"This pioneering book highlights critical, overlooked skills needed by true software professionals." Steve McConnell CEO and Chief Software Engineering Construx Software "It's about time someone took this stuff seriously." Steven Mellor Chief Scientist Embedded Systems Division Mentor Graphics Corporation Co-Author of Exploring the Role of Executable UML in Model-Driven Architecture and six other books "Despite the fact that engineering economics is considered a core area of any engineering field, virtually no books have been written in the area of software engineering economics. Steve Tockey's Return on Software nicely fills this gaps by providing a comprehensive introduction to software engineering economics accessible both to students and to new software professionals." Donald J. Bagert, Ph.D., P.E.Director of Software Engineering and Professor of Computer Science & Software Engineering Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology "The elements of this book are useful not only in making decisions but also in understanding why and how other people and organizations make decisions" Shari Lawrence Pfleeger Senior Researcher, RAND Co-author of Security in Computing and eight other software engineering titles "This just what the doctor ordered to help software programs solve the problem of how to introduce engineering economics and business decision-making into their curricula.

A timeline is a retrospective representation of a linear sequence of significant events which have occurred during the accomplishment of some activity. A timetable provides a corresponding, forward-looking series for pre-arranged events, and is often organized as a tabular list. Such timetables are used to plan and track such activities for performing and reporting on future work. Each of the events associated with these timelines and timetables may be comprised of either top-level milestones or more detailed inchstones. Read more »

What is a lesson learned? Simply put, it is is knowledge or understanding gained by experience (whether positive or negative), and which adds significant, valid, and relevant new information that would be useful in accomplishing a business objective. Read more »

A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is a clear, compelling vision that is intended to serve as unifying focus and catalyst for team spirit, volunteerism, and discretionary efforts. Such goals typically have long-term horizons, clear finish lines, and sufficient clarity to motivate participants to establish and sustain the commitments required to achieve the desired outcomes. Synergy often plays a role in pursuing such BHAGs, as sharing of assets (both knowledge and physical), coordination of strategies, and pooling & integration of resources and components are brought to bear in ways that would not otherwise arise from 'normal' market forces. Several notable examples of such BHAGs come to mind. Read more »