Software Runaways: Monumental Software Disasters

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What you can learn from 16 colossal software disasters.

If failure teaches more than success, imagine how much you can learn from the most catastrophic software development failures of all time. In Software Runaways, software failure expert Robert Glass shows exactly what went wrong in 16 colossal software disasters -- and how to keep it from happening to you.

Glass goes behind the scenes of those awful projects you've seen on the nightly news -- the Denver Airport baggage system, the IRS modernization --and a host of less well-publicized failures that are equally instructive. Along the way, he identifies six characteristics of projects likely to fail -- and some of them will surprise you.

Software Runaways brings a software engineer's perspective to projects like:

• American Airlines' failed reservation system, Confirm
• The 4GL disaster at the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles
• The NCR inventory system that nearly destroyed its customers
• The next-generation FAA Air Traffic Control System that collapsed

Glass presents specific lessons to be learned from each failure, and shows how to sniff out runaway projects early enough to take action. He also considers the typical responses to potential runaways, including risk management and issue management, demonstrating their strengths and weaknesses.

Whether you're an IT executive, project manager or developer, Software Runaways helps you learn from someone else's mistakes -- and that's a whole lot less painful than making them yourself!