Unlike most other software engineering texts, this book blends measurement into the thread of the discussion rather than considering it a separate issue. Similarly, concepts such as reuse, risk management, and quality engineering are embedded in the software engineering activities that they affect, instead of being treated as separate parts. This approach to the subject gives this text a fresh viewpoint that will help students and practitioners understand how to apply the theory to concrete applications.

Pfleeger applies the concepts in each chapter to two examples: one represents a typical information system, and the other represents a real-time system. Both examples are based on actual projects. The information system example describes the software needed to determine the price of advertising time for a large British television company. The real-time system is the control software for the Ariane-5 rocket. Pfleeger looks at the problems that have been reported and explores how software engineering techniques could have helped to locate and avoid some of them. These explicit examples detail the application of the theory and will help readers to understand the concepts. In addition, there are many one-page case studies and examples from the literature. Many of these are expanded upon on a Web page that contains a number of valuable study aids and a considerable amount of additional information. For those interested in legal, moral, and ethical issues, almost every chapter ends with several thought-provoking questions and discussions on these topics.

The text is organized in three parts. Part 1 is traditional, in that its purpose is to motivate readers and to explain why knowledge of software engineering is important to practitioners and researchers alike.

In the excellent second part, Pfleeger walks readers through the major steps that are required for development and maintenance, regardless of the process model used to build the software: eliciting and checking the requirements, designing a solution to the problem, writing and testing the code, and delivering it to the customer. The sections on testing are the best that I have ever seen and are worth the price of the book. The material is detailed, provides a number of useful techniques and strategies, and explains the pitfalls encountered by many test plans. This is an extremely useful portion of the book.

Part 3 covers evaluation and improvement, focusing on how one can evaluate processes and products and steps to take to improve them.

This book will be useful to undergraduate and graduate students and to anyone interested in learning the latest software engineering techniques from a practical standpoint. The book is refreshingly honest. There are a number of concepts that sound good in theory but do not seem to work in practice; when this is the case, the author says so.