Making the Software Business Case

Making the Software Business Case
Author: Donald J. Reifer
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2001-09-05
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0768685087

"Just the understanding and insights you will pick up about how people encounter and cope with combinations of technical, social, political, and economic opportunities and challenges make the book a joy to read and worth much more than the price of it alone." --Barry Boehm, from the Foreword This practical handbook shows you how to build an effective business case when you need to justify--and persuade management to accept--software change or improvement. Based on real-world scenarios, the book covers the most common situations in which business case analyses are required and explains specific techniques that have proved successful in practice. Drawing on years of experience in winning the "battle of the budget," the author shows you how to use commonly accepted engineering economic arguments to make your numbers "sing" to management. The book provides examples of successful business cases; along the way, tables, tools, facts, figures, and metrics guide you through the entire analytic process. Writing in a concise and witty style, the author makes this valuable guidance accessible to every software engineer, manager, and IT professional. Highlights include: How and where business case analyses fit into the software and IT life cycle process Explanations of the most common tools for business case analysis, such as present-value, return-on-investment, break-even, and cost/benefit calculation Tying the business process to the software development life cycle Packaging the business case for management consumption Frameworks and guidelines for justifying IT productivity, quality, and delivery cycle improvement strategies Case studies for applying appropriate decision situations to software process improvement Strategic guidelines for various business case analyses With this book in hand, you will find the facts, examples, hard data, and case studies needed for preparing your own winning business cases in today's complex software environment.

Discovering Real Business Requirements for Software Project Success

Discovering Real Business Requirements for Software Project Success
Author: Robin F. Goldsmith
Publisher: Artech House
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2004
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781580537711

While a number of books on the market deal with software requirements, this is the first resource to offer you a methodology for discovering and testing the real business requirements that software products must meet in order to provide value. The book provides you with practical techniques that help prevent the main causes of requirements creep, which in turn enhances software development success and satisfaction among the organizations that apply these approaches. Complementing discovery methods, you also learn more than 21 ways to test business requirements from the perspectives of assessing suitability of form, identifying overlooked requirements, and evaluating substance and content. The powerful techniques and methods presented are applied to a real business case from a company recognized for world-class excellence. You are introduced to the innovative Problem Pyramidtm technique which helps you more reliably identify the real problem and requirements content. From an examination of key methods for gathering and understanding information about requirements, to seven guidelines for documenting and communicating requirements, while avoiding analysis paralysis, this book is a comprehensive, single source for uncovering the real business requirements for your software development projects.

Software Ecosystems

Software Ecosystems
Author: Slinger Jansen
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1781955638

This book describes the state-of-the-art of software ecosystems. It constitutes a fundamental step towards an empirically based, nuanced understanding of the implications for management, governance, and control of software ecosystems. This is the first book of its kind dedicated to this emerging field and offers guidelines on how to analyze software ecosystems; methods for managing and growing; methods on transitioning from a closed software organization to an open one; and instruments for dealing with open source, licensing issues, product management and app stores. It is unique in bringing together industry experiences, academic views and tackling challenges such as the definition of fundamental concepts of software ecosystems, describing those forces that influence its development and lifecycles, and the provision of methods for the governance of software ecosystems. This book is an essential starting point for software industry researchers, product managers, and entrepreneurs.

Starting a Tech Business

Starting a Tech Business
Author: Alex Cowan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-04-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118205553

The non-technical guide to building a booming tech-enabled business Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. Starting a Tech Business explains in practical, actionable terms how to formulate and reality test new ideas package what you learn into frameworks that are highly actionable for engineers understand key foundation concepts about modern software and systems participate in an agile/lean development team as the ‘voice of the customer’ Even if you have a desire to learn to program (and I highly recommend doing whatever unlocks your ‘inner tinkerer’), these foundation concepts will help you target what exactly you want to understand about hands-on technology development. While a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, getting started today only requires a determined step in the right direction. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and business enterprises need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business. Successful execution requires thoughtful, evidence-based product formulation, well-articulated design, economic use of systems, adaptive management of technical resources, and empathetic deployment to customers. Starting a Tech Business offers practical checklists and frameworks that business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals can apply to any tech-based business idea, whether you’re developing software and products or beginning a technology-enabled business. You’ll learn: 1. How to apply today’s leading management frameworks to a tech business 2. How to package your product idea in a way that’s highly actionable for your technical team 3. How to ask the right questions about technology selection and product architecture 4. Strategies to leverage what your technology ecosystem has to offer 5. How to carefully define the roles on your team, and then effectively evaluate candidates 6. The most common disconnects between engineers and business people and how to avoid them 7. How you can apply process design to your tech business without stifling creativity 8. The steps to avoid the most common pitfalls tech founders encounter Now is one of the best times to start a technology-enabled business, and anyone can do it with the right amount and kind of preparation. Starting a Tech Business shows you how to move a product idea to market quickly and inexpensively—and to tap into the stream of wealth that a tech business can provide.

Gamification at Work

Gamification at Work
Author: Janaki Mythily Kumar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2013
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9788792964076

Gamification is becoming a common buzzword in business these days. In its November 2012 press release, Gartner predicts that "by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations." In the same report, they also predict that "by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives, primarily due to poor design." What is gamification? Does it belong in the workplace? Are there design best practices that can increase the efficacy of enterprise gamification efforts? Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger answer these questions and more in this book Gamification @ Work. They caution against taking a "chocolate covered broccoli" approach of simply adding points and badges to business applications and calling them gamified. They outline a methodology called Player Centered Design which is a practical guide for user experience designers, product managers and developers to incorporate the principles of gamification into their business software. Player Centered Design involves the following five steps: 1. Know your player 2. Identify the mission 3. Understand human motivation 4. Apply mechanics 5. Manage, monitor and measure Kumar and Herger provide examples of enterprise gamification, introduce legal and ethical considerations, and provide pointers to other resources to continue your journey in designing gamification that works! Keywords: Gamification, Enterprise Gamification, Gamification of business software, enterprise software, business software, User experience design, UX, Design, Engagement, Motivation.

The Business of Software

The Business of Software
Author: Michael A. Cusumano
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2004-03-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780743215800

A leading expert on the global software industry reveals the inner working of software giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Netscape, and shows what it takes to create, develop, and manage a successful company--in good times and bad--in the most fiercely competitive business in the world.

Business Process Oriented Implementation of Standard Software

Business Process Oriented Implementation of Standard Software
Author: Mathias Kirchmer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642584284

Here, the author, an SAP R/3 expert and president of a consulting firm, shows readers how companies can achieve strategic goals through business process oriented implementation of software such as SAP R/3, Oracle, or Peoplesoft. The updated second edition of this best-selling title will help managers and consultants understand the necessary methods and tools.

Scaling a Software Business

Scaling a Software Business
Author: Brian Fitzgerald
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2017-08-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319531166

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book is intended primarily for practitioners who are facing the “softwareisation” of their business. It presents the Scaling Management Framework, a model based on collected experiences from companies that have already made the journey to give software a central role within the organization. The model is unique because it suggests a holistic method to analyze and plan your journey. It simply means that you can’t just focus solely on your products or services. You also have to look closely at your processes and your organization, the way you make decisions and get things done. Inevitably, these will have to change. Software has changed the rules of the game. The world talks about the digitalization in industry and society – how the focus has shifted from producing tangible things towards software and services. This trend started many years ago, but is now affecting every company, whether it’s a software company or not. There are many companies that have already made a digitalization journey – and many are about to embark on this journey – like you. How do you transform your organization when software is becoming a critical part of your business? This book comes with a map, a compass, and suggested journeys along with selected travel stories comprising best practices and lessons learned from past digitalization journeys. Use the map to find your way in the digitalization landscape, and use the compass to find the direction of your journey.

Business Models in the Software Industry

Business Models in the Software Industry
Author: Markus Schief
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3658043520

The relevance of software business models has tremendously increased in recent years. Markus Schief explores opportunities to improve the management of these models. Based on a conceptual framework of software business model characteristics, he conducts large empirical studies to examine the current state of business models in the software industry. These data then serve as a foundation for statistical analyses of business models’ impact on firm and M&A performance. Finally, the author develops a software business model management tool.

Future Business Software

Future Business Software
Author: Gino Brunetti
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319041444

​What will business software look like in the future? And how will it be developed? This book covers the proceedings of the first international conference on Future Business Software – a new think tank discussing the trends in enterprise software with speakers from Europe’s most successful software companies and the leading research institutions. The articles focus on two of the most prominent trends in the field: emergent software and agile development processes. “Emergent Software” is a new paradigm of software development that addresses the highly complex requirements of tomorrow’s business software and aims at dynamically and flexibly combining a business software solution’s different components in order to fulfill customers’ needs with a minimum of effort. Agile development processes are the response of software technology to the implementation of diverse and rapidly changing software requirements. A major focus is on the minimization of project risks, e.g. through short, iterative development cycles, test-driven development and an intensive culture of communication.