management over innovation and investment. And he examines the broader implications for business strategy and organization as well as for the technology industry.A frame-changing statement on one of the most important business phenomena of our time, Does IT Matter? marks a crucial milepost in the debate about IT's future.An acclaimed business writer and thinker, Nicholas G. Carr is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

    With few exceptions, existing books are overly technical, only dedicate a single chapter to website vulnerabilities or don't include any real world examples. This book is different.Using publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, Web Hacking 101 explains common web vulnerabilities and will show you how to start finding vulnerabilities and collecting bounties. With over 30 examples, the book covers topics like:HTML InjectionCross site scripting (XSS)Cross site request forgery (CSRF)Open RedirectsRemote Code Execution (RCE)Application Logicand more...Each example includes a classification of the attack, a report link, the bounty paid, easy to understand description and key takeaways. After reading this book, your eyes will be opened to the wide array of vulnerabilities that exist and you'll likely never look at a website or API the same way.

    Requiring only basic algebra and trigonometry, the new edition is notable for its readability, learning features and numerous full-color photos and illustrations. A systems approach is used to cover state-of-the-art communications technologies, to best reflect current industry practice. This edition contains greatly expanded and updated material on the Internet, cell phones, and wireless technologies. Practical skills like testing and troubleshooting are integrated throughout. A brand-new Laboratory & Activities Manual provides both hands-on experiments and a variety of other activities, reflecting the variety of skills now needed by technicians. A new Online Learning Center web site is available, with a wealth of learning resources for students. An Instructor Productivity Center CD-ROM features solutions to all problems, PowerPoint lessons, and ExamView test banks for each chapter.

    No matter what your life looks like now, no matter what is happening right at this very moment, you’re invited to begin a spiritual revolution. Breaking Through is a manifesto for a more empowered life, and will help you achieve a permanent breakthrough in any barrier that may be holding you back in any aspect of your life, as you gain an extraordinary sense of clarity and freedom, dramatically increase your energy, and boldly take life head-on. Baron Baptiste shows you how to revitalize your relationships and infuse inspiration, passion, and adventure into your daily life. You will feel a new level of purpose, power, and peace of mind in your present days and future years. Baron invites you to come with him on a journey to discover what’s possible, and to courageously and spontaneously risk living on the growing edge of the unfamiliar. Along the way, you’ll be exploring practices and principles that will give you new contexts, new considerations, and a new way of viewing your life that will bring about a true and lasting transformation. As you read, you will effortlessly experience a series of smaller breakthroughs until you break through into a totally transformed life. You’ll be free from the stress that causes struggle, and the feelings of fight-and-flight survival, and you’ll begin to view life as a blank canvas on which you can create, expand, and open up to the ways of being that make a real difference in your world. This fascinating book is about awakening and embarking on a journey of uncovering who you are not . . . so you can access the powerful, creative, and positively awesome person that you are. This is what Baron calls “breaking through.” Take the journey.

    Forty-seven years of joyous celebrations after victories and crushing disappointments after defeats are encompassed in it, but it is about more than just touchdowns and interceptions. It is about how a person like Marv Levy, dedicated to his life's work, can begin his career as the obscure assistant coach of a high school junior varsity team and then one day, decades later, lead his men out onto the field in football's greatest spectacle--the Super Bowl. Readers are invited to come experience what it was like to be on the sidelines and be the winning coach in a game that has been designated as the greatest upset in collegiate football history and then be there again 25 years later when an injury-riddled team, losing 35-3 in the second half, rallies and then miraculously goes on to achieve the greatest comeback victory in the history of the National Football League. Fans will learn what it was like to wallow in the exhilaration that comes from leading a team to four consecutive Super Bowl appearances, only to follow it with the desolation that strikes when all four of those games end in defeat. But they will also learn about the character, persistence, and personalities of those incomparable Buffalo Bills of the 1990s who so resolutely pursued their impossible dream. There will be some laughs and there may be some tears. Readers will meet the people who shaped this coach's life, and they will wind up feeling close to them. They will look forward to each adventure contained in these pages, and when each new one does come, they are likely to say, along with the author, "Where else would I rather be than right here--rightnow "

    As with the NIC’s previous Global Trends reports, we do not seek to predict the future—which would be an impossible feat—but instead provide a framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications.In-depth research, detailed modeling and a variety of analytical tools drawn from public, private and academic sources were employed in the production of Global Trends 2030. NIC leadership engaged with experts in nearly 20 countries—from think tanks, banks, government offices and business groups—to solicit reviews of the report.Available here: Global Trends 2030.