Michael Cusumano’s work has always been original and provoking. This new book provides a comprehensive and stimulating vision of the software business. Michael is one of the few persons who has really and personally studied software companies and market dynamics. His contribution is extremely important for software engineers and software managers who want to understand the critical challenges of “doing software”.

This book should be read by EVERY software executive that wants to be updated of what is going on in the software business. This is one of the very few available books that specifically address the needs of a software businesses and this makes this book even more valuable. It lays out the basic relationships between products and service very clearly - and he explores the pitfalls involved with good detail from the companies that he has advised.

In this early portion of the book he also offers some very useful metrics to help provide financial sanity checks. There’s an interesting “historical” chapter that follows the development of the industry, and then he delves into SW development best practices - which appears to be his particular forte. There’s also a good chapter on the start-up phase sprinkled with sage advise. Cusumano outlines ten different case studies in his book, some complete failures and some successful and each and every one of these case studies have a lesson that we should learn from.