Just ten short years ago, project management was thought of by many as an “accidental profession” – a role within organizations created through happenstance and ad hoc training. Project managers were truly a neglected species – often novice managers given a project to complete with the directive to operate within a set of narrowly defined (and often unrealistic) constraints. No crystal ball was needed to predict the outcome – failed projects; managers battling entrenched bureaucracy and powerful factions; and money, market opportunities, and other resources forever lost. 

Blogs are about to storm the corporate world — but not via the CIO's office. They are appearing in companies most often as the convenient records of engineering or design projects. In fact, blogs are following the same bottom-up adoption path that was created by instant messaging (IM), another collaboration tool originally used for personal communication. As blogs bubble into businesses, they introduce new ways to create, share, and leverage knowledge — and that is why they should be on your radar.

User-Centered Design.hmm.seems intuitive, doesn't it? Obviously, if we're launching something onto the World Wide Web, we must be expecting someone to use it — duh. Though this may be true, many companies are missing the mark and their audience and, consequently, their business objectives by failing to successfully integrate the user. A User-Centered Design approach can create successes by merging business and user objectives to deliver a service that users value, while generating a benefit for the business. In fact, studies show that with a User-Centered Design you could realize returns of $10 to $100 for every $1 you invest in making your site easier to use.

Let's face it — all businesses exist for the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value. And in today's business climate where budgets are tight and competition is tough, it is becoming more and more challenging. It is no surprise that organizations are requiring potential investments be backed by business cases that are centered around quantifiable, reliable, and compelling estimates of Return on Investments (ROI). In a nutshell, ROI is an estimate of the financial benefit (the “Return") on money spent (the “Investment") on a particular alternative (e.g., an IT project). Because a company is foregoing the use of funds for the sake of the investment, the investment must not only return the original capital, but also return enough to compensate for what the funds would have earned elsewhere, plus an allowance for risk.

The mark of a craftsman is his familiarity with his tools, the speed with which he can use them to solve simple problems, and his cleverness in using them to solve more complicated challenges. The latest edition of Unix Power Tools explores the standard Unix tools in greater depth than ever, and with better coverage of Linux, FreeBSD, and even the Darwin environment of Mac OS X. It's also been improved by the addition of sections on Perl and Python, programming languages that can often solve Unix problems more adeptly than any specific utility. This detail-filled book distinguishes itself from other guides for Unix gurus with its organizational structure (it's a series of articles that can be absorbed sequentially or individually) and carefully designed and executed index. Like its esteemed predecessors, this book is one you will keep handy.

As the old joke goes, the best way to end up with a bug-free program or script is to write it with no bugs to begin with. But that smug line ignores the realities of compressed schedules and budgets, constantly shifting requirements, the often-negative effects of maintenance by programmers unfamiliar with the original code, and ever changing hosting environments. Months and years after its original release, following system upgrades and multiple security patches, your once-perfect code might be reduced to a bug-riddled albatross.

The Art & Science of Web Design will help you understand the Web from the inside. It is structured around core Web concepts that often get only a passing mention in books on Web design. This book is not a reference book or a style guide. It is your mentor, whispering in your ear all the answers to those ubiquitous questions, and reminding us that there are now new rules and new ways to break them.

The story you are about to read is absolutely true — so true that I haven't even bothered to change any names to protect the innocent (we're all guilty in this sordid little tale, so there are really no innocents to protect). What you read may shock, enrage, and confuse you and — when I get to the part about Barney — may even make you snort that two-buck-a-bottle "soft drink" laced with St. John's wort, ginseng, and taurine right out of your nose and onto your keyboard (a favor, really, if you're using one of those annoying split keyboards). In any case, don't say I didn't warn you.