Pearls From Sand How Small Encounters Lead To Powerful Lessons

Throughout your life, you've had numerous everyday conversations and other experiences in which a small observation--perhaps a single sentence someone spoke to you--resonated so strongly that you still remember it years later. The "pearls of wisdom" that arose from such small encounters helped shape your values, how you think about yourself, and how you interact with others. Pearls from Sand will appeal to people who seek out life lessons, look for ways to apply the lessons to their thoughts and actions, and enjoy sharing these powerful lessons with others.

Throughout your life, you’ve had numerous everyday conversations and other experiences in which a small observation---perhaps a single sentence someone spoke to you---resonated so strongly that you still remember it years later. The “pearls of wisdom” that arose from such small encounters helped shape your values, how you think about yourself, and how you interact with others. "Pearls from Sand" will appeal to people who seek out life lessons, look for ways to apply the lessons to their thoughts and actions, and enjoy sharing these powerful lessons with others.

Now in its third edition, this classic guide to software requirements engineering has been fully updated with new topics, examples, and guidance. Two leaders in the requirements community have teamed up to deliver a contemporary set of practices covering the full range of requirements development and management activities on software projects. Describes practical, effective, field-tested techniques for managing the requirements engineering process from end to end. Provides examples demonstrating how requirements "good practices" can lead to fewer change requests, higher customer satisfaction, and lower development costs. Fully updated with contemporary examples and many new practices and techniques. Describes how to apply effective requirements practices to agile projects and numerous other special project situations. Targeted to business analysts, developers, project managers, and other software project stakeholders who have a general understanding of the software development process. Shares the insights gleaned from the authors’ extensive experience delivering hundreds of software-requirements training courses, presentations, and webinars. New chapters are included on specifying data requirements, writing high-quality functional requirements, and requirements reuse. Considerable depth has been added on business requirements, elicitation techniques, and nonfunctional requirements. In addition, new chapters recommend effective requirements practices for various special project situations, including enhancement and replacement, packaged solutions, outsourced, business process automation, analytics and reporting, and embedded and other real-time systems projects.

Only 39 percent of projects today are successful. Nearly half of the projects that fail, fail because of “poor requirements management” (PMI 2014). Leveraging Business Analysis for Project Success explores the role of the business analyst in setting a project up for success. It informs and educates project managers, sponsors, and organization leaders on what is necessary for project success. This book goes beyond requirements management in exploring the how the business analyst can contribute to increased proi tability through project selection, scope dei nition, and post-implementation evaluation. The reader will learn about the history of business analysis, professional organizations and resources to support the profession, and what to expect from the business analyst at each phase of the project lifecycle as presented in a case study throughout the text. Project leaders will better be able to support the business analysis needs of the project by understanding the skills, expertise, tasks, resources, and time needed to do business analysis right and maximize the return on investment for each project.

Can a Canaanite harlot who made her living enticing men be a fitting wife for a leader of Israel? Shockingly, the Bible’s answer is yes. This 10th anniversary edition of Pearl in the Sand includes new features that will invite you into the untold story of Rahab’s journey from lowly outcast to redeemed child of God. Rahab’s home is built into a wall, a wall that fortifies and protects the City of Jericho. However, other walls surround her too, walls of fear, rejection, and unworthiness… Years of pain and betrayal have wounded Rahab’s heart—she doubts whether her dreams of experiencing true love will ever come true… A woman with a wrecked past—a man of success, of faith... of pride. A marriage only God would conceive! Through the heartaches of a stormy relationship, Rahab and Salmone learn the true source of one another’s worth and find healing in God.

Accelerate Your Pursuit of Software Excellence by Learning from Others' Hard-Won Experience "Karl is one of the most thoughtful software people I know. He has reflected deeply on the software development irritants he has encountered over his career, and this book contains 60 of his most valuable responses." -- From the Foreword by Steve McConnell, Construx Software and author of Code Complete "Wouldn't it be great to gain a lifetime's experience without having to pay for the inevitable errors of your own experience? Karl Wiegers is well versed in the best techniques of business analysis, software engineering, and project management. You'll gain concise but important insights into how to recover from setbacks as well as how to avoid them in the first place." --Meilir Page-Jones, Senior Business Analyst, Wayland Systems Inc. Experience is a powerful teacher, but it's also slow and painful. You can't afford to make every mistake yourself! Software Development Pearls helps you improve faster and bypass much of the pain by learning from others who already climbed the learning curves. Drawing on 25+ years helping software teams succeed, Karl Wiegers has crystallized 60 concise, practical lessons for all your projects, regardless of your role, industry, technology, or methodology. Wiegers's insights and specific recommendations cover six crucial elements of success: requirements, design, project management, culture and teamwork, quality, and process improvement. For each, Wiegers offers First Steps for reflecting on your own experiences before you start; detailed Lessons with core insights, real case studies, and actionable solutions; and Next Steps for planning adoption in your project, team, or organization. This is knowledge you weren't taught in college or boot camp. It can boost your performance as a developer, business analyst, quality professional, or manager. Clarify requirements to gain a shared vision and understanding of your real problem Create robust designs that implement the right functionality and quality attributes and can evolve Anticipate and avoid ubiquitous project management pitfalls Grow a culture in which behaviors actually align with what people claim to value Plan realistically for quality and build it in from the outset Use process improvement to achieve desired business results, not as an end in itself Choose your next steps to get full value from all these lessons Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Includes music.