Books about Capabilities from Amazon.com

Fluency with Information Technology: Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities, Third Edition, equips readers who are already familiar with computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web with a deeper understanding of the broad capabilities of technology Through a project-oriented learning approach that uses examples and realistic problem-solving scenarios, Larry Snyder teaches readers to navigate information technology independently and become effective users of today's resources, forming a foundation of skills they can adapt to their personal and career goals as future technologies emerge..
Price: $57.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

CMMI® (Capability Maturity Model® Integration) describes best practices for the development and maintenance of products and services across their entire lifecycle. By integrating essential bodies of knowledge, CMMI provides a single, comprehensive framework for organizations to assess their development and maintenance processes, implement improvements, and measure progress.

This book is a definitive reference for the most current release of CMMI (version 1.2). In the new edition, the authors have added tips, hints, and cross-references in the margins (in color) throughout the process areas to help you better understand, apply, and find more information about the content of the process areas. The book also now includes brief, insightful perspectives on CMMI written by people influential in the model’s creation, development, and transition. A new case study from Raytheon illustrates a real-world application of the model to a services organization. Whether you are new to CMMI or familiar with an earlier version, if you need to know about, evaluate, or put the latest version of CMMI into practice, this book is an essential resource.

The book is divided into three parts.

Part I offers the broad view of CMMI, beginning with basic concepts of process improvement. It describes the process areas, their components, and their relationships to each other. It explains the model’s two representations as well as paths to the adoption and use of CMMI for process improvement and benchmarking.

Part II, the bulk of the book, details the generic goals and practices and the twenty-two process areas now comprising CMMI. The process areas are organized alphabetically by acronym for easy look-up. Each chapter includes goals, best practices, and examples for a particular process area. The two CMMI representations are described so that you will easily see their similarities and differences and thereby be better able to choose the right approach for your organization.

Part III contains several useful resources, including CMMI-related references, acronym definitions, a glossary of terms, and an index.

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Price: $50.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Established companies are clamoring for breakthrough innovation, but are often hamstrung by the highly reliable, repeatable processes of their management systems. Based on years of research, Grabbing Lightning shows how twelve companies have tried to develop a capability for sustainable breakthrough innovation and outlines best practices for your organization.

The authors show how the management system for innovation is different from the traditional one in that it allows—and even encourages—mistakes and failures in order to promote learning. Grabbing Lightning outlines the three building blocks of breakthrough innovation (BI) and shows what it takes to become an organization that values the BI management system..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"This book is the definitive guide for SAP NetWeaver BI professionals Based on their extraordinary expertise with the product, the authors provide deep insights about key innovations in the areas of user experience, query performance, integrated planning, and enterprise-wide data warehousing."
—Stefan Sigg, Vice President, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence

The long-anticipated publication of this second edition reflects the growing success of SAP NetWeaver as well as the various Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities that are embedded with SAP BW version 7.0. Written by SAP insiders, this comprehensive guide takes into account the ever-changing features, functionality, and toolsets of SAP NetWeaver to bring you the most updated information on how to use SAP BW to design, build, deploy, populate, access, analyze, present, and administer data. You'll discover the options that are available in SAP NetWeaver and uncover a new means to improve business performance.

This book reflects the process an organization goes through during an implementation of the software. The authors begin with an introduction to BI and SAP NetWeaver and quickly progress to information modeling and enterprise data warehouse concepts. You'll learn how to access and deliver meaningful analytic information to the organization, as well as perform integrated planning functions. Finally, the authors share invaluable insight on warehouse administration, performance, and security.

With more than 50 percent new or revised material, this second edition of Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse shows you how to:

• Extract data from online transaction processing systems
• Store transformed data in a way that best supports reporting and analysis
• Use the various Business Explorer tools such as BEx Report Designer, BEx Analyzer, BEx Broadcaster, and BEx Web Application Designer
• Schedule, monitor, troubleshoot, and archive data loads

The companion Web site contains sample chapters in Wiki format and the authors' blog where readers may enter discussions about the book and SAP.

Wiley Technology Publishing Timely. Practical. Reliable.

Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/

Visit the companion Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/mcdonald

The companion Web site contains the sample code presented in the text of the book, plus implementation templates..
Price: $30.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Here are cutting-edge techniques that will boost the productivity and slash the costs of your facility department

Let 21 top specialists show you how to maximize the operation and maintenance capabilities of any facility or plant. This practical handbook takes you through each step in the planning, design, and execution of maintenance and operation procedures for structures, equipment, and systems. It features special emphasis on emergency and energy equipment used in facilities--and explores all essential support functions and duties. The most comprehensive resource of its kind, this handbook provides you with a complete picture of facility operation and maintenance--from technical checklists--to cost control--to computer applications!.
Price: $71.82 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Leaders of software-development projects face many challenges First, you must produce a quality product on schedule and on budget. Second, you must foster and encourage a cohesive, motivated, and smoothly operating team. And third, you must maintain a clear and consistent focus on short- and long-term goals, while exemplifying quality standards and showing confidence and enthusiasm for your team and its efforts. Most importantly, as a leader, you need to feel and act responsible for your team and everything that it does. Accomplishing all these goals in a way that is rewarding for the leader and the team--while producing the results that management wants--is the motivation behind the Team Software Process (TSP). Developed by renowned quality expert Watts S. Humphrey, TSP is a set of new practices and team concepts that helps developers take the CMM and CMMI Capability Maturity Models to the next level. Not only does TSP help make software more secure, it results in an average production gain of 68 percent per project. Because of their quality, timeliness, and security, TSP-produced products can be ten to hundreds of times better than other hardware or software.In this essential guide to TSP, Humphrey uses his vast industry experience to show leaders precisely how to lead teams of software engineers trained in the Personal Software Process (PSP). He explores all aspects of effective leadership and teamwork, including building the right team for the job, the TSP launch process, following the process to produce a quality product, project reviews, and capitalizing on both the leader's and team's capabilities. Humphrey also illuminates the differences between an ineffective leader and a superb one with the objective of helping you understand, anticipate, and correct the most common leadership failings before they undermine the team. An extensive set of appendices provides additional detail on TSP team roles and shows you how to use an organization's communication and command networks to achieve team objectives. Whether you are a new or an experienced team leader, TSPSM: Leading a Development Team provides invaluable examples, guidelines, and suggestions on how to handle the many issues you and your team face together..
Price: $37.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Recipient of the Reader's Choice Award from Visual Basic Programmer's Journal. Gary Cornell is one of the highest-profile authors--key Microsoft insider who's gained industry respect. Support of Visual Studio 6 team with technical review of book. Enables readers to produce commercial-quality programs for practical application. Section devoted to programming concepts for true novice, as well as content aimed towards more advanced programming tasks. Goes beyond competition with extensive coverage on building your own objects, custom controls, recursion, distributing commercial programs. Covers features built into both the Professional and Enterprise editions of Visual Basic..
Price: $6.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Help children develop language and verbal functions! "This is definitely a book I will be purchasing for my professional use. I supervise student teachers in home-based programs as well as school programs and this book will be a perfect fit for the program implementation we currently present. Greer and Ross have produced an excellent accumulation of research compilation, assessment and program descriptions for implementation by professionals training and working with autistic children and adults." -Dr. Irfa Karmali, Shelby Residential and Vocational Services "Overall, a very technically accurate book and one well suited to accompany a practicum component in verbal behavior. Very comprehensive and [does] a good job of covering most questions, concerns and issues [for] training others to implement verbal behavior strategies. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it."-Janet Goodman, University of West Georgia Responding to the overwhelming demand for effective language development tools for children with no language and severe language delays related to autism and other disabilities, Douglas Greer and Denise Ross present newly identified methods to assist teachers and parents in their efforts to provide verbal capabilities to children. In their book Verbal Behavior Analysis, Doug and Denise describe how to help children produce novel and spontaneous verbal functions, acquire language incidentally, and become socially verbal. They carefully integrate the latest research, including many new findings, and present readers with a clear outline of the current state of the science of verbal behavior and its application to children with real needs. Behavior analysts, parents, and teachers will find the procedures applicable to all forms of language (signs, pictures, and voice-generating devices) while maintaining a strong emphasis on the vocal production of a child's speech. *Describes how to teach children to be literate listeners, reducing the number of instructional times required to teach basic skills from four to ten times. (Chapter 3).*Presents the necessary procedures to teach children to become observational learners. (Chapter 5 and 7). *Offers practitioners methods for teaching children to acquire novel language and language usage incidentally, allowing children to expand their language without direct instruction. (Chapters 3, 5, and 6). *Demonstrates helping children to move from emergent speakers to readers, and learn to enjoy books in free time, and to read. (Chapter 6). *Introduces a verbal developmental scheme to guide instruction and aid practitioners in determining which children need particular interventions and when they need them, along with alternative tactics and strategies for solving learning problems. (Chapters 2 and 7)..
Price: $36.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Praise for CMMI® Survival Guide

"Traveling down the CMMI road can be difficult and time-consuming. Garcia and Turner have given us a practical roadmap that addresses the key points to learn as well as the many potholes to avoid. Their Survival Guide is a most valuable resource for the journey. It will help immeasurably in achieving the process improvement that you seek."

—Dr. Howard Eisner, Distinguished Research Professor, George Washington University

"Helps you get to the 'red meat' of the CMMI quickly and with minimum pain."

—Donald J. Reifer, President, Reifer Consultants, Inc.

"The best words I can offer potential readers is that you must have this book, not on your shelf, but with you for repeated reading to glean new ideas or reinforce old ones you gained from the past readings. If you have ever been directly involved in a process improvement initiative or if you are starting one, this book can only help you to do a better job. And while [the authors] may not have written this book explicitly for experienced consultants, I found it a great reference even for those of us who helped start this industry, because it provides clear and useful answers to those tough questions we are asked all of the time."

—Tim Kasse, CEO and Principal Consultant, Kasse Initiatives LLC

"This book contains practical (working) tips for the 'getting started' phase of process improvement, which is the hardest one in the road to improving one's processes."

—Agapi Svolou, Principal of Alexanna, LLC, and SEI CMMI Transition Partner

"The authors have done an outstanding job in providing guidance for process improvement from a practical perspective. Instead of focusing on a single technique or approach, they have provided a variety of methods for process improvement implementation and have framed their discussion with rich context from lessons learned. The concepts described in this book will be useful to both those starting CMMI implementations and to those who are well into their journey but are still looking for ways to lessen the pain and provide value-added improvements. Reading the book is like being in the audience during a live presentation by SuZ and Rich—they wrote the book as they would present the information to a live audience."

—Bill Craig, Director, Software Engineering Directorate, AMRDEC, RDECOM

"I have been involved in process improvement since the early 90's and many of the mistakes that I made could have been prevented if this book had been available then."

—Claude Y. Laporte, Professor, ETS Universite du Quebec

"Primarily, the book is practical. The guidance presented is geared toward someone who is not exactly sure why they need process improvement, but is presented with the fact that they must do it. Very often these are smaller organizations, with limited resources, and uncertain support from above. As I read the book, I thought almost immediately of a couple of organizations with which I am familiar who could use this kind of tutelage. There are real, and useful, techniques in this book that I believe can help these kinds of organizations prioritize and establish reasonable plans for improving the processes in the organization. I also like the sidebars and personal observations. Discussions of experience can really help organizations through the various pitfalls that are part of developing and deploying processes. It makes the book more of a 'real life' guide, and not a theoretical exercise. Finally, the book is an enjoyable read. The conversational style of the book (and the humor) make it much easier to read than many of the books I have read in the past."

—Alexander Stall, Principal Process Improvement Engineer, Systems and Software Consortium

The CMMI provides a framework for process improvement spanning the life cycle of a product or service, from conception through delivery and maintenance. Widely and beneficially adopted around the world, the size and apparent complexity of the framework have nonetheless been daunting to some organizations. That need not be so. With a proper guide to help navigate around unknown dangers, potential pitfalls, and false paths, you too, can realize substantial business value from a successful CMMI implementation. This book is such a guide, full of the real-life examples to ease your way, and written in a lighter style to ease your reading.

The CMMI® Survival Guide is an effective resource for multiple readerships. If you are just now considering a process improvement program, with the CMMI among your options, the authors' discussion of relevant issues will enhance your business case right from the start. If you have already decided to implement the CMMI, the authors' practical knowledge will help you make the most of your efforts. Even if you are well into a CMMI implementation, but are lost, stuck, or going around in circles, the authors' valuable advice will help you regain your direction.

If you work in a smaller or resource-strapped organization, you will particularly benefit from the authors' description of alternative paths to process improvement—approaches that are more incremental or agile, and less intensive, than you might imagine for a CMMI implementation. The authors draw on their extensive experience working with diverse organizations, and on the CMMI tools, techniques, and templates developed for those organizations.

Whatever your background or need, the CMMI® Survival Guide will help you survey the CMMI territory, consult possible road maps, learn from other CMMI explorers, weigh the benefits of hiring a living guide, and even consider whether the trip is right for you.

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Price: $29.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Over 20 years of research went into the creation of this history of the development, characteristics, and capabilities of the Panther..
Price: $39.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]