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Reviewer: Charles William Bash

This book is intended either as a textbook for a course on software engineering (focusing on the human aspects, as opposed to the technical or process aspects), or as a reference book for a group of software professionals looking into these same aspects. The book is broken into five parts, and each of those broken into chapters, with the intent that each part and each chapter could be considered individually, without using the other parts. The five parts are: "Software Development Environments," "The World of Software Engineering," "Software-Human Interaction," "Business Analysis of Software Engineering," and "Software Engineering Education." Each chapter consists of some descriptive material, a series of tasks that students are to execute (sometimes augmented by case studies), and reflective questions for discussion. The descriptive material varies from general background information, to specific comments to assist the "teacher" (whomever adopts that role), to reactions to problems that the reflective questions might raise. I found the material to be very relevant to the topic of "human aspects," but had difficulty with the descriptive material; I was not certain which "hat" (student, lecturer, or commentator) I should wear to read the material. I would have been happier (maybe) with two books: a lecturer's guide (which pretty much would be the content of this book), and a student's textbook. The other option would be to include a clause about selective copying (and even a fee for doing so), so that the lecturer could provide the students with the "interesting questions" without giving away the background information until after the discussion period. Periodically, the authors make it quite clear what they believe the "correct" software development method is, even though they claim no bias. I can't dispute their bias as incorrect, but being a little more neutral (or openly biased) is another potential improvement. This book will provide a very good basis for discussions about the human side of engineering. While there is some discussion about user-computer interfaces, the primary discussion is about the developer's interface with his or her team members. Appropriate discussions are also included about how the team operates when the members are not co-located. Online Computing Reviews Service